Print credit software - any ideas anyone?

[brammers]

Hi all,

I'm looking to buy a printer for a photo society. We're after something fairly high quality, thinking about an Epson 3800 at the moment... The printer will be left permanently connected to a computer, probably running win7 and users will be printing out of Lightroom and Photoshop. The computer will be in a room to which all members will have access at any time - there's no way to keep a log on who comes and goes. The idea is that users buy paper off the society and then buy credits which we add to the machine to pay for the ink.

I'm looking for some kind of account based print credit software to manage printing on the machine. I'd simply like to be able to give each user an account, to take cash off them and give them credits in return. Credits should come off their account based on prints - ideally with options to charge them more for larger prints, for example an A3 print should cost more than an A4 print.

I'm going to be looking to do fairly accurate, high quality printing, so I don't want anything that messes with the actual print job in anyway - just something that checks that people have credits before they print. Also, it doesn't need to be bomb-proof - as it's a photo society I expect most members to be fairly honest.

Any help gratefully received!

Adam

[Blastuk]

Not a software solution but:
If you trust them that much why not just charge the ink price when they buy the paper? or is that not possible?

[brammers]

I trust them not to say bring their laptops and hook them up to the printer, but I don't trust them that much

[dave87]

I believe the Uni uses something called PaperCut, no idea on costs though.

[brammers]

Papercut looks absolutely perfect! Unfortunately it costs 250 quid in its cheapest config, making it much more than the computer it'll be running on :E

As to charging for paper - as the members will have access to the room, there's nothing to stop them bringing in their own paper. I'm sure it won't happen, but we could very easily find that someone's come in with a roll of paper, printed some 60cm by 7m panoramas and left the ink wells empty - for the printers we're looking at that would be a few hundred quid's worth of ink. I'd really like to install a software block.

I'm looking for something along the lines of papercut, but maybe aimed at smaller organisations - any ideas?

[CrazyMonkey]

I'll have a look when im back at college, they use something that sounds exactly like what your looking for. I can post back tomorrow.

[mycarsavw]

If you could work it so you charged at the end of a set period something like HP Web Jetadmin would work well.... only if you had an HP printer of course.

Xerox offer an account management (Xpert Image Xpert Billing) that works with most of their colour printers too.

Print job accounting is what I think this sort of thing is called.

EDIT: I wonder if a print server offers the option too - something to look into maybe?

[brammers]

I'd really like to charge beforehand. No credit on your account - no printing.

Here's why - we're looking at some of the really high spec photo printers and for top quality you have to use the OEM inks - we're talking profiling printers to match papers, calibrating the lighting in the room... we want this to be good.

The inks are pretty expensive...

http://www.printerinks.com/5805/Prin...FVVu4wodlRlEpw

If I leave the printer in a room to which 400 people have access to the key, I could very well come back one day and find that the ink is all gone. We then get into problems of 'oh, it wasn't me, someone must have hacked into my account'.

No credit - no print sounds great to me. We're then onto issues of people stealing the printer, which is something that I'm happy to deal with.

I have no idea whatsoever about print servers. This is going to be a single computer in a room - no network or internet. Does a print server mean a 2nd PC?

Looking forwards to your reply crazymonkey!

[mycarsavw]

Gotcha.

Print servers can be anything from a consumer USB device connected to the PC via an RJ45 cable to a dedicated PC on a network.

Whether the consumer devices offer accounting, I'm not sure. I'll have a look about

[spoon_]

We use here software called PMP - Print Manager Plus - works great.
Another alternative is already mentioned PaperCut.

[Stringent]

We use PaperCut here, its very good.

[krissirk]

removed makes a product that does exactly what you are looking for. You can google them.

I use them in my labs and it works wonderfully. After loads of research it was the least expensive with the most features.

[brammers]

Excellent krissirk - did you sign up to post that? I've given them a call and they're offering something that sounds great for $130 - well within budget. I'll let you know how it goes

[Steve]

Krissirk. If you're going to subversively advertise a company you work for, you could at the very least not do it from a work computer.

Unless you have an agreement with our advertising team you cannot make such posts.

I should ban you for spam, but instead I want you to see this message.

[this_is_gav]

Papercut looks absolutely perfect! Unfortunately it costs 250 quid in its cheapest config, making it much more than the computer it'll be running on :E

Looking a PaperCut myself (our ICT Coordinator was after something similar) and it's free for 1-5 computers. Presumably you'll have more than 5 PCs and that's why you've discounted it, but if not then it's worth bringing it back to your attention.

[brammers]

Ouch - did he do that? And I fell for it - how did you find out?

Gav - I wasn't aware that papercut was free for 1-5 PCs. I'm only wanting it for 1, I'll look into this again, missed it the first time round! Thanks