Uni Printers - a rant

[meghatronic]

Why is it that uni's are money grabbing <insert random expletive>?

You pay 10 pence PER PAGE (colour) and they give you the poorest thinest paper possible... I mean, I have 80gsm next to me and that is almost twice as thick.

I have a covert sheet on my work and can see TWO pages down....

It is madness....

I guess I should buy some cartridges for my own printer a?

Anyone else's uni's rip offs at anything?

 

[afraser2k]

Because technicians are fed up with students printing off rubbish so introduced charges.

For example, at the moment in my department we have free printing and the amount of waste is very annoying and most of it is rubbish that the students have decided to print when there is no need for it (private e-mails for example). For us it all adds up as it now comes out of the general IT budget, about £4,000 a year from three networked printers (including toner/paper/maintenance).

When our total budget for department IT is only £10,000 this year you can see why charges are in place for some departments. I think we're the only one at Glasgow Uni that offers "free" printing to students, so we had to restrict logins to our own ddepartment students to avoid mass abuse.

 

[DaveyD]

It's a rip off on the main campus stuff for me, but all Mechanical Engineers get 500 B&W pages a month free in our building, which is plenty for the majority of us.

 

[KaHn]

Why is it that uni's are money grabbing <insert random expletive>?

You pay 10 pence PER PAGE (colour) and they give you the poorest thinest paper possible... I mean, I have 80gsm next to me and that is almost twice as thick.

I have a covert sheet on my work and can see TWO pages down....

It is madness....

I guess I should buy some cartridges for my own printer a?

Anyone else's uni's rip offs at anything?

Use your own printer?

KaHn

 

[Belmit]

You pay 10 pence PER PAGE (colour)

I'd say that was wholly reasonable considering I paid about 50p a page when I had mine done; it was printed on glossy paper that was more like card though.

Do they have a suggestion box?

 

[meghatronic]

Because technicians are fed up with students printing of rubbish so introduced charges.

For example, at the moment in my department we have free printing and the amount of waste is very annoying and most of it is rubbish that the students have decided to print when there is no need for it (private e-mails for example). For us it all adds up as it now comes out of the general IT budget, about £4,000 a year from three networked printers (including toner/paper/maintenance).

When our total budget for department IT is only £10,000 this year you can see why charges are in place.

Oh yeah, charges I really don't mind... But I mind two things.

1) Before every page we print, there is a coversheet, that explains how much the print cost and how much we have lest and our username. Waste of paper and toner.

2) If I pay, i expect quality... 80gsm+ paper isn't that expensive....
I'm sure it doesn't cost 10p for a 10% covered page worth of toner + a piece of quality paper?

 

[Lagz]

Because technicians are fed up with students printing off rubbish so introduced charges.

For example, at the moment in my department we have free printing and the amount of waste is very annoying and most of it is rubbish that the students have decided to print when there is no need for it (private e-mails for example). For us it all adds up as it now comes out of the general IT budget, about £4,000 a year from three networked printers (including toner/paper/maintenance).

When our total budget for department IT is only £10,000 this year you can see why charges are in place for some departments. I think we're the only one at Glasgow Uni that offers "free" printing to students, so we had to restrict logins to our own ddepartment students to avoid mass abuse.

Theres a difference between charging what it costs (1p maybe?) to cover the running costs of the printers, and ripping you off.

 

[Alex_L]

We get free printing still, but just have to provide paper, which I think is a good system as it does seem to stop people just printing off reems of rubbish, when they have to provide their own paper.

 

[afraser2k]

Oh yeah, charges I really don't mind... But I mind two things.

1) Before every page we print, there is a coversheet, that explains how much the print cost and how much we have lest and our username. Waste of paper and toner.

2) If I pay, i expect quality... 80gsm+ paper isn't that expensive....
I'm sure it doesn't cost 10p for a 10% covered page worth of toner + a piece of quality paper?

The 10p also counts towards maintenance kits and purchasing of a new printer if required. Cover sheets are for administrative purposes when the kids decide to print porn as a joke, for example, or when you are on the last day of term and have 10+ jobs in a queue from different people.

 

[SiriusB]

Some universities make it harder for themselves. At Salford, for some absolutely insane reason, they have made it so whenever you print something off, you get TWO extra sheets with it. One at the start of the print job saying that its the start of [insert name's] print job.. and one at the end saying its the end of [insert name's] print job.

Now imagine if youre only printing one or two pages... thats incredibly wasteful since no one wants or needs the extra "info" pages.

18000 students at Salford.... and every one gets an extra two pages per print job.... terrible

SiriusB

 

[afraser2k]

Theres a difference between charging what it costs (1p maybe?) to cover the running costs of the printers, and ripping you off.

The 1p is only for paper itself, that doesn't include toner plus all the extra little charges that universities have to charge for. I note that the original poster is actually complaining about 10p for colour, rather than B&W printing so their students are getting it at cost.

 

[semi-pro waster]

18000 students at Salford.... and every one gets an extra two pages per print job.... terrible

It is a terrible waste but I can see why it is done to enable you to tell when the start and end of your printing is, if you've ever tried to sift through twenty or thirty courseworks on deadline day to find yours then you might think it is a good idea as well regardless of the waste.

My uni isn't too bad in terms of B&W costs I suppose at 5p page but I prefer to use my own printer as the toner often seems to be left to run out at uni.

 

[afraser2k]

My uni isn't too bad in terms of B&W costs I suppose at 5p page but I prefer to use my own printer as the toner often seems to be left to run out at uni.

We have to do that due to the way the printers count how much toner is left. The printers don't seem to be intelligent enough to reset their counter when a new cartridge is put in.

 

[M0KUJ1N]

I admit that the cover pages do sometimes seem an excessive waste of paper but these generally go straight into the recycle bin after the print job and are a necessary evil.

I do agree that it seems a bit silly to use cheap nasty paper for situations (like essays, papers, dissertations) where quality is important. Like someone has already said put something in the suggestion box saying that you'd be prepared to pay more per sheet of coloured paper if the paper and printout quality was better, email your University IT bods (although budget decisions are generally only made once a year) or even write to your students association about it!

 

[The_KiD]

Anything that stops people wasting paper and/or toner can only be a good thing.

We have a colour printer at work and to replace all the toners and imaging drum costs close to £500 which is a disgrace!

 

[M0KUJ1N]

And how much was the printer itself? £400?

 

[afraser2k]

We've got HP 4200tn's that cost £2000 new. The maintenance kit (that includes imaging unit, fuser roll, etc) costs about £300 every 150,000 pages.

Seems like a bargain to me.

 

[MarcLister]

Some universities make it harder for themselves. At Salford, for some absolutely insane reason, they have made it so whenever you print something off, you get TWO extra sheets with it. One at the start of the print job saying that its the start of [insert name's] print job.. and one at the end saying its the end of [insert name's] print job.

Now imagine if youre only printing one or two pages... thats incredibly wasteful since no one wants or needs the extra "info" pages.

18000 students at Salford.... and every one gets an extra two pages per print job.... terrible

SiriusB

I'm in the same department as SiriusB at Salford and I still don't get the idea of two extra info pages. The first one makes sense, it helps you identify your work. But why the second one? If mine is the only print job at that time then there isn't any more work that I could confuse with mine and accidentally take with me. If however there are other print jobs then the first info sheet with someone else's name on it might be a hint to me that it is not my work?

I mean how dumb are we if we can't see that another print job has started and there is another info sheet showing that the work belongs to someone else.

 

[afraser2k]

I mean how dumb are we if we can't see that another print job has started and there is another info sheet showing that the work belongs to someone else.

You'd be surprised at the number of students who take away other peoples print jobs even in our environment of free printing.

 

[Clarkey]

yes, printing is expensive at my uni, the main uni network is 5p per page I think, and those printers also print out an info sheet before your job with your username and printing balance on it, everybody throws them away, they even put a wheely bin next to most of the printers for the purpose of throwing them out.

On our department network you get 200 pages per term free, after that I think its about 25p per page. Minimum topup is £10 and to top up you need to go through 3 different offices.