Monitoring network printing

[DSapseid]

Right i have been given the task now of installing a print credit system as we have printed over 61000 pages in the last month for a school of only 600 users!! There are a few things i need the software to do and i dont know what one to go for.

 

1. Teachers must be able to add print credits without coming to me.

2. It must log when the user is given more so i can track who is a heavy user and question them.

3. and the most important it must be hassle free for me to install!!

 

I am currently using the paper cut free print logger hence why i know how many prints i did last month.

 

Cheers

 

Dan

[Geoff]

How much money do you have for the project?

[DSapseid]

How much money do you have for the project?

 

Havent been told As little as possible, but if one fills every criteria then i will say this is the one we will get and they will believe me

 

So far this year we have spent over 1/2 of our years toner budget and that is only in 3 and 1/2 months :oops: also we are getting through mountains of paper as much as 3 reams a day in some printers!

 

So if it was cost effective they would probalby fork out for it.

[Embazzy]

I would have to recommend Print Manager plus from software shelf nice and easy to set up and many reports by usres date printer etc colour and black costings i am not sure that you can add credits remotely but users can check there balance also costing is reasonable with support each year

 

Embazzy

[localzuk]

I use PMP also but find it to be buggy and annoying so am looking at other solutions at the moment.

[SOSAGES]

give all the big software options a go.

 

They all take about an hour to get configured with some test users, and then try it and see if it works how you want.

 

this sort of thing shouldnt be rushed i get a lot of calls / emails from end users who are unhappy with product x and wish to swap simply because they didnt put any time into testing and were bowled over by the sales pitch.

 

What makes it worse is the more expensive the product the more keen they are to knock money off it just to get into the site and increase market share i have seem some very nice discounts being offered. But of course the customer is still often unhappy

 

Just make sure the software runs without you knowing about it and requires no fuss from anyone.

[chrish187]

We use some software called PCounter, its not free but its really good. If a pupil clicks print more than once then it automatically deletes replicated jobs, it can assign quotas and it has a searchable database to make reports. Along with a web page showing graphical usage and data.

[SOSAGES]

the pcounter chaps have put some extra work into the Integrated photocopier solutions

http://www.altman.co.uk/pcounter/copiers/

 

looking good. Only issue looks to be no barcode reading but i expect most sites have moved on from that these days.

[DSapseid]

Right with it being the holidays i am now going to get round to putting this in and i have downloaded Print Manager Plus and so far it does everything i need it to do, but i cant seem to install the client package thing so the user gets the popup warning them when there balance is low or run out.

 

I have tried creating an MSI for it and it dosent work. I have also tried writing a batch file to call the exe file that you download and used /s for silent install and put it on the startup of the machine. :twisted:

 

They are going bring an msi out for the client whe nthey release the next version of the software later on this year dosent exactly help me now.

 

Has anyone got a working MSI or another way of installing it os the user gets the popups.

 

Thanks

 

Dan

[SOSAGES]

pcounter price increase news.

 

[Ric_]

@DSapseid: IIRC you can run the client util from a shared drive.