What to use as a print server

[Bill]

I have just recently started working where there are
around 80 Windows 2000 users, 80 Macs users and the same
Unix user. What is in place right now is a OS X print
server that is not working out their haveing allot of
problems. The main go of this is to be able to see the
jobs and keep a log of who is printing. I am thinking of
trying to use Windows 2000 as a print server but I do not
know if your able to keep a log of completed jobs or how
it will do in a mixed enviorment.

Thanks and any help would be great

[Bruce Sanderson]

I see that noone has responded, so I'll try to give some info that may be
helpful.

If you install Print Services for UNIX on your Windows 2000 print server,
UNIX users should be able to send print to printers on that W2K print server
via lpr/lpd.

There is also some support for MAC computer printing, but I'm not familiar
with that.

What this means is that you might be able to define all the printers on the
Windows 2000 print server and use that for all your print clients.

Another possibility would be to settle on a UNIX print server. Your Windows
2000 and XP clients can send directly to the UNIX print server using
"Standard TCP/IP" ports configured for lpr/lpd (not the default
unfortunately, but easily configured). Windows 9x clients could print to a
Windows 2000 or XP computer's shared printer configured to use such as
Standard TCP/IP port.

Tracking who is printing is a more difficult question. Windows 2000 and XP
can add Event Log entries for each print request (open the Printers folder,
click File, Server Properties, Advanced). You would then need a program
that could read through the event log and extract only those events for
summarization. I'm not familiar with any such programs because I never had
the need, but there are probably some third party ones out there that could
do what you want, or you could have a custom one built.

I'm not familiar with what is available in UNIX for tracking print usage.

--
Bruce Sanderson MVP

It is perfectly useless to know the right answer to the wrong question.

"Bill" <Wjbutcher@eae-----------------qqqq> wrote in message
news:034201c2c21b$05223a70$8df82ecf@TK2MSFTNGXA02...