Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!dalcs!aucs!peter
From: peter@aucs.UUCP (Peter Steele)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: $$$ for laser printouts
Message-ID: <1069@aucs.UUCP>
Date: 5 May 88 16:29:33 GMT
References: <1814@uhccux.UUCP>
Organization: School of Computer Science, Acadia Univ., Nova Scotia
Lines: 52

Sorry to post this, but the "m" command rarely finds the mark...

> I have some questions for all of you out there who manage Macintosh
> facilities at a University:
> 
> 	1 -Do you charge your students, faculty, and staff for printouts
> 	    on your LaserWriters?

Yes to all of them, both Mac Lab, PC Lab, and mainframes.

> 	2 -If so, how much?

15 cents a page. This price is based on both keeping the machine in
toner and paper as well as accumulating enough to perhaps buy a
second printer when this wears out or becomes overworked.

> 	3 -If not, why not?

I just said we did! :-)

> 	4 -What kinds of problems did you run into?

Actually, not as many as we thought. On our old TurboDOS (CP/M clone)
network (some 60 stations and on its last legs), we wrote our own print
software which automatically costed pages and made up appropriate letter
quality bills. Students have to pre-pay before they can print. Now that
we're using PC's and Macs, we don't have as much flexibility. That is,
the operator has to count the pages. An unfortunate job but it has to be
done if we intend to charge for laser pages.

> Also let me know how many installations you have and about how many
> total macs you have at your place.  We are trying to get some ideas
> on this as our Macintosh facilities expand here...

We have a 12 station Mac SE lab for student use, as well as various
other Macs at other locations (such as the Mac II in my office) hooked
up as well. The lab was *very* heavily used this past year, especially
during "thesis week" (the week theses are due) and we see only increased
use next year (this past year was the first year we had a Mac Lab up
and running).

Other universities use debit cards and various other techniques but
we found there was no better solution than manual counting. We would
really like to have accounting software like we have on our TurboDOS
system but have found nothing that seems to do the job...


-- 
Peter Steele, Microcomputer Applications Analyst
Acadia University, Wolfville, NS, Canada B0P1X0 (902)542-2201x121
UUCP: {uunet|watmath|utai|garfield}dalcs!aucs!Peter
BITNET: Peter@Acadia  Internet: Peter%Acadia.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU