Consolidating Printers and Remote Printer Monitoring
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@DustinB3403 said in Printer Leasing/Maintenance - Installing Software on the Network for Monitoring Print Devices:
@IRJ said in Printer Leasing/Maintenance - Installing Software on the Network for Monitoring Print Devices:
@DustinB3403 said in Printer Leasing/Maintenance - Installing Software on the Network for Monitoring Print Devices:
@Dashrender said in Printer Leasing/Maintenance - Installing Software on the Network for Monitoring Print Devices:
@IRJ said in Printer Leasing/Maintenance - Installing Software on the Network for Monitoring Print Devices:
@DustinB3403 said in Printer Leasing/Maintenance - Installing Software on the Network for Monitoring Print Devices:
@IRJ said in Printer Leasing/Maintenance - Installing Software on the Network for Monitoring Print Devices:
Honestly, I have never worked at a single company where IT supports printers, other than initial setups.
Must be fucking nice that the accountants are installing toner and removing paper jams.
Smart accountants know that IT handling printers is a waste of fucking money. Why pay someone $100k+ a year and have them work on printers?
Really - it shouldn't be IT fixing it, I think Scott would say that's Bench's job... and while some DC bench techs can make $100K/yr... most are probably more in the 30-60K range.
Do you consider yourself bench/IT or some combination? Don't you work at a place where you'd fill all of these gaps? Would you want Frank the tank ripping paper jams out the printers you support and potentially making a bigger issue of it? Costing more money by said printer being offline.
I dont give a F about Frank or his printer because the printer is under contract. He can call the printer contract vendor and they will send someone out
Again, we weren't and aren't discussing printers that have a a maintenance contract if someone from that business is ordering supplies. God you're a moron.
Wtf are you talking about the thread is literally about a service contract which means they replace toner
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@IRJ said in Printer Leasing/Maintenance - Installing Software on the Network for Monitoring Print Devices:
@DustinB3403 said in Printer Leasing/Maintenance - Installing Software on the Network for Monitoring Print Devices:
@IRJ said in Printer Leasing/Maintenance - Installing Software on the Network for Monitoring Print Devices:
@DustinB3403 said in Printer Leasing/Maintenance - Installing Software on the Network for Monitoring Print Devices:
@Dashrender said in Printer Leasing/Maintenance - Installing Software on the Network for Monitoring Print Devices:
@IRJ said in Printer Leasing/Maintenance - Installing Software on the Network for Monitoring Print Devices:
@DustinB3403 said in Printer Leasing/Maintenance - Installing Software on the Network for Monitoring Print Devices:
@IRJ said in Printer Leasing/Maintenance - Installing Software on the Network for Monitoring Print Devices:
Honestly, I have never worked at a single company where IT supports printers, other than initial setups.
Must be fucking nice that the accountants are installing toner and removing paper jams.
Smart accountants know that IT handling printers is a waste of fucking money. Why pay someone $100k+ a year and have them work on printers?
Really - it shouldn't be IT fixing it, I think Scott would say that's Bench's job... and while some DC bench techs can make $100K/yr... most are probably more in the 30-60K range.
Do you consider yourself bench/IT or some combination? Don't you work at a place where you'd fill all of these gaps? Would you want Frank the tank ripping paper jams out the printers you support and potentially making a bigger issue of it? Costing more money by said printer being offline.
I dont give a F about Frank or his printer because the printer is under contract. He can call the printer contract vendor and they will send someone out
Again, we weren't and aren't discussing printers that have a a maintenance contract if someone from that business is ordering supplies. God you're a moron.
Wtf are you talking about the thread is literally about a service contract which means they replace toner
Read the conversation f****** -
Yep, we're talking about a situation where the OP will likely (I've never heard of a leasing/maintenance situation not include toner) be getting toner as part of the setup.
But really - that's not part of the thread - that's simply assumed.
The thread is - should I allow software to be installed on the network to monitor the printers.
To which I say - personally, the printers should do that automatically - you shouldn't need software to allow that, but if you are stuck with a printer vendor who doesn't have that option.. then yes, installing the software to manage the printers should be fine - but I would NEVER open a port on the firewall to let the vendor remote into said software (OK - almost never).
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@Dashrender said
but I would NEVER open a port on the firewall to let the vendor remote into said software (OK - almost never).
But you would trust said vendor who doesn't have a printer smart enough to do this that their software going on your server is up to snuff?
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@Dashrender said in Printer Leasing/Maintenance - Installing Software on the Network for Monitoring Print Devices:
personally, the printers should do that automatically - you shouldn't need software to allow that, but if you are stuck with a printer vendor who doesn't have that option.. then yes, installing the software to manage the printers should be fine - but I would NEVER open a port on the firewall to let the vendor remote into said software
I was wondering if this was also a thing, where the printers report directly. I am not opening a port for a printer leasing company to access their software. That would be a deal killer for me.
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@wrx7m my experience is that the vendor doesn't "access" the locally installed software, it collects it and then posts it back home. Why would it be anything more than a glorified SNMP retrieval followed by sending out?
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@batman said in Printer Leasing/Maintenance - Installing Software on the Network for Monitoring Print Devices:
@wrx7m my experience is that the vendor doesn't "access" the locally installed software, it collects it and then posts it back home. Why would it be anything more than a glorified SNMP retrieval followed by sending out?
Sadly, they are not so benign. We had a vendor 10+ years ago want some software install, and did require a port opened for it, I passed on that and we kept manually providing page counts.
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@batman said in Printer Leasing/Maintenance - Installing Software on the Network for Monitoring Print Devices:
@wrx7m my experience is that the vendor doesn't "access" the locally installed software, it collects it and then posts it back home. Why would it be anything more than a glorified SNMP retrieval followed by sending out?
That's mostly what I've seen as well. And often the software is a big industry package, not something unique to that vendor.
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@IRJ said in Printer Leasing/Maintenance - Installing Software on the Network for Monitoring Print Devices:
@DustinB3403 said in Printer Leasing/Maintenance - Installing Software on the Network for Monitoring Print Devices:
@Dashrender said in Printer Leasing/Maintenance - Installing Software on the Network for Monitoring Print Devices:
@IRJ said in Printer Leasing/Maintenance - Installing Software on the Network for Monitoring Print Devices:
@DustinB3403 said in Printer Leasing/Maintenance - Installing Software on the Network for Monitoring Print Devices:
@IRJ said in Printer Leasing/Maintenance - Installing Software on the Network for Monitoring Print Devices:
Honestly, I have never worked at a single company where IT supports printers, other than initial setups.
Must be fucking nice that the accountants are installing toner and removing paper jams.
Smart accountants know that IT handling printers is a waste of fucking money. Why pay someone $100k+ a year and have them work on printers?
Really - it shouldn't be IT fixing it, I think Scott would say that's Bench's job... and while some DC bench techs can make $100K/yr... most are probably more in the 30-60K range.
Do you consider yourself bench/IT or some combination? Don't you work at a place where you'd fill all of these gaps? Would you want Frank the tank ripping paper jams out the printers you support and potentially making a bigger issue of it? Costing more money by said printer being offline.
I dont give a F about Frank or his printer because the printer is under contract. He can call the printer contract vendor and they will send someone out
:clapping_hands:
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@Dashrender said in Printer Leasing/Maintenance - Installing Software on the Network for Monitoring Print Devices:
@batman said in Printer Leasing/Maintenance - Installing Software on the Network for Monitoring Print Devices:
@wrx7m my experience is that the vendor doesn't "access" the locally installed software, it collects it and then posts it back home. Why would it be anything more than a glorified SNMP retrieval followed by sending out?
Sadly, they are not so benign. We had a vendor 10+ years ago want some software install, and did require a port opened for it, I passed on that and we kept manually providing page counts.
10+ years ago.. seriously man.. move on..
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I have always pushed for the accounting method that has an app installed inside my network to poll the printers and then that app sends the data to the company monitoring the usage.
I MUCH prefer pushing data out of my network over opening a pinhole for someone else's use. We don't block outbound traffic if the communication was originated on the inside, so no pinholes or NATing of inbound ports.
In MOST cases, they have an option to allow my preferred method of data transfer.
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@JaredBusch said
10+ years ago.. seriously man.. move on..
Sadly, said vendor is probably still using the same app.
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@BRRABill said in Printer Leasing/Maintenance - Installing Software on the Network for Monitoring Print Devices:
@JaredBusch said
10+ years ago.. seriously man.. move on..
Sadly, said vendor is probably still using the same app.
Yeah, I wouldn't hold my breath for the printer industry to suddenly catch up with modern best practices.
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@RojoLoco said in Printer Leasing/Maintenance - Installing Software on the Network for Monitoring Print Devices:
@BRRABill said in Printer Leasing/Maintenance - Installing Software on the Network for Monitoring Print Devices:
@JaredBusch said
10+ years ago.. seriously man.. move on..
Sadly, said vendor is probably still using the same app.
Yeah, I wouldn't hold my breath for the printer industry to suddenly catch up with modern best practices.
More of an issue with small town, small time one off hardware leasing companies.
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