Black and White Page - $.03
Color Page - $.10

After analyzing the printer usage over the fall 2002 semester, the Student Technology Initiative Advisory Committee concluded that on average, about 85% of SUNY Oneonta students (3909 students) print less than 400 black and white pages per semester. At $.03 per black and white page, that's 400 pages so we set the quota at $12.

In the Summer of 2006 we decided to raise that to 15$.

Some facts about printing in the labs


The 15% of students (681 students) that printed more than 400 pages on average printed over 700 pages during the semester that we monitored printer usage (Range: 401 to 4295 pages).
The College spent more than $27,000 from the technology fee on paper, toner, and printer maintainance during the 2002-2003 academic year. Up from $25,000 for the 2001-2002 academic year, and $20,000 for the 2000-2001 academic year.
Over 950,000 Pages were printed in the general purpose computer labs during the fall semester
Pages printed on each of the printers in the computer labs during the fall 2002 semester

Pages Printed Printer Name
168467 Milne-P1
102946 Tabin-P2
97987 Tabin-P1
42560 Hunt-P1
40087 HumEco
39584 Macd-P1
30827 Hulbb-P1
29121 Blodg-P1
28866 Curt-P1
27647 Sher-P1
27174 PS106-P1
26603 Hntng-P1
26492 Tobey-P1
23754 Gold-P1
23728 Ford-P1
23250 Wilb-P1
22626 Grant-P1
21792 Matt-P1
21129 Hays-P1
20990 SocSci-P1
19695 IRC-P1
19501 Litt-P1
19060 Hulba-P1
12127 Hulbc-P1
11305 IRC-P2
6955 Math-P1
5534 Learning-P1
5379 Sch-P1
4017 WC-P1
2327 EOP-P1
2089 Matt-P2

Academic Computer Services uses a centralized print queue system that facilitates the monitoring of printers and configuration changes. Large print jobs cause the print queues to backup while the job is being spooled to the printer from the server. This causes great inconvenience to other students. The new limit cuts down on network traffic to and from the print server, and alleviates the problem caused by large print jobs backing up the queues.

There are two reasons why we have set this limit.

Sometimes a print job get sent to the printers where the user has unknowingly set the number of copies to a large number. This eliminates the problem of print jobs that are exceedingly large, thereby reducing paper waste.
The paper trays in the printers in the labs hold a maximum of 500 pages. Setting this limit decreases the number of times in a day that students will find an empty printer because of an exceptionally large print job being accidentally printed.
If you need to print more that 50 pages, you may by splitting your print job up into two or more jobs. This is usually done by choosing print from the file menu in the program you are working with. This brings up the print dialog where you can choose to print only the first 50 pages of a document, or the remainder or your document. You can also use this dialog to double check that you are only sending one copy of your document to the printer.

The print quota can be increased by transferring money from your Dragon Dollars account. Please come to the Milne Technology Center Lab Desk to have your quota increased. To open a Dragon Dollars account or to add money to your account, visit the ID/Dining Card counter at Hunt Union.

This is normal and means that you haven't printed yet.

Following a pilot in the Fall of 2002, the Student Technology Advisory Committee, which manages the technology fee, considered the following facts:

Printing costs had more than doubled in five years
Almost a million pages were printed in the general-purpose labs alone in one semester
Many printed pages in the labs were left behind in the labs, the result of wasteful printing
Labs were being used to print multiple copies of recreational and social materials unrelated to the academic mission for which the student technology fee is charged
A few students were printing well above the average-one student printed almost 4300 pages in one semester!
85% of the students printed 400 or fewer pages, with the remaining 15% printing an average of 700 pages
Wasteful printing was an environmental concern as well
The Committee chose 400 pages as an arbitrary cut off for the free printing funded through the Technology Fee. For 85% of students this change will have no impact.