OT: Open source software for Xerox Workcentre

[Tommy Trussell]

On 9/8/05, Bjørn Ingmar Berg <bjorn.ingmar.berg at gmail.com> wrote:
> ... has a number of  Xerox
> Workcentre Pro C3545 scanner/copier/printer machines.  These can do
> accouting by tracking usage on a per-user level.  Everything works as
> intended on the Xerox machines.  Now the company needs to gather the
> usage information from all the printers in one place, and divide the
> cost between divisions according to actual usage.
> 
> ...one
> of my tasks is to try and find an alternative to Xerox' own solution.

I believe CUPS (open source printing software) offers some level of
usage tracking. The people who are responsible for CUPS also have a
commercial version called ESP Print Pro, which supports more printers.
I Googled "Xerox C3545 CUPS" and found this page

http://www.easysw.com/printpro/printers.php?MAKE=xerox&MODEL=C3545

which basically indicates there's a ppd file available, so that means
you can probably print with ESP Print Pro. Unfortunately it looks like
SANE -- the open-source scanning software -- may not supprt the C3545
so you may have to evaluate whether you can work with that limitation.

SO I would recommend you look at the ESP Print Pro documentation to
see if it does the type of accounting you need, and find out if your
users use the scanning feature or not. If they don't, you may be all
set to use the other software, assuming it meets your needs.

Good luck!