Technology center reduces printing delays across campus

If you’ve noticed delays while trying to print on campus during the past eight days, it’s because the University has been upgrading their software.

However, Doug Grover, manager of the Student Technology Center, said the problem should be solved.

The delays were because of an upgrade for Uniprint, the management software that the center uses, Grover said. The delays are most prevalent during peak printing hours from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 2 to 4 p.m..

“The server that we were running the software on just didn’t have enough muscle to do the job,” Grover said. “So far I haven’t heard about anything going on today. So we may have done the trick.”

Grover said the center moved around some printing ques from Ballantine Hall Tuesday. The que is the place where the printing jobs go when students click print.

“It’s this virtual line of all the print jobs, and when your document comes up, then it prints,” Grover said. “If you’ve ever tried to print a powerpoint document and it takes a long, long time, one of the reasons could be there are a number of equally large jobs in the que that are waiting their turn. That creates a slow down.”

Grover said the center put off the upgrade for about a year.

“There are some very good benefits of having it,” he said. “It keeps track of everybody’s quota.”

The upgrade also allows every printing station to have a “release station,” Grover said.

Without a release station, anything students click on to print will print, including multiple copies of the same printing job when students click the button on accident.

“We didn’t have any information on how many times students printed something they didn’t want to print,” he said. “With the release station, prints don’t go anywhere until they’re released.”

Currently, the lengths of delay are shorter, Grover said.

“It’s not the way we like to start the semester, but we’ve been getting through it,” he said. “By the end of today, we’ll know if there are further steps that we need to take.”

— Bailey Loosemore