Monitor printer usage

[Billybong007]

Does anyone know how / or any software that can be placed on a print server (Windows Server 2003) that would monitor print jobs ?

The situation I face is having a variety of printers - some cheaper to run than others. One department has a high cost printer which is to be used for printing from one particular application, and after warning users numerious times i'm still removing paper jams and throwing out un-collected prints of non-work related material. The main reason they print to this pritner rather than a low cost printer is because this high cost printer is located beside them - so they only have to lean across to get the prints; rather than walk down 10 meters

I want to either restict a printer so it can only be used by one application or to record all print jobs being sent the printer - perhaps store the print job as an image - this way i can track down the user and proove to them that they have breached protocol.

Any thoughts on what to do ?

- i have considered moving to high cost printer to be located beside the low cost printer, but this will be last case senario.

 

[kmills]

Billybong007,

We use a product from GenevaLogic called Print-Limit. It runs on the print server and writes information like Time, User Name, Printer, Document Name, Pages, etc, to a database. It also displays the information in the Admin console. It doesn't keep an image of the print job, but it is quite in-expensive. It can be used for billing, but doesn't have to be.

kmills

 

[Billybong007]

Thanks kmills - i'll take a look into that

 

[eraH]

Also have a look at something called PCounter.