Printing habits

| 3 Comments
Some students are going to be in for a rude, rude surprise real soon. Today alone there is a student who has printed off 210 pages. Looking at their print history, they printed off 100 copies of two specific handouts (in batches of 50), and that's 40% of their entire quota for the quarter. Once they hit the ceiling, they'll have to pay to get more. This is different from last year!

We always got a few students who rammed their head against the 500 page limit within two weeks of quarter start. I'm sure we'll get some this quarter too. There may be heated tempers at the Helpdesk as a result, but thems the breaks.

3 Comments

Does your printing system not tell them how much credit they have, how much their job will cost, and how much they will have remaining once it has been printed? Surely that would be a clue for them!

It seems like somebody who printed off 200 coppies of the same handout was probably doing it for some sort of student work related reason. You know student work er for the English department. The prof wanders up and says "I need 200 copies of this file." Kid prints file. Later regrets using up whole quota. Around here we have a solution for that. Among other things probaly printing 1 copy and using the copier with the department's index code to duplicate the other 199. Also we have a system where they can file an exception and have those 200 copies moved to the department's code with a fac/staff signature. If it really was work related.

We do have a system for informing users of their job-cost and remaining quota values. However, due to certain delays in figuring out the best method to do that, most labs lack the notification channel right now. It'll show up 'soon', but it is sadly beyond my control.