|
Particularly popular in schools, colleges and universities, print quotas are used
to control and restrict users to sensible use by allocating a quota/allowance/budget.
For example, students might be allocated $10 worth of printing each week. Once this
amount of printing has been used the student will be unable to print any more. (Some
organizations allow students to add additional credit from their own funds. See
the Recharging Balance tour section for more information.)
Flexible Scheduling
Quotas may be easily allocated on a daily, weekly or monthly basis, or on custom
dates like the start of a term or semester.
It is also possible to specify a maximum limit on quota allocations to prevent users
from "banking up" their quota.
Lines of PaperCut source code over time. Like any good software PaperCut is under
active development!
Currency Based
PaperCut uses a currency based system for print accounting. Each user has their
own balance, e.g. $5.00, and each printer has assigned costs (which may be different
for different sizes, color, duplex mode, etc.), such as $0.10 per grayscale page.
There are several reasons why a currency based system is better than just counting
pages (e.g. a quota of 10 pages):
- A currency model leads to less waste, because users naturally choose the cheapest
way to print.
- Currency is familiar, so easy to understand. People understand that different items
have different costs.
- Currency is flexible. Costs can be assigned based on the cost to run a particular
printer, and can be changed and tweaked at any time.
If you don't like the idea of using currency (perhaps because it implies charging
or real money) then it is possible to remove the currency symbol and work in "units"
instead.
Top
|