SysBlog - Div III Networks - “what’s happening in our local ether”

As you know from earlier messages, there’s been an ongoing problem with Macintosh printing and most of our laser printers.  Some documents with embedded graphics lock up the printers completely and, in some cases, lock up the print queues on the server, too.

After much experimentation, we’ve finally come to some conclusions and are ready to move forward. Briefly, the main source of the problem is an incompatibility between OS X (beginning with 10.5) and the Postscript interpreter that HP printers use.  We’ve had occasional documents in the past that ran into problems, but now it happens quite frequently.

Unfortunately, the only scalable solution is to replace the printers - HP has no fix.  Working with ITS and the computer store, we’ve decided that Okidata laser printers are our best choice, going forward.

To try to make lemonade from this bad situation, we are planning to move toward COLOR laser printers that still allow monochrome pages at or below the same cost/page as traditional monochrome printers.  Then we will set up BOTH monochrome and color print queues to each printer so only print jobs that require color will incur the extra cost of color.

This is going to be an expensive and time-consuming problem to fix, so please bear with us.  Because the problem only affects Macintosh printing, we’re going to leave HP printers in place in Windows-only locations like Dell-filled computer classrooms (at least for now).  We’ll replace the printers in Macintosh classrooms and most of the shared (eg hallway) printers — about 14 printers total.  HP printers that are removed from service will be “recycled” internally, replacing older printers that don’t allow duplexing, for instance, and sent to other places on campus.  Existing non-HP (ie Okidata and Panasonic Workio) printers will also stay in place.

The large “Sabin-Reed 130″ color laser will also be replaced.  It is susceptible to the same Macintosh incompatibility and it needs serious refurbishing anyway.  The replacement will be a larger Okidata color printer that also supports 11 X 17 paper.

We’ll be creating new print queues and driver packages for all these printers as quickly as possible.  Expect much of the changes to occur over January break.

I’ll be contacting many department chairs individually about how to handle department-owned printers and some special circumstances.  If you have questions, concerns, or suggestions, let us know!  Send email to me directly or to cats@email.smith.edu.

Here’s a list of printers planned for replacement soon:
Macintosh Computer Classroom Printers -
Burton 209 and 301
Sabin-Reed 126
Bass B-2 and 102

Faculty/Staff/Research Shared Printers -
Sabin-Reed 130 (xerox room) color laser
Burton 2nd Hall
Burton 303
Sabin-Reed 126 (shared with classroom)
Sabin-Reed 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Hall
Bass 206 and 410
McConnell 209