carterp@deakin.OZ.AU (Phil Carter) (06/12/91)
We have a number of laser printers, HP DeskJets, etc about the campus which use single sheet paper. We are finding that students are using an enormous amount of paper and ink (the DeskJet ink costs more than the paper) and that 99% of students' printout finishes in the garbage bin. We want to cut down on the wastage and are interested to know if anyone has some suggestions for this problem. For example, students could pay for their paper. Is it possible to install coin or card operated printers? Any suggestions would be most appreciated. Thanks. -- Phil Carter Computing Services Centre, Academic Programmer Deakin University, Warrnambool campus carterp@deakin.oz.au Princes Highway, Tel: +61 55 618427 Warrnambool 3280, AUSTRALIA
sean@ms.uky.edu (Sean Casey) (06/12/91)
What if someone installed a laser printer, and people actually used it? Obviously, there's going to be better planning next time a printer is installed :). Lets see, offhand, some choices are: - Find money to run the printer. - Give users a quota, perhaps a daily quota. - Restrict the type of usage allowed. - Encourage students to use X based previewers. - Tutor them in efficient usage of resources. - Make them pay for their own use. Why not ask students what they think would be a good idea? After all, they're your customers. Sean -- ** Sean Casey <sean@s.ms.uky.edu>
poulson@cs.widener.edu (Joshua Poulson) (06/12/91)
In article <1991Jun12.123238.17236@ms.uky.edu> sean@ms.uky.edu (Sean Casey) writes: >What if someone installed a laser printer, and people actually used >it? > >- Find money to run the printer. >- Give users a quota, perhaps a daily quota. >- Restrict the type of usage allowed. >- Encourage students to use X based previewers. >- Tutor them in efficient usage of resources. >- Make them pay for their own use. > We have instituted a policy of allowing nothing but three-hole punched paper that is supplied by the department. Since no one is going to want that stuff too often except for homework assignments, it should work out. Also, we allow printing on a separate machine and printer with whatever paper you want for 10 cents a page. (We don't supply THAT paper). That works out for the most part. -- Joshua R. Poulson [Joshua.R.Poulson@cyber.Widener.EDU] "I speak only for myself, okay?" [poulson@cs.Widener.EDU] "It is better to play the game and lose than it is to argue about the instructions." (Me, 1991)
jfw@ksr.com (John F. Woods) (06/12/91)
carterp@deakin.OZ.AU (Phil Carter) writes: > We have a number of laser printers, HP DeskJets, etc about the >campus which use single sheet paper. We are finding that students >are using an enormous amount of paper and ink (the DeskJet ink >costs more than the paper) and that 99% of students' printout >finishes in the garbage bin. We want to cut down on the wastage What kind of terminals do you have? Looking at a program or a large paper on a 24x80 is vastly inferior to being able to spread out a stack of paper and look at 5 or 6 sheets at once. Large-screen graphics terminals almost make that possible. The next question would be why are the expensive printers the only ones available? It would make more sense to have several high-speed line printers that use cheap paper; if the turnaround faster than a laser printer (not hard to do) people will naturally prefer it unless they have a compelling reason for quality output. You can possibly reduce the paper costs by using recycled paper and by recycling the used printer paper (I don't know offhand what the market for recycled paper is like in Australia, though). That doesn't help the problem of the cost of DeskJet ink, but hey, you bought a one-time cheap printer with high operating costs... If you just simply want to stop students from printing things, the answer is really simple: don't give them computer accounts. That way, they don't use up expensive electricity, either.
andrewb@suite.sw.oz.au (Andrew Bettison) (06/19/91)
In article <1429@sol.deakin.OZ.AU> Phil Carter writes: > We are finding that students are using an enormous amount of paper and ink... In <KIRAVUO.91Jun13212300@vipunen.hut.fi> Timo Kiravuo writes: > ... [they] can't think any farther than their own nose. Like > those that print ten copies of a single document instead of using > a copying machine, since copying costs but printing does not. They're being given the wrong signals by the price structure. If you want them to think of printing as more expensive than copying, then _make_ it more expensive! > The best way may be to educate users. And have them watch their > peers. I don't think so. You can't educate people that the world is one way, when all _immediate_ evidence tells them that it patently is not. (People seem to have this peculiar tendency to believe the real world in prefercnce to what people tell them :-) > We have not yet installed print limits, but it could be done. > In the comp. sci. lab they had a limit at one time, but I don't > think that it is in use anymore. And it gets more difficult since > the systems are more and more distributed. Yes, implementation of such things is pretty tricky. (If you're interested in a _real_ solution to such problems, contact me.) > One way to limit printing is to get slow lasers instead of fast > ones. > One idea is that each printer would be given a weekly amount of > paper and ink, but that would only mean a big rush to print in > monday. No use. But instead you could announce in December that > this years budget for printing is used up, and there shall be no > printing until you can get an extra budget. What I am aming at is > to make the users feel that printing is a limited resource that > they have to care about. None of that idiotic 'there is plenty > more where that came from' culture. Not _so_ idiotic, just selfish. If the paper and ink just keep appearing, then why think any differently? Announcements from on high that there is no more paper or ink will be met with skepticism and disbelief: "why, a ream of 500 sheets only costs $8 in the shops, and ink can't be all that expensive! What's their game?" I'll agree that this sort of attitude displays a remarkable short-sightedness and lack of concern for others, but people commonly behave this way in a large crowd of strangers, especially when they think nobody is watching. I believe that people typically don't have qualms about being selfish when the ones they are depriving are anonymous: part of a great unknown herd. If you want a large crowd of users to behave responsibly, then you have to give them a system in which each individual or clique must pay for their own usage. In such an environment they will quickly form economical and responsible habits. There's nothing quite like learning by experience. If your community of users is quite small, however, then appealing to their social conscience should work. (By small, I mean that everyone is acquainted with almost everyone else.) -- Andrew Bettison - Softway Pty Ltd Phone +61-2-698-2322 Internet andrewb@softway.sw.oz.au Fax +61-2-699-9174 UUCP uunet!softway.sw.oz.au!andrewb
pirmann@aramis.rutgers.edu (David Pirmann) (06/20/91)
There was a discussion here at Rutgers a while back on how to prevent non-comp sci students from using computer science equipment. Currently the unattended Macintosh labs have dot matrix printers which are inadequate for the needs. To install laser printers in an unattended lab would mean that non-comp-sci students would use them as word processing stations and comp sci students would have to wait. Some of the solutions were: use bright orange paper and black toner or white paper and colored toner (assuming this would discourage people who want to print a thesis or other paper, while the comp sci professors would know about the procedure and accept it), or hack the Mac Laserwriter driver to print "DCS STUDENT PRINTOUT" faintly underneath the regular printing (this would be overridden by people with unhacked laserwriter drivers on their system disks). While this might not cut down on excessive student use of resources, it would certainly make sure that only the right students use the equipment that is provided for a particular use.
rcte2p@menudo.uh.edu (Paul S. Sears) (06/20/91)
pirmann@aramis.rutgers.edu (David Pirmann) presents in article <Jun.19.14.27.43.1991.26118@aramis.rutgers.edu> >There was a discussion here at Rutgers a while back on how to prevent >non-comp sci students from using computer science equipment. Currently >the unattended Macintosh labs have dot matrix printers which are >inadequate for the needs. To install laser printers in an unattended lab >would mean that non-comp-sci students would use them as word processing >stations and comp sci students would have to wait. > >Some of the solutions were: use bright orange paper and black toner or >white paper and colored toner (assuming this would discourage people >who want to print a thesis or other paper, while the comp sci professors >would know about the procedure and accept it), or hack the Mac Laserwriter >driver to print "DCS STUDENT PRINTOUT" faintly underneath the regular >printing (this would be overridden by people with unhacked laserwriter >drivers on their system disks). I work at the Engineering Computing Center here at UH and in regards to laser printers, the school in general has an effective way to limit their use. All the public access laser printers have a "Copicard" reader attached to them. All of the laserprinters are served by a print spooler (usually on the server itself). To printout on the laserwriter, the user must have a "Copicard" and printouts cost $.10 a page. The users can print out as much as they are willing to pay for. Any user can print a job that is sent to the spooler, but the job will just sit in the spooler until the user uses a copicard. > >While this might not cut down on excessive student use of resources, >it would certainly make sure that only the right students use the >equipment that is provided for a particular use. -- * Paul Sears * Technology *** |"The greater an individual's power * The University of Houston *** | over others, the greater the evil that * RCTE2P@Jetson.uh.edu * * * | might possibly originate with him." * RCTE2P@menudo.uh.edu * * * | - PROPAGANDA, from A Secret Wish (CD)
Allen Renear (06/20/91)
>In article <1429@sol.deakin.OZ.AU> Phil Carter writes: >> We are finding that students are using an enormous amount of paper and ink... >In <KIRAVUO.91Jun13212300@vipunen.hut.fi> Timo Kiravuo writes: >> ... [they] can't think any farther than their own nose. Like >> those that print ten copies of a single document instead of using >> a copying machine, since copying costs but printing does not. But it should be noteed that printing on a laser printer can be a lot cheaper than copying on a photocopier. There is a lot of folklore about printing costs -- and it sometimes distorts resource consumption almost as much as bad pricing structures do. Impression cost on a Xerox 4050 running at typical volume is a little over .02/impression; a desktop photocopier is about .07/impression. So making copies on the 4050 rather than a desktop photocopier *saves* money. Ok, make the laser printer smaller and the photocopier bigger and soon the comparison is reversed -- better to make those ten copies on a Kodak 300 Ektaprint or Xerox 5200 than an Apple Laserwriter NT. But in the grey area of the middle it is harder to say: should you make copies on a HP IIISi or QMS workgroup printer or carry them to the office Canon NP5(???)? This takes only cost into account and ignores revenue and labor. Add those things in and things become even more complicated. For instance, I don't like to see some professional staff person (professor, programmer, engineer, scientist, manager, etc) walking a master from the laser printer to a photocopier across the street to do 5 copies of a short document. That doesn't pay. Sure consumable supplies for cartridge based marking engines are expensive (that, by the way, is where the cost is) but people are much more expensive. And I *never* want to see staff walking a master printed on a mid+ volume laser printer with independent consumables to a photocopier, any photocopier. That's just throwing money away. oops, I forgot. These are students. Well, maybe that changes it. And they are digging into their pockets in front of some machines and not others. I dunno. I like Douglas Houweling's attitude in a computing planning report he wrote when he was Vice-Provost for Computing and Planning at Carnegie-Mellon: "Carnegie-Mellon University...places very heavy demands on the time of its students and faculty ... CMU is very conscious of the need to make efficient use of student time..." John McCredie, ed. *Campus Computing Strategies, 1983. Anyway, wherever possible lets encourage rational pricing schemes that really reflect costs and encourage productivity and discourage 'islands of automation' (printing a master on one marking engine and then hand carrying it to another -- yuck).
jb3o+@andrew.cmu.edu (Jon Allen Boone) (06/20/91)
I heard that at Penn State, they changed the laser printers so that they need to recieve verification before they print - this comes in the form of a card-reader which reads their venda-card and charges them $1 a page for printouts from the laser printers. Sounds workable to me - though I've not too much information about it. ----------------------------------|++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ | "He divines remedies against injuries; | "Words are drugs." | | he knows how to turn serious accidents | -Antero Alli | | to his own advantage; whatever does not | | | kill him makes him stronger." | "Culture is for bacteria." | | - Friedrich Nietzsche | - Christopher Hyatt | -+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-
mmoore%hellgate.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu ( ) (06/20/91)
In article <IcLyeuu00j5uE1oo0c@andrew.cmu.edu>, jb3o+@andrew.cmu.edu (Jon Allen Boone) writes: > > I heard that at Penn State, they changed the laser printers so that > they need to recieve verification before they print - this comes in > the form of a card-reader which reads their venda-card and charges > them $1 a page for printouts from the laser printers. Sounds workable > to me - though I've not too much information about it. > Sounds workable, yes. But it also sounds rediculously expensive. Does one sheet of laser printing really cost that much? Here at the University of Utah undergrads have quotas, and so long as we are under quota, no charges are incurred. Should we need more than our quota of paper, we can buy more, but it most certainly isn't a dollar a page. I think a quarter is more reasonable. Michael Moore (University of Utah) <=--=><=--=><=--=><=--=><=--=><=--=><=--=><=--=><=--=><=--=><=--=><=--=> "News Flash: Penn State Riot" '....many casualties as students held hostage several University administrators, demanding a 75% decrease in laser printing costs...' <=--=><=--=><=--=><=--=><=--=><=--=><=--=><=--=><=--=><=--=><=--=><=--=>
russotto@eng.umd.edu (Matthew T. Russotto) (06/21/91)
In article <Jun.19.14.27.43.1991.26118@aramis.rutgers.edu> pirmann@aramis.rutgers.edu (David Pirmann) writes: >Some of the solutions were: use bright orange paper and black toner or >white paper and colored toner (assuming this would discourage people >who want to print a thesis or other paper, while the comp sci professors >would know about the procedure and accept it), or hack the Mac Laserwriter >driver to print "DCS STUDENT PRINTOUT" faintly underneath the regular >printing (this would be overridden by people with unhacked laserwriter >drivers on their system disks). One problem with these solutions are that in the first, students can bring their own paper, and colored toner, if I am not mistaken, costs more than black toner. One interesting solution might be to intentionally degrade the output by smudging some toner on the corona wire, leaving a black streak down one side. -- Matthew T. Russotto russotto@eng.umd.edu russotto@wam.umd.edu .sig under construction, like the rest of this campus.
russotto@eng.umd.edu (Matthew T. Russotto) (06/21/91)
In article <IcLyeuu00j5uE1oo0c@andrew.cmu.edu> jb3o+@andrew.cmu.edu (Jon Allen Boone) writes: > >I heard that at Penn State, they changed the laser printers so that >they need to recieve verification before they print - this comes in >the form of a card-reader which reads their venda-card and charges >them $1 a page for printouts from the laser printers. Sounds workable >to me - though I've not too much information about it. At $1 a page, I'll bet the local copy shops get a LOT of business. Penn State probably doesn't have to replace toner too often either... -- Matthew T. Russotto russotto@eng.umd.edu russotto@wam.umd.edu .sig under construction, like the rest of this campus.
kludge@grissom.larc.nasa.gov ( Scott Dorsey) (06/21/91)
In article <1991Jun20.194517.29237@eng.umd.edu> russotto@eng.umd.edu (Matthew T. Russotto) writes: >In article <Jun.19.14.27.43.1991.26118@aramis.rutgers.edu> pirmann@aramis.rutgers.edu (David Pirmann) writes: > >>Some of the solutions were: use bright orange paper and black toner or >>white paper and colored toner (assuming this would discourage people >>who want to print a thesis or other paper, while the comp sci professors >>would know about the procedure and accept it), or hack the Mac Laserwriter >>driver to print "DCS STUDENT PRINTOUT" faintly underneath the regular >>printing (this would be overridden by people with unhacked laserwriter >>drivers on their system disks). > >One problem with these solutions are that in the first, students can >bring their own paper, and colored toner, if I am not mistaken, costs >more than black toner. Yes, but of course if students brought in their own paper it wouldn't cost so much to keep the printers running, either. I would have no problem with this. --scott
ELE@psuvm.psu.edu (Jeremy) (06/22/91)
In article <1991Jun20.200247.29358@eng.umd.edu>, russotto@eng.umd.edu (Matthew T. Russotto) says: > >In article <IcLyeuu00j5uE1oo0c@andrew.cmu.edu> jb3o+@andrew.cmu.edu (Jon Allen >Boone) writes: >> >>I heard that at Penn State, they changed the laser printers so that >>they need to recieve verification before they print - this comes in >>the form of a card-reader which reads their venda-card and charges >>them $1 a page for printouts from the laser printers. Sounds workable >>to me - though I've not too much information about it. > >At $1 a page, I'll bet the local copy shops get a LOT of business. Penn State >probably doesn't have to replace toner too often either... I did some research on this since I'm at PSU (grad). The price across campus is 25c per page from the vendacard (costs 50c) for a laserprinter hooked to the Mac. The best price I could find downtown is also 25c a page (Gnomen Copy) flat rate although Kinko's was 25c/page for 30 or more copies, 50c/page for 10 or fewer. The worst price was $2.50 a page from Kopease, who wanted to retype the document as well as print it out. Hope this helps. -- jeremy.. I am the EFF ele@psuvm.psu.edu
lowey@herald.usask.ca (Kevin Lowey,159 Physics,(306) 966-4826,(306) 249-3232) (06/23/91)
ELE@psuvm.psu.edu (Jeremy): >>>I heard that at Penn State, they changed the laser printers so that >>>they need to recieve verification before they print - this comes in >>>the form of a card-reader which reads their venda-card and charges >>>them $1 a page for printouts from the laser printers. Sounds workable >>>to me - though I've not too much information about it. > > I did some research on this since I'm at PSU (grad). The price across > campus is 25c per page from the vendacard (costs 50c) for a laserprinter > hooked to the Mac. > > The best price I could find downtown is also 25c a page (Gnomen Copy) flat > rate although Kinko's was 25c/page for 30 or more copies, 50c/page for > 10 or fewer. > > The worst price was $2.50 a page from Kopease, who wanted to retype the > document as well as print it out. Here at the University of Saskatchewan we have a campus wide Ethernet network that covers most of the buildings on campus. This handles ALL our DECnet traffic, TCP/IP traffic, Appletalk traffic, etc. We use the DEC Pathworks system for our PC labs. The Printing Services department on campus is in charge of doing all copying, etc. What we've done is put 300dpi Postscript laser printers in two of the copy centres, one on either side of campus. Our Computing Services dept. has gotten out of the laser-printing business altogether. These printers are connected to the Campus network. We can print to them from any machine attached to the network, including VAX minis and workstations running VMS or Ultrix, MS-DOS systems running Pathworks, and Macs connected to the campus Appletalk. All the printing ends up going through a print queue on one of our VAX/VMS computers. Our printing services department charges about 20 cents (Canadian) per page. We've found this to be a great solution. Printing Services is already well versed in photocopy machines, etc. They are also set up to handle money. They keep the printers in tip-top shape. All Computing Services has to do is make sure the network and queues are running correctly. - Kevin Lowey
brendan@cs.widener.edu (Brendan Kehoe) (06/24/91)
ELE@psuvm.psu.edu wrote:
>jeremy.. I am the EFF ele@psuvm.psu.edu
In what way?
--
Brendan Kehoe - Widener Sun Network Manager - brendan@cs.widener.edu
Widener University in Chester, PA A Bloody Sun-Dec War Zoneetb@milton.u.washington.edu (Eric Bushnell) (06/26/91)
I'm intrigued by this copy-card, venda-card, whatever-you-like-to-call-it card reader for laser printers. Does anyone have any info on vendors or prices for these devices? (perhaps someone from Penn State, where they seem to be in use?) Mail or post at your discretion. Thanks, -- Eric Bushnell Univ of Washington Civil Engineering etb@u.washington.edu
t891368@otto.bf.rmit.oz.au (Mark) (06/28/91)
In article <IcLyeuu00j5uE1oo0c@andrew.cmu.edu> jb3o+@andrew.cmu.edu (Jon Allen Boone) writes: > >I heard that at Penn State, they changed the laser printers so that >they need to recieve verification before they print - this comes in >the form of a card-reader which reads their venda-card and charges >them $1 a page for printouts from the laser printers. Sounds workable >to me - though I've not too much information about it. Ouch. We have a charge of 10 cents per page. Thats in Australian dollars too. (One Au$ = approx US$0.75) Mark mark@otto.bf.rmit.oz.au