Locking Down Ability To Print In Color

I've blogged before about our new Canon ImageRunner C6800. Like I said before, it's one of the few products out there that does fast black and white (68 ppm) and some color (16 ppm).

One problem that I've run into is that even though the Printing Defaults are set to print jobs in Black and White, some systems are still printing in color by default.

I've done research and can't find a way to force all jobs sent to a specific "printer" on our Windows 2003 print server to print in black and white.

I figure that if possible, best way of dealing with this is having two separate "printers" on the server. One that allows people to print in color and one that doesn't.

Appears that this is not possible though, with vanilla Windows Server 2003 and XP clients.

If anyone has a way to do this, drop me a line. Be much appreciated as color prints are 10 times more expensive for us on that machine than black and white.

Comments

[Andy]

How about just using a generic hp laserjet4 print driver, which won't do color. Then set this up to be available for everyone to use as the default queue. Create a new queue using the correct drivers for colour but have this paused by default and then let the printer admins release the jobs as appropriate?

[Alex Scoble]

Thanks! That's effing brilliant! Wish I had thought of that on my own.

Will try it and let you know how it goes.

[Michael Balzer]

There is "Job Accounting" feature that you can be enabled. Once you set up Job Accouting IDs without color capability, you can use this number to control color. One advantage of this method is you can continue to use all of the features of the Canon 6800.

[luci]

I was told by my Epson dealer that I can print only in black if I want to.

I forgot how he told me to do this. Does anyone know?
I see no reason to use up so much color as I only need black printing.