There is a way to force the colour Dprint machines to print in black and white, and only charge your account for black and white prices:
Select the “Force Monochrome” box on the Dprint touch screen.
From the Dprint website:
You wrote:
It’s just ironic that although Concordia preaches about sustainability, at Loyola, you still get a ridiculous printout receipt for filling up your copy card. Makes sense? Do you really think anyone treasures the fact that they added two bucks to their card, and needs to commemorate it in print? It’s an unbelievable waste of paper, ink and expense, and the conveniently placed garbage can under the machine just encourages people to throw out the paper- so much for recycling.
If there is this additional money to just throw away on useless receipts, I would much rather it be spent making sure the printers actually work (when I came to the library yesterday, two of the printers were already ‘temporarily’ out of order. As a student who has pumped in much money to this school, we deserve much better than this. This is absolutely ridiculous, especially at this time of year when we Need things to reliably work), full of paper, and more routinely checked and maintained.
if you have the money, spend it on maintain the printers during the evenings- to tell students, “sorry, guess you’ll have to just print and hand out your assignments during our working hours” when as students, we’re here at all hours of the day, is insulting, unfair, and a very lame excuse.
Thank you for your comments.
The reason that the DPrint loader at the Vanier Library automatically prints receipts, is to prevent a noisy beeping sound.
The loader can be set up to not print receipts as a default, but it requires input from the patron on whether or not to print a receipt. To alert the patron that input is needed, the loader beeps incessantly. This was disturbing to students and staff so it was changed it to print without waiting for input and without beeping.
The Vanier Library has been in contact with Dprint regarding the maintenance and paper loading for the printers in the library. Approximately two weeks ago, Dprint changed the servicing frequency and time for the Vanier Library printers. We hope this will address the concerns of the library community.
You can also always send comments directly to Dprint:
You wrote:
I have been working at a computer for a while now, regularly sending things to print, when I suddenly realized that the automatic printer option is the COLOR printer!! How did this happen?! This means that NONE of my things will print. this is ridiculous- please make sure the black and white is the default one- what a loss of time! Now I have to retrace my steps on everything… this is so stupid… and completely avoidable.
You wrote:
I’m working at Loyola (on a Friday in the evening), and one of the three printers has been jammed since yesterday, and the single fill-up machine on campus is also broken. This is absolutely incredible- so long as our funds are allocated towards ‘prettying up’ the website, the printing services are still incredibly lacking. I would bet money that if I complained to a librarian about this, I would be told, “don’t worry dear, someone will come fix it on Monday”. Monday?!? If we as students are here working on the weekend, we DESERVE functioning and MAINTAINED machines and services. This is absolutely inexcusable and infuriating. Another issue is that the security officer I mentioned the useless machine to, spoke no English. G-d forbid there should be any issues, he would not understand anything. Glad our priorities are straight.
Sarcasm aside, we would REALLY appreciate if you took students’ concerns into account-considering how much time (and money) we put into this, that’s the least we deserve.
I’m sorry to hear that you had a bad experience, I can understand your frustration. However, the DPrint machines and loaders do not belong to the Libraries. They fall under the jurisdiction of Concordia Retail (the Bookstore).
Your comments have been forwarded to Concordia’s DPrint service and the loader at Vanier library has been repaired.
You can contact DPrint directly, with the contact information from their website:
We have also notified the appropriate people in the Security Department and passed on your comments.
Thank you for taking the time to write to us.
You wrote:
I was working at Loyola’s library, and was pleasantly surprised to see that they have a stapler AND hole puncher available afterhours- As It Should Be. It never ceases to frustrate me and others at the downtown library as to why the stapler is taken in when the librarians finish for the day. As students, we’re here at all hours, and having a functioning and reliable stapler should be the least of our worries and something that is guaranteed- heavens knows we pay enough fees. Surely a stapler ought to be included in them.
It’s just infuriating and ludicrous the logic- ‘oh, we have to take them in or someone will steal them- do you know how many we’ve had to replace?’ is the lame excuse I’ve heard so many times. Why don’t you just chain it to the table if there is this concern? But to leave us with nothing… that makes no sense. It seems to work fine at Loyola- why can’t we also have it downtown?
Thank you for your comment. I can understand your frustration. Unfortunately, in the past, we’ve had many staplers broken and stolen from the Webster library, some were chained to the desk and some were not.
Library management will consider making a secured stapler available.
This is also a good time to remind our library users that the DPrint/MFD machines have stapling capabilities for both newly printed pages and photocopies.
This is from our DPrint webpage:
Q: Will the printer-copiers automatically staple my documents?
A: By default print-outs and photocopies are not are not stapled, but you can request that the print-outs be stapled.
Printing: Before you send the print job, go to the print dialogue box and click on ‘preferences’. On the right side of the box there is a ‘stapling’ drop-down menu. Choose 1 or 2 staples.
Photocopying: You must be using the feeder. On the main ‘Copy’ page on the right hand side choose ‘1 staple’.
You wrote:
I would like to commend the DPrint team for trying to provide us with fast and updated machines that can scan, print in color, and be accessible anywhere on campus. For that, we really do appreciate it. And everywhere else on campus, it seems to work very well.
But. The system is simply not functional in the library. Rather than alleviate stress as intended, it enhances it. The system is not user friendly nor self-evident in the least, the machines are balky and stubborn, consistently break down, have a ridiculous delay between print jobs, it takes forever to log in as the snazzy ‘swipe’ mechanism usually does not work, the machines log you out, and rather than tell you how much money you have left, it cheerfully churns out paper saying “lack of funds”. How is this sustainable? How is this helpful?
I spend a good chunk of my time trying to help other hapless students struggling with the system. The back-logs are incredible, the line-ups snake up to the librarian’s desks, and the tension is so thick you could cut it with a knife. People are panicking, and since that all the old but reliable machines have been removed, we have no alternative. The librarians are not well equipped to handle this, and in fact, have informed me that they are not even allowed to touch the machines, should there be a jam, or say, a need to fill up on the basics such as ink and paper which we desperately rely on. Instead, they are instructed to contact your team or IITS who, even if well-intentioned, will do nothing after hours, leaving us stranded.
On behalf of the Concordia student body, we implore you to address this. There should have been a pilot (actually, there was…) and have it test-driven by students. We stay hours on end in the library- we should not have to have our stress added upon due to printer malfunctioning.
Thank you for your email. As far as I understand it, the system in the library is the same as it is elsewhere on campus. I think that the situation may be more difficult in the Libraries, simply because we have many workstations and many students coming in at the same time. Some printers seem to be getting line-ups while others are not used so much, because people do not know they are there. Please take a look at this page on our website: http://library.concordia.ca/services/computers/printing.php?guid=copierlocations . It tells you where the printer/copiers are in the Libraries. It also links to a listing of Dprint machines in other locations across campus. In the meantime, your comment will also be forwarded to the DPrint Team.
You wrote:
Is anything going to be done about overcharging at the printing stations? Often when printing something double sided, particularly when it’s an odd number of
pages, the machines round up.
For example, if something is 7 pages, the machine charges you the equivalent of 8 pages. There is no blank page at the end of the document. It’s genuinely 7 pages. I asked someone at the reference desk, and she told me its a known issue but there’s nothing they can do.
For someone who does a lot of printing, where a lot might be an odd number of pages, eventually it does add up. Is the library aware of the problem? If so, what is being done about it?
You’re right, this added cost does add up. I asked our Systems Support Manager why this was happening.
Early in 2009, the Libraries implemented double-sided printing in order to save paper and to help the environment. Unfortunately, a problem was discovered with our print management software: whenever a double-sided print job for web pages has an odd-number page count, the page count is rounded up to an even number. Consequently, a one-page print job will have two sides printed, a three-page print job will have four sides printed, and so on. Hence, students get charged an extra side for these print jobs. As far as we know, this only happens for web pages (HTML files).
Luckily, we have received few complaints concerning this problem. Students who do complain are usually glad to withdraw their complaint and accept the extra charge when it is pointed out that the problem is currently unresolvable and when they are reminded that double-sided printing saves paper and helps the environment.
Meanwhile, we hope this web-page printing problem will be resolved with future upgrades of our print management software and/or with new print drivers, but we cannot say when this will be. The Digital Store is also proposing a new network printing service for the Library’s public workstations. If the Library decides to adopt this service, then this would also eliminate the problem.
Thank you very much for asking such an interesting question.
You wrote:
Printing Suggestion I would like to suggest the library look at implementing the printing software used in the ENCS computer labs. The only difference between what the library uses now is when the copy card is inserted into the slot, the user must enter their netname. After which, it only shows them items that have been sent to the printer under their netname.
Main reason is yesterday I had sent some stuff to the printer, and went to get it about 40 minutes later. It seems like someone had accidentally printed my stuff, since I saw one of the pages lying around and nothing was left in the queue. Also, it’ll just make things easier for everyone so they see all their stuff without searching for it.
Thank you for writing to us. Your suggestion has been forwarded to our Information Systems and Technology Division.
Concordia University Library 