Network printer - setting it up

[looperman]

Hi guys, not sure if this is the right place for this, any help would be appreciated:

We need a scenario where a printer can be networked (either on it's own or shared through a networked computer), where a user needs to authenticate with username and password in order to print. The printer needs to be accessible to both PC and MAC users. Also, we need to be able to log how much usage each user has made of the printer.
We generally have windows 2k and xp users and we have an active directory for now.

 

[Law]

I use CUPS on a Linux machine though. It does what you want, logs user and date and time of prints. But I'm not familiar about it for Windows server though.

*EDIT*

You should be able to create a login prompt using Windows 2000/2003 server. When you share the printer, take the "Everyone" out of the share permission and add a password protected account. So that when ever they try to connect or print it should pop up. However I'm unfamiliar with that also because I've seen it only authenticate users once than after they shut off for a while than it will ask for a login again.

I don't know about the logging part. You might want to take a look at the print services that comes with the Windows server and see if they have the features.

 

[looperman]

thankyou very much for your input