Problem:
You have a printer that uses expensive color ink, and you (are asked by management to) restrict access to the colour ink to a small group of users (the managers), while still allowing other users to print B+W.
Solution:
This solution relies on obtaing two different drivers for your printer, one that only prints in Black & White, & another that prints in color. The printer in this example is a HP COlor LaserJet 2840, for which said drivers can be downloaded from the HP website.
There's different ways of doing this, and this method isn't perfect (I can think of several workarounds), but if you have the usual n00b users then it'll work perfectly...:-)
Download the vanilla & B+W drivers & create the printer port on the FPS (File-Print-Server, assuming Server 2k3/XP) manually by using the add-printer wizard, selecting Local Printer->TCP/IP port->enter hostname.
First install the B+W drivers and configure a printer from the printer port (last step), when the wizard asks you for the drivers browse to where the B+W driver installed itself, name this printer "MakerModelB+W" or similar.
Now install the vanilla drivers that allow color printing, and create a printer from the port, but this time using the color drivers. Congratulations! you now have two virtual links to the same machine, one that will always print color, on that will always print B+W.
Now open 'Active Directory Users & Computers", browse to your Groups node, and create a group called "Colour Printer Users" or similar, add a few people (yourself & the managers).
Go back to the two printers and configure printer sharing. Give printing rights on the B+W printer to your main User group ("Staff" or whatever), then go to the color printer, remove "Everyone" and add the Color printing group from the last step.
Congratulations! Now you've got a mechanism for letting some users print color, while restricting everyone else to B+W! now just add the printers to your login script with a check for the color group so that they get the color mapping instead and you're done!
Showing posts with label printers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label printers. Show all posts
Monday, June 11, 2007
state of the art user interfaces (pt 2)
(installs printer...)
this experience wasn't so bad. the instructions were pretty good, step-by-step for idiots. There were a few gaps between what was in the tute and reality (eg-there's two piece's of sticky tape on the base not in the tute and I can't figure out how to get them off), but no show stoppers in plugging everything in and inserting the ink cartridges.
It was obvious that the box team had been at the ink cartridges and internals as well, everything had guidelines and pretty pictures for the technically challenged (like me!), so that was a good experience. One thing lacking was some audio on the CD-ROM tutorial, as well as the ability for it to scale, the tutorial is a pre-packaged presentation about 600px by 480px that can't be resized, or rewound, so usability is a bit limited, but the content was good. pretty pictures and exploded diagrams everywhere.
The big failing wasn't the hardware though, it was the software. Installing the drivers was a bit of a pain as the supplied disks don't support Server 2k3, which is a bit retarded considering this is a mid-range network printer, and you would expect it to be deployed as a shared printer from a 2k3 instance.
Had to download the drivers from HP, the B+W & vanilla drivers and install them manually. This took a couple of goes, but not because of HP. That'll be in a coming-soon blog.
Overall? It's a nice machine, very functional. can't comment on the price cos I wasn't involved in that stage. The most noticeable thing about it though, is that in operation it is *LOUD*! When you print you can hear every gear and cog inside grinding away and wheezing. This printer needs to be away from people or else it will drive them fair up the wall!!
A close second is how slow it is, the quotes of about 7ppm is pretty close, if not a bit high, if you don't expect high performance then you won't be disappointed! ;-p
How I managed to separate color & B+W printing permissions will be in another blog...
this experience wasn't so bad. the instructions were pretty good, step-by-step for idiots. There were a few gaps between what was in the tute and reality (eg-there's two piece's of sticky tape on the base not in the tute and I can't figure out how to get them off), but no show stoppers in plugging everything in and inserting the ink cartridges.
It was obvious that the box team had been at the ink cartridges and internals as well, everything had guidelines and pretty pictures for the technically challenged (like me!), so that was a good experience. One thing lacking was some audio on the CD-ROM tutorial, as well as the ability for it to scale, the tutorial is a pre-packaged presentation about 600px by 480px that can't be resized, or rewound, so usability is a bit limited, but the content was good. pretty pictures and exploded diagrams everywhere.
The big failing wasn't the hardware though, it was the software. Installing the drivers was a bit of a pain as the supplied disks don't support Server 2k3, which is a bit retarded considering this is a mid-range network printer, and you would expect it to be deployed as a shared printer from a 2k3 instance.
Had to download the drivers from HP, the B+W & vanilla drivers and install them manually. This took a couple of goes, but not because of HP. That'll be in a coming-soon blog.
Overall? It's a nice machine, very functional. can't comment on the price cos I wasn't involved in that stage. The most noticeable thing about it though, is that in operation it is *LOUD*! When you print you can hear every gear and cog inside grinding away and wheezing. This printer needs to be away from people or else it will drive them fair up the wall!!
A close second is how slow it is, the quotes of about 7ppm is pretty close, if not a bit high, if you don't expect high performance then you won't be disappointed! ;-p
How I managed to separate color & B+W printing permissions will be in another blog...
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