Printing Solution

joe2687

I'm looking to put a system in place where people have to pay per sheet to use 4 or 5 network printers. I'm just wondering has anyone any knowledge of these types of systems and/or put one in place?

To give you a bit of background, I work in a VEC college. At the moment, we have 5 LaserJet P1505n printers on the network, and we are going through 2500 sheets per day. This is mainly due to students printing crap direct from the internet (in one instance, I actually saw a student printing her friends list from facebook out!)

So basically, I figured if they have to pay for the paper, they wont be printing as much. The main points I am worried about are:

1. Will the printers have to be upgraded?
2. Can this be done by tracking each users printing through AD?
3. Is there actual software to do this on the market?

For photocopying, we have a system where a student will buy a card from reception with 20 sheets on it, he sticks his card into a little machine which in turn applies 20 sheets to the photocopier. This is a good system and works well for photocopying, however if there was some kind of a software solution rather than having to upgrade all printers then that would suit us better.

Any help/links would be greatly appreciated. Thanks all.

Enigma IE

http://www.safecom.eu

Yes, there are solutions on the market. Have a look a Pull Printing, also Campus Print. Typically you would need to upgrade to printer firmware, to include the Safecom component. Here is a list of supported devices

http://www.safecom.eu/solutions/safecom_go/supported_devices

Cervantes

Have you had a look at PaperCut NG

http://www.papercut.com/products/ng/

There's a free 40 day trial - should prove plenty of time to set it up and test it.

joe2687

Thanks for the replies. I looked through a few sites in the last while, and papercut seems to be the most straight forward of the lot. I like the web-based interface and administration suite.

I think I'm going to go with their 40-day trial and see what its like, i have a classroom with 20 PC's I might trial run it on until the summer holidays.

Bob_Harris

You could save a bit of money by going with something open source, e.g
http://www.linux.com/archive/feed/56831

Although you will probably lose in terms of ease of setup etc.

the_syco

Yup. Carlow IT did something like this. People still printed out stuff, but in the long run, it would cost the college nothing, as the revenue collected would cover it, IMO.