Printer Usage Policy

• The Department of Computer Sciences has several "public" laser printers available for use by those with accounts on department machines. For a list of "public" printers available from a given UNIX machine, use printers help page. If you plan to (continue to) use the department's printers, you should become aware of the policy governing their use.

• The printers are a shared resource. The PostScript printers are mechanical devices typically designed for lighter work loads than they receive here. It is essential to their health that they only be used as necessary. The printers are to be used for the same purposes as your account -- research work and/or administrative or course work for which your account was assigned. You should not be using the printers for personal use. It is considered appropriate for students to print resumes, but only single copies and only your own.

• You should only print manual pages on the printers as absolutely necessary *.

• You should not print documents just to "see what they are." There are on-line previewers available for essentially all documentation formats. These are excellent tools for proofing documents, and generally save time, paper, and printers.

• You should not pipe program output to lpr unless you know how much output you are going to generate and the amount is less than about 20 pages.

• You should not use the printers as duplicating machines. If you want multiple copies of a document, print one copy and then use a photocopy machine to make more copies.

• Managing output is everyone's responsibility.  Stack output neatly on the table. Be careful to separate the output of different users using banner pages.

• If you are printing output on the printer that is more than 25 pages, you should be there to collect it when it comes out. The output trays on the printers are not designed to handle large numbers of pages, and it is necessary to remove some of the output before it is finished. When someone else besides the owner does this, the portions frequently end up scattered around the tables without header pages.

• When you direct output to the printer, make sure you pick it up. Even if you no longer want it, you should collect the output to avoid unecessary clutter around the printer. You should also recycle paper that you do not want. Printer paper should go in the small grey recycling bins where available.

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* For local use only, some of the manuals are subject to copyright restrictions.