Monitoring network printing

[Trav]

Hi folks

 

Didn't know where to post this so have started new topic here.

 

We had problems chasing about trying to find who printed 18 pages of something and who else printed whatever at times during the day.

 

We discovered Papercut which logs all print jobs on the network and writes to a log that can be viewed and saved in a .csv etc. for later analysis.

 

Guess what ................... it's brill and best of all it's free.

 

Have a look @

http://www.papercut.biz

[kearton]

and best of all it's free.

 

...for 5 or less users. It would have to be a *pretty* small school to fit in this category methinks...

[SOSAGES]

i started using papercut in the office for just 5 users (keeps it free)

 

works very well so far. 2 new features i noticed are it monitors copies and how many trees you killed this week

 

as for cost overall i havnt checked lately the costs of pcounter pharos etc but papercut does seem to be more than reasonable imo

[maniac]

The basic 'print logger' version is free for unlimited users, but it will only monitor print jobs and won't limit them. See details here http://www.papercut.biz/products/free_software/print_logger/

 

We've just brought the Papercut NG software for our site, at £457 for up to 2000 users, I still think it represents excellent value for money. It's a very good piece of software in my opinion.

 

Mike.

[SOSAGES]

oh and the install process was very easy, having spent years playing with other print monitoring software papercut did seem to just install and work. Anything giving me 0 hassle gets my vote

[plexer]

Trav: A forum search for papercut returned 24 matches.

 

Print monitoring has been discussed many times.

 

Thanks,

 

Ben

[ChrisP]

For keeping an eye on our print setup i use...

 

 

1)

NetSupport School 9 (new version) has excellent classroom/student level management of printers.

 

2)

http://www.splunk.com/

SYSLOG SERVER: WOW i love this. Another great FREE (non pro version) Linux solution. ^ this should 100% be part of your network fabric and it runs well in a VM. (you can add syslog agents to you windows servers and log them as well)

 

3)

Printer job logging thats built into most good network printers.

 

4)

Printserver logfiles

 

5)

winsuite logs

[Diello]

PrintManagerPlus from SoftwareShelf here.

[SOSAGES]

do the free/open source software options allow you to monitor user copies?

[Trav]

@ Kearton ..for 5 or less users. It would have to be a *pretty* small school to fit in this category methinks...

 

It's unlimited as a logger, if you want it to do more then you must pay... where's the problem with that statement Kearton

[TechSupp]

I use PaperCut (the free one) in my schools. It does just the job. Create a spreadsheet with pivot tables to handle the data, then its just a matter of copy and paste each month to create the 'name and shame' graphs to stick on the staff room wall (the last bit is best doen when teachers are in class as all hell breaks loose when they come in for a break and see the figures! ' I did'nt print that!!!!! Oh yes you did and I've proof )

[kingswood]

Glad I came on here today- Papercut looks like just the tool I need...

[acrobson]

We use Print Manager Plus as well from Software shelf, we have just upgraded to the AD version as we were previously running on NT4. Before hand i considered my a guru on PMP, however since half of the team have been upgraded (More of a beta version in my opinion for BSF ) i haven't had a chance to play, and the new top dogs are really struggling to the point they say it's crap, however, i cannot comment as i cannot play yet! If only they'd ask my opinion!

[sidewinder]

We use Papercut. Found it was very reasonably priced and compared to my previous experiances of PCounter, it was a doddle to set up. Also liked the fact you didnt have to change to proprietary printer ports like PCounter

 

Really, really recommend it

[CheeseDog]

@ Kearton ..for 5 or less users. It would have to be a *pretty* small school to fit in this category methinks...

 

It's unlimited as a logger, if you want it to do more then you must pay... where's the problem with that statement Kearton

 

Are you sure?

 

PaperCut NGâ„¢ - Downloads

This is a fully functional 40-day evaluation version of PaperCut NG. After using PaperCut NG for the defined trial period, you must purchase a license to unlock the program, or remove the evaluation version from your system(s).

 

If you have less than five user accounts on your network domain, you may continue to use PaperCut NG free of charge after the trial period.

 

[ChrisP]

Installed the PaperCut Print monitor this morning as it's a nice tool for free.

 

Quickly identified that somone had printed 279 pages to a colour printer already.

 

Thumbs up!

[Trav]

CheeseDog@ Are you sure?

 

 

Sure am, PapercutNG is a different beasty and pennies are needed for that one. Just the simple Papercut logger is free as several on here have found out as you can see by the comments.

[kearton]

@ Kearton ..for 5 or less users. It would have to be a *pretty* small school to fit in this category methinks...

 

It's unlimited as a logger, if you want it to do more then you must pay... where's the problem with that statement Kearton

 

Apologies for any confusion. I merely followed the link in your original post, and clicked on the Pricing link on that page and saw "FREE" for 0-5 users. I did not take the time to see that they had a few products and that the logger was a seperate app.

[CheeseDog]

CheeseDog@ Are you sure?

 

 

Sure am, PapercutNG is a different beasty and pennies are needed for that one. Just the simple Papercut logger is free as several on here have found out as you can see by the comments.

 

Thanks for that quite tempted to gvie it a go now.

[SOSAGES]

We use Papercut. Found it was very reasonably priced and compared to my previous experiances of PCounter, it was a doddle to set up. Also liked the fact you didnt have to change to proprietary printer ports like PCounter

 

Really, really recommend it

 

a lot of monitoring software abuse printer ports like that.

Pcounter is a great bit of software but i do find it a little ugly and fiddley these days. One great thing about pcounter is they allow access to the API so you can develop your own gateways etc.

 

But yes papercuts price makes it an option for a lot of sites.

[Kitkatninja]

Also use Papercut NG at my place, found it better than a few other products and reasonably price, added that it also works with AD and is server based (some of the products we tried weren't).

 

-Ken

[timbo343]

The free version of papercut does us, we have banned so many kids and got them to pay for the excessive printing that they have printed.

[localzuk]

The free version of papercut does us, we have banned so many kids and got them to pay for the excessive printing that they have printed.

 

Do you mean papercut print logger or papercut NG free version? I am guessing the prior.

[timbo343]

Yeah The paper cut print logger.

[SOSAGES]

the papercut chaps seem to of gone live with the walk up photocopying option now as i found this page: http://www.papercut.biz/products/copier/

 

the more companies that develop solutions like this the better for the end user. Hopefully soon we will see some more embedded soltions built into the machines like the pharos and cannon options, nice bright easy to read screens on the copiers make this sor of thing a joy to work with.

 

i am not sure if many sites charge for printing/copying any contacts of mine who work at a college/uni seem to get free printing but it seems to me they could be making a lot of money if they started to charge.