Printing Costs Starting January 2011

The charging rate for printing increased this month, going from 8 cents to 10 cents per 8.5x11 page B&W, and 25 cents to 50 cents per 8.5x11 page colour.

The new prices are campus-wide and for Engineering are the first price increase in many years.

Engineering Computing manages 15 printers in our labs and some departmental labs, some offices, and the colour printer located near the help desk.  We print hundreds of thousands of pages per year, though the number has been steadily declining as more work can be submitted electronically.  Last year students printed 400,000 B&W pages on our printers.

The price of higher end printers has actually been falling, but so has their quality of construction; newer printers may require more frequent replacement.  Also, the cost of consumables (paper, toner), maintenance and co-op labour (to refill the printers) are all increasing.  WatCard’s 0.5 cent per page transfer fee cuts into the price too.  But the biggest factor is that we are now hit with GST and PST, whereas we were previously exempt.  That 13% increase was much too big to absorb.

The cost of running the printers is higher in Engineering than other faculties because we maintain so many printers in all the labs.  It is more cost effective to have two or three heavily used printers and force everyone to walk to them, however, that would not be as convenient for students.

About 13.5% of student B&W jobs are printed duplex (double sided), leading to 15% of our printed pages to be double sided.  Duplex printing is charged at a rate of approximately 75% of printing two single sided pages.  The actual cost to us of printing double sided is closer to 85% of the rate of single sided.

In 2009/2010 we printed 20,000 colour pages.  We never hoped to break even on colour printing, but last year we were losing too much per page at too high a volume to continue at these rates.  Other faculties were charging several times our rates, and the CTSC committee decided to standardize on a new fair rate for everyone.

With the new rates we can afford to replace printers sooner. We hope that will lead to fewer breakdowns and clearer output.

Printing at UW is still a good deal.  B&W output on a home inkjet costs roughly 50 cents per page.  Colour output at home is usually even higher, though it depends on how much ink is used.

If you think a particular printer is giving poor output, be sure to contact our consulting office so we know to have the printer serviced.  We are alerted when it runs out of toner, or when it is running out of paper, but we can’t tell remotely if it needs a cleaning or other work.

Introduction

Hi, I'm Erick Engelke, Director of Engineering Computing at the University of Waterloo. 

My department takes care of many (but not all) computing issues within the Faculty of Engineering, and I also sit on the university committee (CTSC) which makes decisions about all computing-related issues for the campus.  I cannot change everything, but I do have input into the process.

I've decided to start blogging to share information with our clients, and to offer a forum for feedback.  Feel free to post or to Email me.

To students, we are best know for Nexus, the computing system that delivers software to approximately 1000 student lab computers in Engineering (approximately 500 of them in Engineering Computing labs, 500 in departmental labs), and about 4,400 computers across campus.

In the last few years, students' own laptops have added to the picture, but not in the way many people expected.  Laptops are useful for many things, and they reduce the reliance on labs for typical commercial software such as Microsoft Office.  However, over 95% of our undergraduates still use nexus labs and our Terminal Server (remote desktop to Windows).

This table is based on the fall 2010 term.  The co-ops, Masters and PhD students sometimes use private office computers, so they are not necessarily adding to the lab traffic.

The labs are often busy, especially as we get closer to end of term.  By November, it's hard to get a spot anytime between 11am and 6pm, or even later in Gear. 

Usage is higher in certain labs, mostly where we have newer computers, or more workspace.  Last term the gear lab was used heavily until 11pm most nights. 

There are several reasons people use labs in addition to laptops, but one of the most prominent is that the labs have specialty engineering software installed.  I've heard other reasons including monitor size/screen resolution, high speed network connection, not lugging a laptop, dead laptop batteries, working in groups for projects, working near friends, etc.

Some students have discovered Engterm, our Windows Terminal Server.  It has many scientific applications on it, but not all the ones in the student lab - some licences prevent us from using software on a terminal server.

One of the benefits of Engterm is that you can access maltab, maple, mathcad or certain other packages from your laptop, at home or school, without having to find a spot in our labs.  To use it, find remote desktop on your computer, and type in engterm.uwaterloo.ca.

Engterm usage seems to peak between 8pm and 10pm, probably when people are working on homework at home.  The graph misrepresents low usage in the early morning hours, as the counters are reset at midnight and ignore people already logged on.

As you can imagine, there are many issues running big computing systems, computing networks, etc.  I have a list of potential topics for this blog but questions from users will probably shift the priority.

I hope your find our systems useful.
Erick