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)
I just read your entire blog, it was very interesting. Thanks for taking the time to write it.
ReplyDeleteWhere are you up to with PaprCut now?
Thank you for sharing. Condition Monitoring Software brings detailed, useful information to those who must make a decision in a quick, intuitive manner.
ReplyDeleteHi
ReplyDeleteI've found that Equitrac & PaperCut do the same thing for basic printmanagement. However Equitrac is a weightier product with more advanced features which require proper implementation by a qualified administrator whereas anyone can quickly implement PaperCut.
Equitracs' more sophisticated features become evident as I've found out migrating users from Equitrac to PaperCut
Here are just 3 features that I'm aware of that are 'lost' when moving from Equitrac to PaperCut.
1. Print & Save- the ability to release a print job at the MFD and save it for release again (this can be repeated multiple times)
2. Multiple Print Job selection - If 5 print jobs are listed in Equitrac you can select 3 and press 'print' to print the 3. PaperCut does not allow multiple print job selection for release. Only options are to ‘Print All’ or if a user only wants to print 3 print jobs out of the 5 print jobs listed they have to select & press print 3 separate times rather than selecting the 3 print jobs at once and pressing ‘print’ once
3. Completely restrict copying - in Equitrac you can create a rule to stop certain users (e.g. students) from copying. PaperCut can only restrict certain users (e.g. students) from colour copying.
Without any bias Equitrac is a far superior product for these and other reasons.
I hope this helps.
Regards
A E
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