The Printers in the library

[RandomMusings]

Aaaarrrrrgggggghhhhhhhhhhhh - RAGE.

2 hours - printed 6 documents - crashed computer 4 times - need I say more?

[creepy old man]

There have been many times when I've almost cried from frustration trying to print things in the library. Instead of getting my work done as necessary, I end up spending hours, literally hours, trying to print the articles I need, and only half the time do I actually succeed.

Don't know if you already know this, but when printing JStor stuff it tends to work more often if you save the pdf to the desktop, then open it. Click the printer icon on the top left of the page instead of going to file-print (because that doesn't work) and then print every page of the article. Trying to save pages by cutting off the useless first page doesn't work. I've taken to bringing things to read along with me because the chance of actually being able to print something in less than 15 minutes is slim to none, even when there's no one else trying to print.

The worst was when there were many people trying to print on the duplex printer, almost having nervous breakdowns, and nothing was printing at all. Turns out the library had put the duplex printer offline and not said anything about it or put any kind of sign on the printer, so there was no way for anyone to know that their documents were never going to print. And to think we actually pay for this 'service!'

[Garnet]

Yeah I've learnt my lesson not to trust them. I sent my essay to an e-mail account and went in at 10:30 to get my essay printed out for a deadline at 12, big mistake - i'd never had to submit an essay late before.

[Fawksie]

I added the Samba shares for every public printer in the University, plus the Central Printer Queue to the local CUPS server on my MacBook Pro. It made me weep with joy.

If you have a laptop or a computer on ResNet, read, implement, rejoice.

[Duggeh]

I spend a small fortune on photocopy credit in the library. There isn't any way I'd risk one penny on printer credit and buying a cheap laser printer was, probably, the most sensible deployment of money I've ever made in my life.


Actually now I think about it I got that printer for Christmas.


POINT IS: The library printers suck giant donkey balls.

[Freaker]

I added the Samba shares for every public printer in the University, plus the Central Printer Queue to the local CUPS server on my MacBook Pro. It made me weep with joy.

If you have a laptop or a computer on ResNet, read, implement, rejoice.

If that is what I think it is, it works great. I pull up whatever I need to print on my laptop, send it the Central Printer Queue, and that's that sorted. Even works from my flat using VPN.

If you really do need to use library computers for printing, it helps to hog two of them. Print from one, shut it down, start it up again, and in the meantime print from the other one. I don't know what it is, but it seems like it gets slower the more you print - so starting up the system again usually helps for me. Bloody annoying, but ah well.

[zipporah]

I tried doing a lot of printing last week for the first time, and I finally understand why the things are so hated. Even when I moved to Butts Wynd, where hardly anyone was doing any printing, it took 15 minutes or so to print - and it was the same whether I printed a page at a time or a whole document. ARG.

(Hilariously, I then changed my essay topic and didn't use any of the articles I'd printed.)

[Hennessy]

Repost? What happened to my OP?

If the computers in the IT services building were monkeys chained to typewriters I would have had them whipped to within an inch of their lives by now.

[macgamer]

I cannot believe ITS have allowed this to continued for another year. I remember last year writing very irate e-mails to them about how much of my time the printers had wasted.

I take it that people are still having problems printing PDFs, which the prints seem to be allergic too. I found that things were slightly faster if I printed the PDF as a file directly to the printer or to the central printing queue then telling it to print after that. The latter of the two options tended to prevent the computer crashing so often.

I did occasionally, when there were less people around, switch off or reset the printers, which helped when the printers had crashed or had otherwise thrown a hissy fit.

The other issue was that ITS seldom checked the paper level in Butts Wynd, relying entirely on people to call when the supply had been completely exhausted.

[Jono]

From the PDF-hating printers, the computer terminals constantly undergoing maintainence, to the clunky email client with its spam filters that won't delete spam; I'm convinced that the IT provision in this university is pennance for the sins of our godless,cocaine-snorting, horse-doping, KK-bashing, Jerry-Springer loving student body.