Equitrac V's Papercut

So it's been a while since I was able to blog, now I have not been wasting time I have setup a lovely door entry system using Mifare cards, now granted the staff just use door stops and allow anyone in and out makes it a waste of time but heh it wasn’t my choice :) And I have installed 2 new virtual servers to keep the strain off my old Dell DC.

So in the last few months as you may know I have been evaluating PaperCut which is made by an Australian company. It was next on my list of software to have a look at but the reason I have taken my time with it is because I think I maybe onto a winner here.

Now I shall (hopefully) blog about my findings about PaperCut when I finish evaluating it but during the eval process I was contacted by a few companies I had called concerning Equitrac/Pcounter/uniflow etc they were “following up a sales lead” or as I like to call it bothering me after I already said no!

So I mentioned to these nice salesmen what I was up to and what other software I was trying and I informed them I was reasonably happy with PaperCut at that stage all 3 of the people I talked to started what can only be described as a salesman pitch, no facts or reasonable arguments just quoting the training manual and not having much of a clue about the real world :) So while I’m am far from being a PaperCut expert I have at least used the product for two months without much trouble and I have read the manual and KB articles when I got stuck to learn a thing or two.

So they proceeded to tell me that Equitrac was better because:

it did Page level account and price changing:

Equitrac can track and account for colour, B&W, different sizes with a host of printer languages (pcl5/6 postscript etc). PaperCut on the other hand can only identify colour with PCL5 (and I think he said postscript as well). He also mentioned it was easy peasy to edit the price lists for print jobs on printers but PaperCut had to do it one at a time.

My comments were, well that is very good to know but sadly for you Mr salesman you are wrong. From my reading PaperCut supports colour (or color as they call it – god knows why as they are Australian!) detection in all printer languages (most of which I have never heard of) and recently introduced page level colour (or color as they call it!) on various printer languages. To quote the PaperCut website:
“Previously page-level colour detection was available on PostScript, PCL5 and HPGL drivers. Now we have added PCL6 / PCLXL to that list. Together this adds up to page-level colour detection support for the vast majority of printers in use today.”

You can also easily edit price lists across your fleet of machines..

it has a rules system.
Equitrac has an awesome (my own words..) rules system so you can easily redirect prints to a specific device or deny access and a host of other options. It is really great :)

The guy told me PaperCut could not do this and I said once again you are wrong PaperCut just does it using two methods; one is via what it calls “filters” so you can deny access / force B&W etc but if you want to do some of the more advanced jiggery pokery then you need to look at “advanced scripting” more info here http://www.papercut.com/products/ng/manual/ch-script.html

Reports.
The main thing you will read about PaperCut is reporting is a doddle and very detailed mr salesman informed me PaperCut could not schedule a report or allow me to setup a custom report. Nothing like false information PaperCut has the best reporting feature I have seen in a long time - http://www.papercut.com/products/ng/tour/report/ for all the info

papercut lacks use of release keys –
Equitrac can handle anonymous user printing using a funky thing called release keys – 100% correct and PaperCut does not do this but I wouldn’t use it and I’m sure I could point out things PaperCut does that equitrac doesn’t but im fairly certain no one cares (especially me)

The phone calls got annoying after a while and from all that I assume they hadn’t kept up to date – I suggested they subscribe to the RSS feed PaperCut offer ;)

anyway it didnt put me off and both products are great imo but for me papercut seems cheaper and works how I would want software to work (dosn't happen often)

Equitrac, Hard work and expensive.

I dont like my women to be hard work and expensive so i dont expect software to be either ;) (actually right now i would take any woman...its a sorry state of affairs for another more emo blog)

I managed to find a fairly nice salesman (they do exist!) who worked for a Ricoh / Sharp copier dealer and he told me in a very honest and open way that the reason so many copier dealers (such as themselves) push Equitrac is not because it is the daddy of all print/copy solutions but simply they make the most money on it.
Now I admire honesty but that money has to come from my (already limited) budget

The good:
Well known brand (market leader I expect)
Great support from Ricoh, Ricoh is a massive company.
Integration with lots of other systems such as accounting and document management systems.

So let’s see what I didn’t like about Equitrac, well to start with I couldn’t instantly get a rough idea of costs nor could I download a demo/trial of the software to have a look on my own without being bothered by some sales rep.

It’s expensive, not unusual to run into 10's of thousands of pounds.
Looks dated, they need to go to UI design classes
Difficult to install,
complicated licensing and pricing (to make you spend more money)
high maintenance
From what I gather it requires high skill levels to manage and its terminology Is confusing for “noobs”
Engineers need to do a week long course to learn how it works and keep it running, now if it takes a week for an expert to learn how long will it take me? I want to install and configure everything within hours not days and never touch It again 

So apart from the cost and the silly licensing structure (adding to the costs) it is a good product but you can (i hope) get better for less money.
I can see why a lot of people go for Equitrac but I personally like to research everything and I found this lacking but most market leaders are probably why people go and buy an iPhone as its the safe option yet HTC have some great phones coming out.

Uniflow - Pretty but not worth the money.

I asked around for some quotes for print and copy management software, the results are pretty silly really :)

UniFlow
Uniflow demo went well until the Canon guy lied to me to say they didn’t let other people develop app's for Canon machines. Also I was unconvinced about the flexibility of the system what if my card reader technology changes in the future? (not that I have picked anything just yet).
Also the cost of uniflow was just silly and frankly I don't want to only have Canon machines, as good as they are thing's change, in 2 year's time I may want Lexmark copiers and be able to use my chosen print/copy software with it.
One good feature was Job Ticketing, where you could let people know what they need to do to get the print. Of course this was an "optional module" along with most of the good and useful tools other people throw in for free... /sigh!

So uniflow was expensive, also (and this may be wrong) I read it couldn’t talk to Active Directory, this is madness!

On paper Uniflow looks the business but not once you start to look under the rug or get the price list.

While Canon machines/support/service all seemed fine I just didn’t like the software as it tied me to Canon and was very expensive.

The cost of the Canon machines was more than reasonable but nothing that stood out from other offerings.

Copier Dealer

So I know what software I wanted to install now to wonder off and find some copiers to make it all work together.

My First concern at this time was with Uniflow as that is a Canon product based on the MEAP platform so not exactly "vendor neutral" as they call it. Of course on the flip side Canon copiers are damn good machines. My second concern of the Uniflow option would be cost so let’s hope my fears are unfounded.

So how do you find copier dealers in the South East?
Do you even need to stick to the South East? would I find a better deal (albeit slower call out times) by looking "Up North" or anywhere in the UK really.
Call out times don’t bother me too much the UK is not the largest country in the world so an engineer can be on site next day and hopefully I picked some maintenance free machines.

After a quick look on Edugeek /Google and some phone calls to potential providers I came up with this short list (in no particular order)

Alpha Reprographic
1st Office Equipment
Balreed Digitec
Datasharp Business Solutions
Complete Imaging
Portrayal
Integrating Solutions Limited (ISL)

I did not go to the manufacturers direct (such as Canon / Ricoh / Sharp / Toshiba)
At the same time I learnt that Ricoh also sell under these names nashuatec, gestetner, NRG, rex rotary, IKON, Savier, Lanier, Monroe.

So what now? Well a few emails/calls and I got some rough quotes with many offers to be visited and to be demo’d some of the software (equitrac and uniflow)
Now I don’t know about you but I am pessimistic :) and think anyone that is coming to visit me to demo a product must be expensive to cover their time, or just nice guys!

So I had my copier dealers picked and I knew what software I wanted to test it was time to actually spend some time setting up some virtual machines + I already have a Ricoh copier doing nothing to try out some of the “vendor neutral” embedded solutions to see how well they work.

So much to do so little time!

The Task

My "boss" who bless him seems to know less than most people about IT sent me an email just after Christmas to "investigate and test print monitoring solutions, including if possible tracking of our copier fleet"

I always think a copier fleet is a silly term it wouldn't make much of a navy..

Anyway off i wondered to google.com and typed in Print Monitoring Software this produced about 11,000,000 results but as always only the first two pages of search results and adwords were worth looking at.

So after an hour or so on google and Edugeek and various other sites i came up with a short list (in no particular order)

Print limit pro
Equitrac
Pcounter
PaperCut
Uniflow

I even went and had a look at using a Linux box and CUP's to save some money..

Hello World

As with all good IT staff members I created a blog before I went all Michael Douglas in falling down on the other staff and students I face on a daily basis.

I created this blog using Google blogger, I looked at wordpress but felt blogger was better for my simple needs.

The blog is mostly about Print monitoring software such as Equitrac, Pcounter, PaperCut, Uniflow, Print Limit Pro etc.. and my fight to find the best of the bunch.

I expect it will also act as somewhere to vent myself on an unsuspecting public!