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One more time: Print Limits?

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5 replies

by lfruchter

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Dear Sages,

I'm setting up a Win server 2003 in my school and it's been a while since I tangled with Microsoft's products. Naturally, I want to limit how many pages each of my student users can print. Apple knew that some environments would need this ability and built in just the tools you needed in their server software. From searching this site, I'm starting to get the sinking feeling that Microsoft has not managed to provide a comparable feature, even through GPMC.

If I'm wrong, can someone point me to how I'd place limits on user printing through GPMC? I can't find anything close when I search the Administrative Templates. I'm no command line wiz, so cryptic .bats and bashes are probably too much for me...

If I'm right, WTF!?! Are schools the only places where admins need to do this? Are there not enough schools in the world to make this worth Microsoft's time and money? Is there any free or cheap (school cuts coming, you know) 3rd party software that does this?

Thanks as always for any insight or enlightenment. I'd have been fired without y'all long ago. (Oh wait, they couldn't find anyone else to do this job for so little...)

Lev in Brooklyn

5 replies

by rob miners

do a Google for: printer page quota control software

Once it is setup you should be able to allocate the responsibility of looking after it to a Staff member. It will be one less chore for you to do.

by bfilmfan

It is a third-party feature and not built into the Microsoft code.

Best recommendation I can make is to restrict users from printing on high operations cost printers.

by lfruchter

Back in the late 90s I ran a school network with an NT file server and a Mac admin server (or whatever the technical name for what it did is). The 2 machines understood each other's security groups and mapped users to directories seamlessly. The NT box held the files and the Mac did everything else: user accounts, security, application restrictions, reports, monitoring workstations, you name it. The Apple software on the Mac had a special control panel for setting user print restrictions, down to the number of pages per week each was allowed and displayed wonderful reports on who had printed how much. Those were the days...

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