Keen observers of University affairs will already be aware that the University has recently changed its supplier of MFDs (a MFD (Multi Function Device) is what used to be called, in simpler times, a photocopier with a number of additional functions such as printing, scanning and faxing). As a result, Canon and OCE photocopiers in the University will be replaced by their equivalents from Xerox over the course of the next few months. As far as the School of Informatics is concerned, the devices in Appleton Tower have already been replaced and the Canon devices in the Forum are currently scheduled to be replaced on the 24th of July.

What does this mean for the average Informatics user? Well for one thing, the new devices are designed to cope with a heavier workload than the Canon devices we currently use and will therefore hopefully be more reliable. They are also considerably cheaper to operate. The slight cloud around this silver lining is that to print to the new devices, some self-managed users will have to reinstall the print queues for these machines and that there are some changes to the way scanning is done.

Printing

The print queues affected by these changes are if132c0, if237c0, if336c0, if435c0, if536c0 and if541c0 in the Forum and at12 at Appleton Tower and the queue names will remain unchanged. DICE users, and users who have configured their own machines to talk directly to the School’s CUPS server need do nothing to print to the new devices as the appropriate configuration files will be updated on the server. Users of self managed machines, especially Windows and MacOS machines will need to delete any previous printers they had set up pointing at these queues and install new printers following the appropriate instructions found here. The drivers for the new devices can be found here. Select EFI Fiery Controller from the Associated Product drop down list and the appropriate operating system from the Operating System drop down menu.Then click on the postscript driver download link.

Scanning

The big change for users of the scan function is that scanning to a central file area via Samba is no longer available. All scans are now delivered via email. For detailed instructions on how to scan on the new machines, see here.

For the moment, all issues with the new MFDs whether they be issues with the actual devices or problems using them should be reported to computing support in the usual way.

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