n8743196@unicorn.WWU.EDU (jeff wandling) (06/15/90)
Thanks for all the response! Those here working for *the cause* revel in
what you said/think. KEEP IT UP!
As of this posting, the majority say that their policy is either free or
some reasonable fee. There were many suggestions for us to use a previewer.
We have looked into that. Right now, we don't have a Sun/X windows for
student use. This summer we are getting some of those new IBM 6000
workstations with all the whistles and bells. This will be available fall
this year. Hopefully it'll have what we need.
As for the minority, they are alone. If there are any others out there who
agree with the minority speak up. Tell me what your policy is.
If you want to read the shrunken responses from the letters I recieved,
procede...
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THE MAJORITY
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Organization: ???@naucse.cse.nau.edu
At our site we provide a minimum of free pages per semester. We also
restrict the printer to people who have read and signed a statement
that they will use the printer for official letters, resumes, articles
to be published, or graphics output they can't get elsewhere. This
has resulted in a very reasonable amount of use of the printer. Note,
finally, that we are talking about a DEC LN03 printer here. Possibly
one of the worst TeX output laser printers in the history of TeX.
...........
Organization: Northwestern Univ. Evanston, Il.
We have a network of Suns with three Apple Laser Writers on it.
The current cost to us of such a printer is about $3200. We
do not currently charge our users for use of the laser printers
but we have considered it. We thought 5 cents/page would cover
the cost of cartridges and paper with some left over for maintenance.
We are not trying to recover the purchase price of the printers,
and we haven't really thought out the maintenance issue, so 5 cents/page
might be a bit low. We also haven't figured in staff costs for
keeping the printer up. It does seem to me however that 25 cents/page
is very high.
................
Organization: School of Chemical Sciences,
Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
>I'd like to know if this asinine policy is popular with other system
>administrators.
No.
It's free. At least for people in our department. I think that
the open-to-all-students sites charge a nickel.
$0.25 is exhorbitant in the extreme.
................
Organization: Solbourne Computer, Inc.
That is high. We were able to pay for a service contract on an HP
LaserJet 500 and later a LaserJet II by charging only 5 cents/page on
the 500 and 15 cents on the II (we were also trying to recover capital
on the II as well as discourage its use to be only "large graphics
files", rather than a print engine).
At work, we print what we need. No one minds.
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Organization: ???@orion.crd.ge.com
I am not a system administrator, but can lend you some information. I
help run WRPI, the radio station of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. We
have a Mac with a Laserwriter at the station, which makes running the place
very pleasant indeed. The first priority for the Mac is of course, station
business. But when it is not in use for that, station members may use it
to write and print out papers and the like. Next to the Laserwriter, there
is a coin box. For anything other than station business, users are expected
to (and do) drop in five cents per printed page. We also charge on this
same honor system the same rate for personal use of the station's copier.
Very reasonable rates, and it is working out very nicely. That twenty-five
cent per page fee is ridiculously high.
...................
Organization: SOCS, McGill University, Montreal, Canada
5 cents per page. always a header page. 5 cents for header page.
some professors pay students photocopies and laser fees from
grant money. For instance I don't pay either photocopies nor laser charges.
...................
Organization: Purdue University
In Purdue CS dept, laser printing is free.
In Purdue EE dept, students are charged 5cent/page.
25cent/page is too much, I think.
.....................
Organization: ??@rice.edu
At Rice U. in Houston, we pay $.05 per page to cover the cost of
printer supplies.
......................
Organization: Computer Science Department, Texas A&M University
I am very suprised to know that your university is charging 25
cents per page of Laser printing. A look at our university acc-
ounting utility shows that they are accounting 2 cents for every
page that go out of the laser printer. This may look less
considering our university in funded by state. Still I think
that 25 cents is too much of money for this if you consider the
price of Laser Printers have come down so much these days...
..................
Organization: ???@hayes.fai.alaska.edu
UAF (U of Alaska Fairbanks) Academic Computing has two publically
accessible laser printers connected to the VAX mainframe that are free
to students. ASUAF (student union) has a laser printer in their
Macintosh lab that costs 25 cents a page. Only the morons go to ASUAF.
..................
Organizaton: ???@cs.umass.edu
Obtain and use a previewer to see your output *before* you send it to the
printer! I do it all the time, to save trees, even though I don't pay
(directly) by the page. (Ultimately I *do* pay, since I have to buy the paper
and pay for the servicing of the printer we own, though my cost is probably
more like 2 to 3 cents per page.)
...................
Organization: ??@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu
Here, TeX and it's ilk are available, and laser pages are 0.10$ per.
...................
Organization: University of Waterloo
The data below is taken from the printer_charges man page, local to
the University of Waterloo. Note that the fees are in Canadian dollars.
The most expensive printer on campus to operate is the lino-
tronic300. This is a very high resolution postscript
printer which produces output on photographic paper.
The rate is $3.87 per page.
Next are the laser printers. Paper and maintenance costs
are much higher than for the conventional line printer. With
the large number of Imagen laser printers on campus, the
rate charged for each page printed can be shown on a per
administration basis.
The following table illustrates the rates charged by various
administrations for Imagen laser printer use:
Administrator Cost/page Limits Registration
MFCF $.15 see below Yes.
CS Dept. $.15 none* Yes.
Stats Dept. $.15 none* Yes.
EE Dept. $.10 none* Yes, only available to
EE department members.**
DCS $.15 see below No, but fund must
be established.
Graphic $.15 by funds No, but fund must
Services be established.
(Engineering)
* "none" means that limits are not set (or they are very
large if they are) but one is expected to be able to pay for
what one uses.
** A form from [some person in charge] must be filled
out and signed by the supervisor before access permission is
granted.
The following table illustrates the rates charged for
specific printers:
Printer name Administrator Cost/page
lw_dcs DCS $.20
lw_arts Arts Dept. $.20*
* this rate is for Arts faculty/staff/students; users out-
side the Arts Faculty are charged $.50/page.
.....................
Organization: Oregon Graduate Institute (formerly OGC), Beaverton, OR
We charge for laser printer use but we also provide previewing
capabilities for tex/latex using our X terminals.
.....................
Organization: Columbia University
Here at Columbia, the computer center (which I'm an employee of) used to
charge $0.25 per page for printing to a Laserwriter II from either macs
or UNIX systems. Usage of the macs was free, but you had to pay $35 per
semester for a UNIX account. Last semester they changed it so that you
had to pay $35 per semester to use the macs, too (although a single $35
gets you an account for both the macs and UNIX systems), but everyone
gets a free 20 pages per week of printing to the laserwriters (it costs
$0.25 per page above 20 per week). Printing to digital ln03's has
always been free, so you can experiment with TeX for free (using the
dvi2ln3 converter).
.....................
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THE MINORITY:
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Organization: MIT Media Lab, Cambridge MA
Our lab budget covers all our printing and copying needs. Most printers on
campus are owned by labs or groups who pay for their output. If you have
to pay for laser printer pages, $0.25 is cheap! Many places charge much
more! Unfortunately, someone has to pay for the printer, toner and paper.
Perhaps some sort of funny-money account would be good. That allows people
to use the printer w/o spending their own money, yet prevents abuse.
:(
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@desc me=jeff wandling n8743196@unicorn.wwu.edu jeff@arthur.wwu.edu