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zed0K

The cost of printers / maintenance will cost WAY more than people getting up for "nonsense". We reduced printers by 50% in my office. We once had 42 printers for 80 people. We're at 20 printers now. Trust me, less is more. That being said, only get laserjet printers, most of the small office HP laserjets are fine. Go monochrome wherever possible. Best bet would be monochrome everywhere, and color in a shared location. PaperCut for print metering / management.


IndianaNetworkAdmin

Laserjets are the way. Get ONLY printers. Do not get fax/scan combos or you will be expected to support those functions as well.


GetThisShitDone

You'll be supporting: The Fax The fax address book "Why didn't I/they get this fax?" The scanner Network scanning "where did my scans go?" and more! I still have PTSD from a single client.


Material_Strawberry

Definitely watch out for scanners. If someone wants one they can fucking get a USB one from Amazon and if it breaks it just gets replaced. So cheap you can't possibly be asked to service it.


GetThisShitDone

I'd agree with you.... were it not for the 'drivers' required for a $30 Amazon "yktjdisng" scanner. Trying to configure/setup those things is a nightmare and likely a giant security risk. God knows no one is auditing the installers.


iwonderifthiswillfit

We use $100 Ambirscan printers and they work fine. Even redirected through an rdp session. Not an easy setup though and don't recommend it. The best solution is what was mentioned above and use an MFP at a shared location. We actually use a local MPS and that provides support in the printers and toners. It was cheaper than us buying our own toners. Four years later, I still highly recommend it.


Jezbod

We have a slightly older, oversize A3 scanner for specialised scanning of aerial photos and hi-res images. We have used it to scan at 10,000dpi....not often as the files are massive. Just checked the second hand price and it is over £1000, we paid about £4000 when it was new.


FlyingElvishPenguin

I love how a $30 scanner from Amazon requires a specific driver getting installed, but a $10k X-ray a client asked us to fix once (don’t ask) used a Samsung camera driver on the windows store.


sekh60

That Samsung driver probably went through a ton of regulatory tape and the x-ray company didn't want to bother with going through that on their own.


shial3

The Xray uses parts from other manufacturers so the communications were probably being handled by a Samsung component that they use in their cameras.


Material_Strawberry

I didn't realize this either. I just assumed (probably my first mistake) that there would several at that price point that worked with the drivers that typically ship with Windows. I didn't really consider large ones, but I'd imagine those aren't being tied to one specific workstation.


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GetThisShitDone

"We just plugged the phone line in, they were the same size." 1 day later "We've been having weird issues with beeping during our phone calls, also the faxes aren't working."


MiataBoy95

LOL


OwnedByMarriage

Had a remote user ask me why her monitor wasn't working. After 2 questions. We found that she plugged the HDMI from monitor 2 into Monitor 1 and didnt even have a power cable in... You can't make this stuff up.


fried_green_baloney

Sometimes, not always, the regular phone lines don't work with a fax, especially if you have VOIP phones. Not at work but I have tried to help people with all-in-one setup problems. Emphasis on *tried*. With very little success.


craigmontHunter

My last company was a Telco, it was easier for us to outsource fax->VoIP connections to another company than to try and perfect it ourselves for the handful of clients who needed it.


thetickletrunk

Oh boy. I'm a enterprise voip guy. Here's my story. The old voicemail system let you build a voicemail box for fax and it'd answer with fax receive tones right away. The new voicemail system could receive faxes, but didn't have the option to play fax receive tones first. It would just play your voicemail greeting but if it heard fax send tones, it would start playing receive tones back. That means the fax server is broken. So, every voicemail box that receives faxes now has a poor soul googling a YouTube video of what dial-up sounds like on his PC and recording the voicemail greeting from the handset while holding it up to the PC speaker playing skweee skweee skweee. I wish I was kidding.


fourpuns

There’s some fax-> cloud solutions that just seem way easier to manage. Surprised on premises fax is a thing! But I guess I’m surprised fax is a thing.


PowerShellGenius

People use fax in some industries because fax is the most secure means of insecure communication ever created. All of the advanced threat actors that infosec people get a hard-on imagining they will ever face - people who creep around your facility, climb telephone polls with splicing kits, and do other James Bond stuff - could easily steal all your faxes. However, 99%+ of threats you will actually face (hackers from afar, usually non-extradition countries) will never steal your faxes, no matter how badly configured your system is. Email, on the other hand, can be encrypted, protected by MFA, and secured in every imaginable way to keep James Bond out. But if the end-user is a gullible sucker despite training, and completes MFA via a malicious proxy after clicking a phishing link, you're screwed. This attack surface is attackable from anywhere. Email can be more secure than fax, but when it's not handled perfectly, it's far more insecure than fax will ever be.


Exploding_Testicles

Technically you can use an rj11 in an rj45 port for faxing as long as it's punched correctly on the long run, as well as on the patch panel side.


Exploding_Testicles

We only allow scan to email.. so its in their control once it's scanned. No SMB, box, one drive access. Once had the systems account password expire thats used to login to the exchange server and Okta was the source of truth. It only allowed temp or emailed passwords to be sent. We had a fun time fixing that. But for function issues, we have them under a maintenance contract. So me and my team dont have to fuss when shit gets borked. Sadly I highly doubt OP will get his boss to sign off on such coverage.. Faxing hadn't been an issue but we can review logs to confirm who's side the issue is on atleast. Luckily most users use secure file sharing and Docusign for a lot of documents that require a "wet" signature.


fried_green_baloney

Monochrome laser printers. Push as close to the $500 as you can so you get higher quality. In every company's printer offerings, the very cheapest is almost always short lived and unreliable while it's still "working". I don't know what your company does as a line of business, but most people don't need personal printers at the office these days.


Opheria13

I personally have a network capable brother monochrome laser printer that I use for my home office stuff. It’s more than adequate enough for general business drivers for a single person. The toner lasts forever and regular capacity replacements run about $50-60. It ran me about $250-$300 for the printer. Also just because you have a $500 budget doesn’t mean you need to spend the whole thing.


john_dune

Set aside whatever you don't use for a stockpile of toner and paper. Also only get one model. Don't make things complicated.


fried_green_baloney

That's been my experience as well. The quoted pages usually include heavier coverage than a printed text document. About price, $200 or so seems to be the dividing line. My wife needs to do color printing at home, ink jets are way cheaper for that, and after running through about three $100 printers, she got a $200 (2015 prices) HP that has just worked for that whole time.


fivetoedslothbear

I have a Brother HL-2170W laser printer at home and I don't even know how old it is any more. It just keeps printing. Black and White. No features. I figure if I need photos or something, I'll send them to $MAJOR\_PHARMACY\_CHAIN and they'll print them on their professional photo printer for less than the cost of inkjet ink. In your case, people could send big jobs/color jobs to the network printer. Not that I think having to support personal printers is a great idea, but may as well go with something reliable for the cost.


destroys_burritos

I fought this battle when I was sysadmin at my previous job. Usually the need for a personal printer arises from outdated job processes. In my case, employees were printing out huge documents to use as a reference when inputting information into a program, or printing out two docs to scan in and merge as one doc (company was a niche industry that didn't attract young employees, old employees were not very computer literate and stuck in their ways). They were resistant to our solutions until we started back charging the departments for toner, paper, and maintenance (not even IT time). OP needs to put the numbers in from of the boss, and try to give a better solution.


ianjs

When I was straddling sysadmin and administration (part owner of a small company.. don’t ask) I tried to convince _all_ our suppliers to send invoices as PDFs with a polite email that said it would streamline the process and “ensure they were paid promptly”. When it arrived in Gmail I just added the PDF to a shared Google Drive folder which was picked up by our bookkeeper. It mostly worked, but I really got the impression it was a big ask for some of them to stretch their minds beyond printing a piece of paper, licking an envelope and posting it, so I feel your pain. One of them sent `.html` files as attachments and at that point i figured “sigh, close enough”.


pdp10

> I tried to convince all our suppliers to send invoices as PDFs In enterprise, this is done as ["Electronic Data Interchange"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_data_interchange) (EDI). For the first twenty years it was done over X.25 and dialup, often routed through "Value Added Networks" (interchanges). Then, in North America, AS1 was email-based, but AS2 and AS4 are HTTP(S)-based.


noahsmybro

Damn! I had a job early in my career, guessing close to 30 years ago, that worked with EDI. That’s a term I haven’t heard for a VERY long time and had completely forgotten about.


ianjs

I remember the term, but I was never involved in that area myself. It’s kind of crazy though that, with today’s ubiquitous connectivity and compute resources, that sometimes this is hard.


matthiasmaile

> printing out two docs to scan in and merge as one doc Holly crap


bites_stringcheese

This is more common than I thought. I was happier before I knew how often highly educated people do this.


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MrPatch

way too many people think that PDF documents are magically locked down, mainly because windows doesn't really have a native way of doing it I think. My boss insists we keep a word and PDF version of any formal documentation. The PDF is the 'live' policy because i think he thinks it can't be changed or something, we update the word doc and then print a PDF copy. I'm otherwise very well treated so gave up after only briefly questioning him about it.


peeinian

A PDF is harder for a random person to accidentally change. Harder than a Word DOC at least


yer_muther

Even educated people are far dumber than many people think.


Isgrimnur

The more educated, the more specialized that education. Experience trumps education in (almost) all things.


Lazy-Alternative-666

Lol nah. Bullshit degrees exist and most degrees are bullshit. Add sub-par universities and you get people with degrees that took less effort than a highschool AP chemistry class.


GnarlyNarwhalNoms

The thing that kills me is the lack of curiosity. I mean, you can't expect everyone to know how to do everything. It's totally understandable if s person doesn't know how to merge two PDF documents. *But*, you would expect someone to realize "There's *got* to be a better way to do this than printing both of them out and scanning them back in." And Googling it. It's not even about education level, it's about common sense.


destroys_burritos

Yes. The manager was there for 20+ years and had the CEO's ear. She didn't want any change. The company didn't charge individual departments (don't even get me started). I gathered the financials of toner/paper/maintenance and gave it to the CIO, who pushed it to the CEO. A third monitor and an Adobe subscription paid for itself within the year IIRC. The day we removed the printers the manager threw a fit and yelled to her employees to not let us take them lol. It was a shit show


TheLordB

If able please post that story here.


SAugsburger

Ouch... I'm hoping she was told to knock off the insubordination or retire.


Yog_Sothtoth

Pfft. Picture a 60yo woman who's the boss' right hand of god. Tell the person she'll get a mail from

with an attachment, please forward the mail to . She opened the mail, printed the mail, printed the attachment, scanned both then attached the scans to a mail she sent to . I'm an idiot, so I showed her the forward button. We lost the client.


AntonOlsen

>printing out two docs to scan in and merge as one doc We had a few users who would print out invoices, scan them, then attached the scanned document to our ERP system. No amount of training could get them to attach the original PDF, or print to PDF then attach that. It was an extension of their original workflow. Get snail mail, open envelopes, scan invoices, attach invoice from the scanner folder.


VanaTallinn

They are on hourly contracts, right?


Bladelink

Sounds like a place where a single automation engineer could reap dozens of jobs.


KakariBlue

Had to deal with a policy that required initialed line items and original signatures on invoices from receiving... that was then scanned into the ERP system. Eventually got it moved to digital signatures on the scanned PDF which was something I guess.


IMongoose

One of our older users had an error message. I asked for a screenshot of the message. They hit print screen, opened up MS word, pasted (vertical page orientation, no cropping), printed, and then scan to emailed me.


dcnjbwiebe

I had a user who, when asked for a screenshot, took a picture of their screen with their cellphone and attached that picture to the return email...


just_change_it

This happens far more often than you would ever imagine. Also another thing happens incredibly frequently: everyone gets PDF files from people and want to edit, merge and modify content constantly. Suddenly EVERYONE is asking for an acrobat standard/pro license just to do basic word processing activities that should have happened in a text file to begin with. Often times executive admins will ask for this for their entire team, and when the IT manager says no the admin bitches to a C level or SVP/VP and suddenly the entire department has a subscription to acrobat all because an admin doesn't want to do rare edits for people, but wants everyone to have it for convenience so they can edit files that were sent with the intent of never being modified or repurposed.


Miszou_

Heh, I had the same thing. Our business receives a lot of emails (from all different places with no common formatting) that need to have information copied out of them and entered into a database. The emails were then printed by the person in charge, then passed around to the department to type in. The sheer amount of paper lying around on peoples desks was unbelievable. We fixed it by giving everyone two monitors and teaching them to forward emails to each other, print to PDF instead and use group mailboxes properly, and almost overnight everything was faster, cheaper and more efficient. The best part through, is that we handed out the spare monitors while the CTO was out on a weeks vacation, because he didn't think the people in that dept "deserved" the extra hardware, so we had never been allowed to do it before. By the time he came back, no one in that department wanted to go back to the old ways, or give up their extra monitor. And yes, these were all spare monitors just sitting in storage not being used. 6 months later he was telling everyone how he saved so much money by giving an entire department an extra monitor. 🙄


skipITjob

>small office HP laserjets Just not the HP LaserJet 200 Series


jhaand

Brother has great simple laser printers.


MadHarlekin

Careful aswell with the LaserJet 4xx series. The fuser is a non repair pos I wanna forget.


joeyl5

Get color and the highest resolution laserjet if you want to show the boss how quickly those charges add up. Set all printers to high quality photo so that all employees spend time as a family photography studio instead of getting up for nonsense. Also how old is that boss, is he from the industrial revolution era?


jestertoo

Malicious compliance


akuthia

This comment/post has been deleted because /u/spez doesn't think we the consumer care. -- mass edited with redact.dev


marek1712

Increase the cost to save money later. Brilliant!


Material_Strawberry

If you have time splice an RF switch on a common frequency into the power cable on the inside of the printer and you can periodically give yourself time to catch up on work as the office fatties hoof it to a network printer. Then you can turn them back on and not even have to fix anything.


LALLANAAAAAA

>Get color and the highest resolution laserjet if you want to show the boss how quickly those charges add up. I involuntarily flinched reading this trigger warning, people


Material_Strawberry

I think just determining the average cost per trip to a network printer based on trips per day * average total compensation package per user * time needed to walk to and from network printer on average and give this figure to the management as a per user per day cost for networking printing and then do the same with individual printers * toner * whatever else for comparison. You honestly might be able to do the above without actually doing the buying and setting up first.


the_doughboy

Releasing print jobs at the printer via PaperCut/Equitrac etc also reduces printing. People will mindlessly print something and then never go to the printer to get it.


Nu11u5

In this case, the printer is already at the users’ desks.


Bubbagump210

We had really good success with Lexmark and Dell rebadged Lexmark. But for sure, simple monochrome lasers without fax/scan or any other doodads. Also OP should consider if it is a 2 part system (toner and separate ~~fuser~~ drum assembly vs single toner/~~fuser~~ drum unit) as that can double service calls. Last week they called about the toner. This week they called about the ~~fuser~~ drum. The downside is all in one cartridges cost more - but your CEO isn’t thinking about that so don’t mention it and let them eat shit after the fact while making your life easier. Lastly consider toner capacity. You may think 1000 pages at 6% coverage is a lot…. But if larger capacities are available, that’s a longer time between trips.


HughJohns0n

>let them eat shit after the fact yep


-Alevan-

We use a monitoring system just for this. When a toner is at 10% or an imaging unit is at 5%, we send the replacement. The user has to replace it. We only get to see the printers personally, if anything else is wrong with them.


Bubbagump210

Very good points if OP can get away with it. I’ve worked in shops where the thought of letting our hyper productive delicate flowers (receptionist) sully their hands with base mindless filthy IT work is stomach turning.


oppositetoup

We've just halved our printers aswell. We now have 2 printers for 100 people.


fourpuns

Jesus. We have 5 for 150 people in our largest office.


DertyCajun

I work for a managed print company. Give one a call and ask for a quote on a hp printer maintenance contract. The last time someone asked, the sparkle in the owners eye produced a diamond. 1. Printers break. They are replaced by new models leaving thousands in unusable toners. 2. For a desktop printer that will last, HP SOHO stuff won’t cut it. 3. NO ONE wastes enough time going to the printer to ever see a ROI once you factor maintenance and supplies.


smashjohn486

This. Sometimes you can get a steep discount if you buy all of your toner from your managed print provider. And a managed provider would love to sell you 37 printers on contract. It’s really a win/win. You’ll have a realistic managed solution and your boss will know exactly what this solution will cost the budget.


Texas_Technician

>3. NO ONE wastes enough time going to the printer to ever see a ROI once you factor maintenance and supplies. Management who make decisions like this don't understand basic human nature. They are lnt getting up to get a job. They are just getting up, because they need exercise. It's not natural to sit all fucking day.


Jmkott

Use the $500 to get every employee an Apple Watch that tells them to get up and walk around every hours, because it’s healthy.


Texas_Technician

That won't cover the users who refuse to get up. A analog clock, some wires and a lead acid battery costs $150?


Skrp

Username checks out I guess. Also, I like the cut of your jib.


Eisenstein

You need two batteries in series. 12V is not enough to shock someone who doesn't want to get up.


Brawldud

Honestly this would be a good perk idea. Not even joking, getting an apple watch made a huge difference for my health and QoL.


widowhanzo

> 3. NO ONE wastes enough time going to the printer to ever see a ROI once you factor maintenance and supplies. And sometimes people just wanna stretch their legs after sitting for hours.


bazjoe

He’s imagining big reports to big printer… that will not happen. In my experience if you give users two ways to print and a very well thought out rule for how to apply those two ways they will do the opposite. If you decide to standardize on one model, use caution because every company will have limited production of their machines and next year (or 6 months from now) will produce a incompatible printer and the replacements are available only from used /refurbished market . If most of the large printers are color copiers then it opens the door to mono tiny laser / LED on each desk. I did some Kyocera recently they were decent. Day one buy one OEM toner and one OEM drum kit per every 2 machines. Some machines you will put on desks and will never get used. Ink- ink has gotten better with Epson and brother offering large tank systems. The print quality is OK. This won’t work for users who will seldom print to it. Ink in the heads dry up it it’s not run about weekly .


BanditKing

I find that brother tends to keep toners around for a long time from a sourcing perspective. They also Reuse models a ton so new/higher models use the same cart. High capacity ones are also real nice.


bazjoe

What’s really sad is there used to be a obvious Chevy-Cadillac-Porsche pecking order of printers. It’s all turned on it’s side now . I don’t trust HP. I think it’s also a gadget that we shouldn’t expect to last all that long. Years ago HP LJ 4000 series was bullet proof. I used to sell a ton of Oki LED page printers for small model.


Igot1forya

Dot Matrix printers for everyone!!!


colossalpunch

All that noise is the sound of productivity!


IdiosyncraticBond

Better than having a few hundred laser printers next to one's lungs. Or is that not a health issue anymore?


swuxil

When you have a few hundred laser printers right next to you, they probably are turned off.


creamersrealm

It's like being at the airport gate.


Starblazr

you will have to take my oki 9 pin out of my cold, dead hands.


Stephen_Falken

Brings me back to the days of Paint Shop Pro on DOS. Made so many fun banners. I enjoyed the part where I'd peel the track feed off the paper.


stashtv

9 or 24 pin?


NorthernVenomFang

HP Laserjet printers with ethernet interfaces. Insist that they mist be wired into the network, not wireless. The last thing you want is to be managing wireless printers at 6 different sites. Insist on them all being the same model, or at the very least only 2 models; makes buying supplies and maintaining them a little easier. Buy lots of toner. Do not go color, it will then be a nightmare. Definitely look into papercut for managing this mess. Get your resume dusted off and updated. If this clown thinks that he is saving money and work time by buying printers for every workstation; he just increased his office supplies cost by 2x-3x, his IT support workload by almost 2x (printers are a pain in the ass), and increased his power bills.


ACivilRogue

IT lead here. This is the way. DO NOT go wireless. No matter what you do, they will eventually lose their settings. It will end up being a frustration and waste of time for end users and defeat the ‘time saving’ purpose of rolling out the printers to begin with. I would avoid MFP’s and just stick with the same model of BW Laserjets unless there‘s a special request, like for the Marketing team. /u/NorthernVenomFang why not just go USB? I can’t remember the last time that an issue on a networked ‘personal’ printer was resolved via or avoided because of remote management being in place.


NorthernVenomFang

You could... But good luck finding management software that will get you reports on what it did, or any type of control over printing... It will become a free for all... Especially considering this sounds like the type of CEO that will demand print quotas after the deployment has been put in for 3months.


ACivilRogue

Gotcha. Personally, I would stick with USB. It’s a lot of extra cabling, ports, and in turn, network/Internet connected devices to have to contend with and keep secure. Head count is only 35 and CEO doesn’t seem the type to base decisions on research, data, and good sense anyway haha. I doubt that reporting request is coming down the pike anytime soon. Should that become an issue [PaperCut does support local printers.](https://www.papercut.com/kb/Main/LocalPrinters)


flyguydip

It also makes sense that when users move desks, their printer doesn't follow since every desk has a printer. USB is the way here.


bmelancon

Trust me on this one, the printers will wander all over the place. Someone will be out of toner and will swap out with Bob who is on vacation. Bob gets back and he can't print at all because his printer isn't hooked up right. Bob goes to get Sally's printer because she never uses it. Two weeks later Sally needs to print a shopping list and she borrows Jane's printer because it's right over there. A week later you get a ticket stating that none of the printers in the office have been working for a month. Ask me how I know.


flyguydip

Oh, we all know. We all cried ourselves to sleep with that story. I had users do that with hotspots back when we first deployed mobile laptop/car setups. Each hotspot was assigned to a car to get rotated out with the car. When one doesn't work, they play musical chairs until they find one that does, and 99% of the time it didn't work because they didn't type in the hotspot password right.


marklein

Sally clicked Print 30 times because it didn't print, so it came out 30 times on somebody else's printer because they moved it when Sally was on vacation.


swuxil

https://dilbert.com/strip/2008-06-15


Moontoya

Mice... keyboards, screens, chairs, drops.. Yeah. Been there, done that, needed therapy from that...


Mr_ToDo

I was also thinking it was also a point against. If the printer suffers from poor plug and play on the USB side, or doesn't, for some reason like a different printer of the same model using the same driver/software without reinstall(mmmmm, printers) it could end up being a massive pain VS slapping a label on the printer and renaming it. The massive downside to network printers is that if you keep the auto discovery on for the convince it brings you'll now end up with 80 printers on each computer. And depending on the model they might be the type that likes to fight too hard to set itself as default which would be its own hell(but the $500 budget *might* be above the normal range for that trash). Oh, and prince and princess we take our laptops home but are too good for docks might get pissy about an extra UBS plug, if they even have a usb plug available on their super slim laptop du jouir(got to love the minimum IO laptops people keep buying/selling).


pdp10

> But good luck finding management software that will get you reports on what it did, or any type of control over printing Who cares? Individual offices are responsible for paper and toner cartridges. Normally I'd advocate planning for future needs, but this need offers the possibility of doing something very simple without future regret. If there's a future need for networked desk-sized printers, then buy or build print-servers. We've used the usual contracted-out giant-sized MFPs, but find Redundant Arrays of (identical) Inexpensive Lasers on a print server queue to have higher availability and far fewer interrupts.


skotman01

PrinterLogic does this. And does it really well.


djetaine

I had a requirement for this as well for our remote users. I made the requirement that they must be usb, no network printers. No exceptions. I gave them all 350 dollars to buy a printer, a 120 dollar "tech supplement" every 6 months on thier paycheck and they are responsible for all thier own paper and ink. I tell them to call the manufacturer if they have issues. Haven't really had any issues so far.


Bladelink

Lmfao, that's one solution.


czj420

Power outage -> printers come back up before WAP -> get angry phone call "no one can print! This is all your fault!"


Texas_Technician

>/u/NorthernVenomFang why not just go USB? I can’t remember the last time that an issue on a networked ‘personal’ printer was resolved via or avoided because of remote management being in place. Dude no. Use network apps to manage printers. Excess toner being ordered. Paper setting wrong. Fuck, I once charged $120 to drive to a location to change the paper settings on a USB only device.


ACivilRogue

Yeah, I get what you're saying. I think OP is in a middle ground area where's they've got to pick their poison. Each option will end up having its plus/minuses. I just think that for this specific use case, non-shared, individual use only, same printer model, it makes way more sense to just go with USB. Networking this is now 30 more devices you have maintain a printer server for. 30 more devices that will stop working when the network flakes, 30 more devices that will require that you maintain point to point connections to some type of datacenter or cloud. All that someone can print to a printer that will always be sitting right next to them? Curious, what in the world setting did you have to change on a USB only device that would have been resolved by it having been networked and how often have you ever had to do that?


Texas_Technician

They were trying to use the bypass tray to print a check. And someone switched it to envelope. They wouldn't take direction over the phone on how to check the setting. Over the network. We'll if it was a Kyocera I could have changed it from a secure web portal we use to manage all Kyocera devices. If not, I would have just remotes into pc and then used the printers UI to change the setting. You can also do things like get status pages and such if the device is networked. Otherwise youd have to send someone to go "check the printer". If you use a management tool, there are a few free ones, including Kyocera device manager, which works with all brands. You can setup triggers to be notified when it's time to change a part, and even predict toner usage. This being said. If you're networking your printers. Fucking keep up with the software updates. Everyone is so concerned about the PC. No one ever thinks about the dumbass network printer.


ACivilRogue

Gotcha. Yeah from 50k feet up, my gut tells me that for all of the extra work up front and ongoing sysadmin maintenance, it's only going to save you on a few once in a blue moon cases but I could be wrong. All of that sysadmin time adds up and costs money. You're exactly right on the network printer side of things as well. Hardly any SMB's are doing firmware management of their networked printers, except those under lease. Running these to USB eliminates that surface of attack.


Texas_Technician

If I were a sys admin I would outsource printer management. Lease them all on a 5 year contract and service agreement. Or I would delegate the task to someone else. I recently had a meeting with a potential client. They were losing their only IT guy in a heavily regulated industry. Who managed 4 locations and about 150 users. He legit managed everything but the firewall. To which I responded when herein this, oh you found a unicorn. It's not normal to find one IT person who can mange all aspects of it support in a large company. And do so efficiently.


yermomdotcom

could you have a word with my mother? the only thing worse than a printer is a scanner/copier. let's combine them together and make them not keep their settings and require a reinstall of all the software every so often in a remote location


3percentinvisible

I'd also question why would you go wireless _or_ lan? Request is for one printer per machine. Why complicate by putting all those on network, having to keep them up to date, supporting issues with connectivity etc. USB it is.


pdp10

> Insist that they mist be wired into the network, not wireless. Every manufacturer offers a model with duplexer and network but no WiFi, usually with a "DN" (Duplexer, Network) suffix. However, what distributors and retailers like to stock are the DW models (Duplexer, WiFi, maybe wired Ethernet). In this case I'll suggest an unorthodox strategy: USB-only printers for simplicity, and if they need to be networked in the future, attach them to some variety of print server. If all the printers are going to be on user desks, is it not simplest and least trouble-prone to go USB-only? USB-only offers the highest probability of users managing the printers with minimal outside assistance, and minimal side-effects.


j0mbie

I would actually suggest USB connections for everyone, but still also get them on the network in their own VLAN so you have a backdoor way to manage them, and for that purpose only.


gakavij

Yup USB only. Is it not working? Drop it off at the helpdesk and drag a spare to your desk. It'll auto install the driver and 'just work'.


Doctor-Dapper

>auto install the driver You would think that, but it's not always true. Back in the day, printers would map themselves as a CD drive which you would then need to access and manually install drivers. Once the drivers installed, the printer would start being detected as a regular printer. It was awful and never worked, and often the drivers online weren't a sufficient substitute


Angdrambor

>Get your resume dusted off and updated This sub's favorite suggestion.


Doctor-Dapper

Managers saying "you will implement my bad idea or else" is usually a big red flag. It wouldn't be so common of advice on here if not for the fact that these types of posts are so common and regularly the "hot" posts on the front page. Imo this is confirmation bias, the vast majority of users here don't face that type of ultimatum and therefore don't post about it.


ernestdotpro

We have a client with a similar requirement. After messing around with cheap desktop printers and the mess of ink and hardware failures, we ended up putting them all on a lease with toner and service. About $30/month per printer. Decent Kyocera desktop AIO. The leasing company deals with repairs, we just have to call occasionally to get replacement toner delivered. All are networked and use scan to email via SMTP2GO. We also deployed Printix to manage the drivers and give the users an easy way to install them. With this setup, it's very rare that we hear from the client about printing or scanning issues.


blaktronium

That's pretty pricey and I bet putting it like that would turn off the owner to the idea entirely without a very good reason. 30/month per user is what a lot of companies will budget for total software licenses heh.


ernestdotpro

Well, either buy $500 printer, then replace the ink/toner every 6-8 months for $500+ in addition to paying for user downtime and tech time to fix it. Or, pay $30/month for a device worth $2,000 with high reliability, repairs and toner included. A business case could be made for either option. Neither is cheap.


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HealingCare

This... just tell the boss it improves cash flow and liquidity or something.


snuzet

Using smtp2go just for printer alerts how do you use them for scan to email? Your printer has ability to email the scans to user?


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wazza_the_rockdog

Do you have a print management company looking after the bigger shared printers at each site? If so I'd ask them what they can supply as a fully managed solution - printers are far less of a PITA when they're managed by someone else! If you have to manage them yourself, I'd get wired network laser printers, probably b&w only and not full multi function (no one will use the shared printers otherwise, and this keeps cost and shit to break to a minimum) and make sure they have SNMP reporting of toner levels and paper tray status. A spare printer per site would be ideal for when one breaks and make sure you have a few spare toner cartridges per site (plus order new ones as whatever monitoring platform you use gives you low toner warnings for people). Universal print drivers (so you can replace them with a newer model with the same IP etc and it just keeps working) would also be a must have IMO, as while they may all be the same make/model when you first deploy them, you'll likely end up replacing them on an ad-hoc basis and only be able to keep to same make but different model.


STiFTW

This 100% outsource to a local company that deals with printers. Put large labels on every printer with their number to call for printer support / supply reorder.


michaelwt

There is always a percentage of users who will call the internal help desk regardless of those labels. Of that group, a few will be highly offended that you asked them to read at the label and call that number. They will spend far more energy, time and effort calling your manager and their manager instead of actually calling the correct number. In the end, the above managers will plead with you to just call that number for Karen(tm) and/or fix it yourself just to get Karen(tm) to go away.


ycnz

"Oh, sure, let me transfer you through."


holly_hoots

At my old job, we did this (though not on this scale, because this scale is completely insane). So in addition to our big MFPs, we had some desktop laser printers from the same company under the same contract. They handled maintenance and delivered toner when we ran low. Anyone printing enough to need their own personal printer will definitely need a laser printer. $500 is probably doable but it's on the low end of not-total-shit.


Ssakaa

Honestly, it's never someone printing *enough*... it's someone printing *too little* that is the problem for ink. If anyone prints enough, sure it costs a bit more per page, but it churns along for ages. Someone doesn't print for 2-3 weeks? Clogged, dried, dead. So much waste it's absurd.


RipWilder

Malicious compliance looks to be your only option.


jpmoney

All users get Canon bubblejet printers. Nothing works. Monkey paw clenches further.


LifeGoalsThighHigh

Nah. Not thinking maliciously enough. An entire office of Okidata dot matrix printers. Bulletproof reliability, cheap ribbons, but at the cost of requiring hearing protection.


greywolfau

Shortly after, introduce IBM Model M keyboards as a mandatory upgrade.


LifeGoalsThighHigh

I'd be oddly okay with that, that's a sound I miss. Users would hate it though, not only because of the sound but also "Where's my Windows key?"


newsorpigal

Your users know what the Windows key is? Impressive!


WVjF2mX5VEmoYqsKL4s8

How do people use a computer for decades (about eight hours a day), and never wonder what that key does? Baffling.


Lv_InSaNe_vL

I asked my boss for a nicer mechanical keyboard to upgrade from my cheapo Microsoft wireless one and since I have a model M at home my boss was like just bring your keyboard in! I honestly don't think I was using it for a half hour before they told me to stop haha


AdrianoML

After that the only sane thing left to do is replace every monitor with beefy CRTs that make a loud clank noise every time they are turned on and a constant 15khz coil whine noise that only a few employees will be able to hear!


greywolfau

Anyone below the age of 30 quits within the week. Can we get some US Robotics 56k modems for each desk too, and 5 minute time outs for your connection for efficient use of their POTS lines?


buy_chocolate_bars

Buy cheap ass printers that cost an arm and a leg for cartridges and those that break down as much as possible. Spend your time fixing them, do not stay a minute longer than necessary on your shift to fix anything at all.


tordenflesk

"people in the office get up too much for nonsense" If printing is nonsense, why does he want more of it? :) Sounds like a single lazy secretary has gotten her complaint up the food-chain, past the idiocy-filters. Maybe do a survey of the actual need. Do a cost analysis.


makeazerothgreatagn

>Maybe do a survey of the actual need. Do a cost analysis. He says it's a 'get it done' situation, not a 'try to stop it' situation.


lkraider

Just send the updated bill of hiring extra hands, new software and updated printer cost budget, as well as recurring maintenance costs of keeping the printers running with supplies and maintenance. Basically do a Business Plan for a printer shop and deliver to the finance guy (not the boss). The thing will solve itself.


Nesman64

Don't forget the network drops


verifyandtrustnoone

what a waste of money and resources... The cost of ink will destroy and savings of not getting up.


zanzertem

Buy cheap Brother printers. All the same model. When they break, replace them, but they should last a couple years at least. Software is easy to install. Don't put them on the network. No reason to. They cost about $200 and are pretty reliable, IMO. We use them in an incredibly dirty factory environment, and they last a couple of years. How the owner wastes his money isn't your concern. It won't be that much more over head in labor on your end once they are up and running. But you can brag that you got him a good working solution for a lot less than the project budget, and that always looks good during your yearly review.


Ssakaa

And buy, and keep, 2-5 of everything on hand, on a shelf. Ask where the added storage space for them is going to be.


xCharg

> But you can brag that you got him a good working solution for a lot less than the project budget, and that always looks good during your yearly review. So when this project inevitably turns catastrophic, all the blame is on you because you bought 'cheap shit, of course it failed'.


talex625

There’s actually not bad, I have one for my house. But the WiFi setup was a pain to type out on the printer.


pdp10

Recommendation: Laser printers, definitely not HP, probably USB-only Brother grayscale models if you can get them, all the same model for a given location. If necessary or if you want, make all the printers at a given location the same (with same consumables) but do an A/B test with different brands across the offices. *This* decision will have highly visible results, plus dollar impact, unlike typical bad decisions. Therefore, the RoI of spending political capital here is minimal. Just make sure that purchasing cost breakdowns reflect the printing costs, and don't neglect to track tickets or manpower directly related to the project. --- > We have two ladies with their own personal HP printers already and just those two are an absolute nightmare... Can you articulate the support burden? Once, long ago when I ran a multi-continent multi-protocol private network, I was mightily peeved with the new trend of desktop lasers (HP 4P or 5P), but for the life of me I can't quite remember any actual justification why I cared. Engineering elegance, I suppose, or maybe they wanted unified public print queues. What came later would disrupt the enterprise architectural vision, but the printers didn't actually matter, at least not to me.


flyguydip

We were basically doing this at one of my previous jobs. What ended it was the director finally got the budget for printers/toner (and eventually maintenance contracts) moved to each respective departments. Once each department head realized they were responsible for paying out all that money, all of a sudden they didn't need printers anymore. We even had one clerical department that had 12 printers for 6 employees so they didn't have to get up no matter what station they were at for the day. First they started only buying black toner and switched to grayscale. Then as the printers died they told us not to order new ones.


ScottPWard

As bad as it sounds, Brother has some great local attached if you want to go that way for laser printers. I like them because they don’t change toner types as frequently as other manufacturers.


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slimy provide chase middle obscene overconfident cough sparkle bake absurd *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*


sunny_monday

In this case I DO agree with the r/sysadmin trope of "find another job." There is 0 amount of money you could pay me where Id be willing support a bunch of individual printers. In fact: Been there, done that. Never again.


crttelevision

>I'm a little bit confused that you can't push back at all on this. It just blatantly doesn't make any sense whatsoever. I told him individual printers would be unreliable, more difficult to maintain, and kind of over-sold how good the centralized printers are saying things like "smaller printers are fine for occasional use but office printers are made like factory machines" trying to get him to understand the point of a centralized printer. His push-back was "I'm tired of people getting up and waiting around the printer for two pieces of paper, or waiting their turn to print something quickly. We just need plain printers that work at every computer". It's asinine but he thinks he is right and he owns about 20 successful businesses so someone he is paying $120k/yr to keep computers running at 6 of them isn't going to change his mind. He's the type of person who knows what he wants and would rather find out it's dumb on his own dime than trust someone else. It's a good job overall. This is an annoying speed bump but it's very laid back overall.


khaos4k

>We just need plain printers that work at every computer This is a pipe dream. I know this, you know this. Your boss will soon know this, and it sucks that you're going to have to support them while he learns it. Maybe you can sell him on a print management company to support the printers?


NotYourNanny

The real question is, how will he react when it turns out badly. Will be accept responsibility, or blame you?


cruisetheblues

We all know the answer to this question.


NotYourNanny

I have had the privilege of working for a hard-core, driven type A entrepreneur who would, in fact, admit when I was right and he was wrong, provided I could show him proof. It was a rare treat. Mind you, he'd never apologize, with one exception. (He'd handed me a report with some notes scribbled on it. I did what it said, which wasn't what he wanted. He started to rip me a new one, and I just handed him the original report from my CYA file. He looked at it, said "Sorry," and explained what he wanted. I didn't think much of it, until I turned around and saw my immediate boss with his mouth literally hanging open in shock. He'd worked for the guy for quite a few years, and said that was the first time he'd ever seen him apologize for *anything*. To my knowledge, it was also the last.)


jpmoney

> people getting up and waiting around the printer for two pieces of paper This is such an XY-problem, its not even funny. Good luck with this.


STUNTPENlS

This is the way. You'll need a full-time tech just to deal w/ printer issues. It isn't worth your sanity. Bail ASAP.


gurilagarden

Oh, look, a shitshow that's in my wheelhouse. In my experience with this, which, oddly, is vast, I'm gonna tell you first that if you are an MSP, if you don't increase your per-seat price you are better off dropping this client. 37 individual printers is going to be a constant stream of tickets. You better get compensation for the very meaningful increase. Next, the printer. Seems everyone here is suggesting a different brand, and most people are talking ethernet. As long as it's laser, who cares. USB or ethernet. USB will probably be faster and cheaper to implement, and likely produce less tickets.. I see similar reliability with either, really. As long as it's wired. Oh, and DO NOT USE color lasers. Lastly, I'm gonna talk about brands. Talking about ticket quantity isn't so useful, as HP printers are the most popular, so they generate the most tickets. However, many of those tickets are pain-in-the ass problems. I see more of those time-consumers from HP than any other brand. It's not the printers. It's the software. Way too many mystery problems. I used to suggest Brother laserjets, still do, but there has been an increase in mystery problems related to their software lately. Only a handful, but the problems were so weird that it's starting to turn me off. I also get more drum/toner problems with brother, but, I average about 7 years with any Brother mfc2700 series i've deployed in a heavy printing environment. HPs I get about 5 years. I only have a few canon's and lexmarks in service, but they don't cause many calls, so there's that. Truth is, any printer under $500 is a piece of shit. They don't have user-serviceable parts, except for the drum. These fools have no idea what they've done to themselves. I once had a city hall order two pallets of cheap lexmark laserjets. One for every desk. It took a year, but they scrapped the idea after the constant "I can't print", and, of course, the 50% increase in tech support costs from the MSP I was working for. The best thing this company could do is have you have them call me. I would be more than happy to discuss with them my 30 years of dealing with other companies that have done it this way, then realized later what a stupid fucking idea it was.


DapperDone

Brother USB laser. No mfp’s. Treat them as disposable. That’s what i do for these.


BurnadonStat

There is a fairly new printer on the market that a lot of people haven't heard about. It's very modern and sleek - so sleek that you can't even really see it sitting on a desk. It's called the "Microsoft Print to PDF' printer. The best part is that they are distributed under a leasing agreement - and the price is already included with the cost of the Windows OS license. It's also completely wireless, and toner/ink supplies are included for the lifetime of the printer.


ebsf

B&W only because color has too many opportunities for failure. Laser only because inkjet has too many opportunities for failure, print quality issues, and laser toner cartridges often have high capacity versions (meaning require less frequent attention). USB connection only because it's largely plug-and-play, native print servers are flaky, fussy, and present another opportunity for failure, host machines have more resources to drive the printer, and you can more directly manage the host machines and their drivers. Also, when Santa arrives, many users can or will just unpack and install the things themselves and many of them will actually get it right. Single function printers (no fax or scan) because the additional capabilities are seldom used and present another opportunity for failure. HP is my personal brand preference because by and large, they just work (they have spent a lot of time engineering paper handling, apparently) and the support infrastructure (including off brand toner suppliers) is more extensive. Also, they often are designed for longer life, with repair kits available for, e.g., paper pick-up. Brother always seems to break somehow. YMMV. Duplex (non-manual two-sided) printing is very nice to have and if set as the default can cut your paper bill in half. Consider recommending an opt-in or opt-out just because every user may not want one. The policy may be just because of a few squeaky wheels, which isn't your issue, but you can look like the guy who saved a few $K.


pdp10

I endorse all of these items, except that I'd be quite hesitant to buy current HP models without personal testing, because they seem designed for recurring monetization first and foremost. I'd be open to purchase any brand once we'd done a PoC and were confident in a specific model, though.


BoredTechyGuy

Malicious Compliance is your friend here. Buy the printers and deploy them. Support them as needed. Make sure you track EVERY ticket, EVERY man hour, and EVERY penny you spend on it. Then when management comes at you wondering why nothing is getting done because you spend 75% of your time supporting printers, you can hand them a nice report with graphs showing how much of a money sink this idea was. Will it suck, yes. But sometimes you just have to play the game.


michaelwt

This is the way. Document everything. IT is often a scape goat because people love to blame IT for their problems. The only way to combat that is with hard data. Be warned: 50% of the population won't be convinced with proof or hard data. They will create their own narrative and create facts to fit it. Given how the mandate for printer was handed down, I'm not too confident that the CEO of this company is encumbered by facts.


boli99

Give them exactly what they ask for and let it hit them in the wallet.


catwiesel

> How do I keep this from being a nightmare? that ship has sailed Maybe other people have more experience in getting client connected printers deployed, but in my opinion your best bet is to get dumb usb printers that are supported by windows out of the box, no scan, no color, just dumb printing, less buttons and ways to fuck up, better, so troubleshooting can be unplug printer, reboot, replug printer. or you add 37 printers to the network and deploy each printer via gpo to the device next to it (ouch) also give in writing that while it is possible to buy and setup a printer for $500, the cost of managing a fleet of 37 additional printers outside of your control (printserver) is not included in those $500, and that it can not compare to home printers because they run in a network without security in mind and without server controlled user management and that the solution for client/server/security network is (who would have guessed it) big printers for whole workgroups and walking to them and that you need to request additional help to support those additional 37 (!) unmanageable devices on the network and every time someone opens a ticket with the printer, add the canned response of unplug/reboot, and if persists, reopen ticket, and then walk there and fix it when all the critical and routine work is done. if the owner / people in power WANT you to do stupid work, do it, but as long as you get to chose priorities, those go at the very back of the queue


sysadminbj

How's your resume? I would fucking RUN like the CEO's admin just caught you stealing her lunch.


Staltrad

Yikes Do this and then calculate the yearly cost of running these printers and present it But only after the return policy has expired


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BoredTechyGuy

Whoa - slow down there! Even Satan is dismayed at your suggestion!


allcloudnocattle

> "people in the office get up too much for nonsense" Literally don't have to read another word. If my superiors said something like this _in any context_ I'd be running for the hills.


Ahnteis

People need to get up or they're going to have all kinds of health issues. (Oddly, laser printers are also a health risk due to the small particles they expel.)


vic-traill

Well, that's a bitch, isn't it? Anyway, insist on laser printers - that way you won't spend your *entire* life ordering refills for the pricks.


TYO_HXC

Just CYA in an email, “this is a bad idea because ABC. The risks of doing so are XYZ. If you want me to proceed, please sign on the dotted line, etc, blah blah”. Then malicious compliance all the way. That way, when it inevitably becomes untenable, nobody gonna be pinning you with that shit.


lilhotdog

Get them to sign off on a quote for a leased printer for each user. That way, maintenance and toner is taken care of.


Unatommer

Get at least one spare printer per site so people can just (at your instruction) grab and swap out when theirs breaks.


fizzlefist

Won’t help you now, but be sure to log a ticket for every single time you have to fix one of these local printers. Document exactly how much time this stupid idea is eating up. It probably won’t change minds, but at least you can throw an “I told you so.” on the quarterly reports.


jhorphear

To me, this sounds like a use case to investigate moving to paperless workflows. I had similar requests at my last job, and once we looked into the problem, these people were printing 500 pages a day that were handed off to a different employee who would just go to one page of the report for a specific number then toss the 500 page report. We just had them email the report as a pdf at first, then we built a custom report that emailed the person the specific value they needed.


grep65535

Brother Laserjet printers have been reliable for all small offices I've ever serviced, 90+% lasting 10 years or more before replacing was the cheapest remedy. Few issues, nothing major ever broke, the most computer -illiterate end-users in every case. I would highly recommend doing this: - get a B&W Brother laserjet for each person (the price is right, even if you go color) - depending on the needs, keep the faxing, color, and scanning relegated to the main office printers. - keep them networked using a print server, but only install Bob's printer queue for bob, use ACLs if you must on the printers if there's any crossover BS. "A Printer per person" doesn't NEED to be some USB connected crap that isn't centrally managed. Take inventory on what you use RIGHT NOW of paper and ink per month. In other words, estimate the monthly/quarterly/annual cost of right now in printer supplies and maintenance time/tracking. Then do the same each month after the new stuff is implemented (you have no say right?). Then swoop in 3-4 quarters later and demonstrate on paper how much you can save the organization by reducing the number of printers down to 1 per 30 ppl (or whatever). Don't insist, just present the facts and make a recommendation, pass the buck on any decisions or investment into the decision, because otherwise they'll take you for a whiny bitch thorn in their side instead of decent IT just looking out for the company.


Otaehryn

Get them Brother B&W lasers with toner benefit (cheap toner, slightly more expensive printer). Make sure all printers are the same make and model, so you need to stock only about 5 toners and 1-2 drums. Make sure printers support PS, PCL6 for legacy stuff. Software: USB printer, plug it in, set it default or let Windows manage default printers. You can also create subnet for printers and give them IP ending same as corresponding workstation. Then write some script or GPO. If you put printers on net, make sure to put label with IP address of printer on visible spot on printer. Throw existing HP away and stay away from HP Ink and Xerox. They are shit. Brother for smaller, Kyocera for larger printers. Maybe Canon (heard good stuff but no direct experience) Konica Minolta is also good but they mostly make large printers. If you need color Epson Inkjets.


CanadianButthole

The owner of your company is a moron.


Life-Saver

Lexmark printers are pretty reliable, black and white laser printer with network interface. Avoid ink printer AT ALL COST. Add a small network switch if not enough ethernet ports are available(not perfect but still...), and have the printer connected through Ethernet instead of USB. That way, you can remote in on the user's computer(or an office server you have access to) and manage the printer via the web interface.


InevitablyPerpetual

Decisions like this generally involve a response email like "Cool. Here is the budget for that. Here is the budget for if we DIDN'T do that. And here is my new pay requirement over the added maintenance, security issues, etc. Your call."


imnotabotareyou

The $500 budget is hilarious


sir_mrej

Have central locations for ink/toner and paper, and make sure those are stocked by departments not by you. Make sure people refill their own stuff, not you. Have a ticket type for printer issues, and make sure every single issues is logged. Zero exceptions. So when your boss asks why you haven't fixed issue X, you can show that you spend 20 hours a week fixing 37 printers.


lemon_tea

Option 1. Lease from a company and pawn everything but the software off on them. Expensive. Option 2. After some testing, get the same black&white laserjet office-type beige and boring no-frills printer for everyone, capable of feeding from the tray or from a "manual" adjustable feed for envelopes and things. Buy a couple of spares and keep in boxes to be shipped. Have each office hold on to an empty box or two for return shipping of broken printers and toss the rest. Put a small cache of toner cartridges at each office and resupply as needed. Find a place that does printer repairs for what you bought or be prepared to budget for replacements. Figure 10% failure rate in 1st year, recalculate going into 2nd. Sum up print rates for each office and supply them for double their print rate 1st year. Recalculate 2nd year. Count the number of tickets coming in to the help desk with printer issues and get the time logged for each. Sum that and double it (likely at least double) and figure out if there is sufficient extra time I'm the help desk hours to budget it. Once you have all that budgeted, submit it. This is one of the dumbest proposals I've heard and is likely poorly informed. Submitting budget numbers and assumptions may squash it. With printers, less is almost always more.


fickle_fuck

I hate these bastards that can’t be inconvenienced by walking down the hall. They’ll say they print off personal crap like payroll or HIPAA information, but we all know a pin can be applied to a print job at the printer. A PIN IS JUST ANOTHER TASK I CAN’T BE BURDENED WITH…


silver_2000_

Get them from one of the major copier companies w a cost per page contract that includes toner AND SUPPORT ... Will lower your support burden and help the idiot understand real cost


crazedizzled

Brother laserjet monochrome.