I spent the last week working from our main office in Melbourne. I live in Portland, Oregon and this is my second trip to Australia to work with the team here. The trip had been planned for months, and I’ll have to admit that I wasn’t really looking forward to the 13 hour flight or living out of a suitcase. I’m not much of a road warrior. Once here it took me a while to recover from jet lag and get my bio clock realigned. On my first work day I only made a little progress on the goals that I had set for the trip.

The Melbourne Office Kanban

Steve, our Partner Alliance Manager joined us from Sydney on Tuesday. We spent most of the day flowcharting our sales and distribution channel partner strategy. That and the ever changing Melbourne weather gave me a headache that had me limping back to the hotel at the end of the day instead of socializing with the team as I had hoped to do. As I rested in my hotel room that night I wondered if the trip was going to be worth the expense and inconvenience. The following day was much better. Steve and I finished up the channel process flowchart, and I went out for beers with Tom, Hendrik, and Ian after work. Things were back on track.

On Thursday I watched the team go into action birthing release 11. 6, better known as the iPad Printing release. We don’t have pointy haired managers or project team meetings at PaperCut –instead we use the Kanban method of project management. For PaperCut that means pasting colored pieces of paper on a wall and moving them through stages starting with concept and ending with completion. Everyone on the team stood in a circle and each of us reported the progress of the previous day as the papers were moved from “Review” to ”Done”. The build was completed by Tom and Chris in the late evening hours in order to keep to our policy of not posting new releases on Friday.

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Measure twice, cut once – That is an adage that is familiar to many IT professionals that are responsible for deploying software that affects network infrastructure and user policies. Thorough testing of an application prior to deployment can be a crucial factor in the overall success of a project. In some cases license restrictions can limit the ability to test an application completely, but that’s not a problem with PaperCut. Our license is designed to allow you to test every aspect of our print control software prior to implementation.

Anyone wishing to conduct performance, functionality or “what if” testing can download the latest version from the PaperCut download page. This is the same version of PaperCut that is used by over 30,000 sites worldwide when they upgrade to the current version. At the end of the 40 day trial period you will be prompted for a license key when you open the PaperCut Admin Console. The printing managed by PaperCut will continue to work just as it did during the trial period, however many of the PaperCut administrative and print reporting capabilities will be disabled until a valid license key is entered.

The trial version is primarily used by prospective customers to evaluate PaperCut, but some sites go into production during the trial. I know this because one of the questions that I am asked most frequently is if the configuration and print log data from the trial will be retained in the permanent version. I love hearing that sigh of relief when I tell someone that it only takes about 10 seconds to register the license and they will be off and running with everything intact! Some folks wait until after the trial license has expired before they contact us. No problem, PaperCut keeps tracking after the 40 day license has expired and all of the information will be current when the license key is entered.

Sites that have purchased PaperCut do not need to buy an additional license for testing. A test server can be set up with either the trial license or the purchased license. Uses include testing with different operating systems, new versions of PaperCut and new network configurations. In addition, the purchased license can be installed on multiple servers during a server migration. This eliminates the need to uninstall or decommission the previous PaperCut installation before activating the new server.

If you need additional time to test or evaluate PaperCut, or if you have a situation that requires additional flexibility in order to be fully tested in your environment, please contact support and we will issue you an extension license that will allow you to complete your testing.

Image “Measuring Up” by lowjumpingfrog / CC BY

In the world of software systems, blind faith is often consider the province of the naïve and inexperienced. The high potential for surprises in software deployments has given rise to the following axiom.

If you use a piece of hardware long enough, eventually it will break. If you use a piece of software long enough, eventually it will work.

This somewhat dark reputation of software has grown over decades of implementation horror stories that have a much longer lifespan than the multitude of boring stories of successful deployments. When things go bad with a software implementation the damages are often characterized as a waste of time, money and productivity; the very areas that the software was supposed to improve! This painful irony is enough to give most system administrators a measure of respect for the bleeding edge of software.

When it comes to adopting new technology healthy skepticism is a good thing, but if overdone it can block the path of innovation and the payoff valuable technology. This is because in spite of the afore mentioned axiom, when it comes to reputable software ‘fresh is best’. If this were not true software versions would be valued for their age, like fine wine. Instead, for most commercial software, six months without an update is usually considered the early warning signs of a dying product.

The fear of early adoption is not limited to the implementation of entire systems, it also extends to installing new versions and using new features of existing systems. The gravity of ‘not broken / don’t fix it’ in a production environment sometimes results in shops running software that is several revisions behind and often out of production.

So how do you decide where to place yourself on the luddite / suicide scale of software deployment? The decision is different for each implementation, but we have some tools that can help you make your mind up. First, read the PaperCut Release History to find out about changes that have been made since the version that you are currently running. The list of new features, fixes and improvements are updated with each minor release. Second, when you find a feature that looks interesting (for example, maybe you like the idea of improving your printer utilization using some of the example recipes in PaperCut’s new advanced scripting), use the search tool on our website to search all of our documentation. You will find links to the Tour, Knowledge Base, and User Guide sections that were updated when the newly added features were introduced. Third, try it. The license allows you to install a copy of PaperCut on a test server (even a desktop system will do) so you can test features before introducing them into your production environment.

One last thing. If you are running an older version of PaperCut, please remember to check that your license will work with the new version. From the Admin Console open the About tab. You will find the Licensed Version, and if you purchased Upgrade Assurance a ‘Software updates available until‘ date. If not, upgrade costs are modest and listed here. You will also find a link to check for and order updates as well as a link to email technical support in case you have any questions about the update.

CC image courtesy of cogdogblog on flickr

I’ll have to admit I’m a bit of a pop culture junkie. Each December I like to watch some of the year in retrospective television shows that go through the highs, lows and woes of the previous year. As I watched the 2008 wrap-up of the most over-used words in use in the United States I was surprised to hear that ‘green’ made the top 5. At first I thought; that’s too bad, after 15 minutes of fame green is no longer in. Then I thought maybe the green movement has become so widespread that folks are getting overwhelmed with its new prominent position in our lexicon. I really don’t know why green made the list, but I hope it doesn’t foretell a lack of interest or apathy in the future.

I live in Portland, Oregon USA where green has been a hot topic for decades. Portland is a major hub for the timber industry. The people in this area have experienced the downside of ignoring the environment for economic gains. Throughout much of the 20th century clear cutting was the standard logging technique here. In the 80’s as the environmental impact became obvious, public lands were protected from clear cutting. In the following years the timber industry nearly collapsed as enforced protection of the forests worked its way through the economy. The loss was 2 fold – first the environment, then the local economy.

Things are better in Oregon now, the local economy is much less dependent on the timber industry, logging practices are more environmentally friendly, and green is definitely in. When I tell people about my new job at PaperCut and show them our Environmental Impact Gadget I almost always get a ‘cool’ or ‘wow’.

If you would like to try the gadget and you are running Windows Vista, send me an email and I will send you a link to the download. The gadget is a part of our print management software that is used throughout the world to reduce waste by applying print quotas and providing network managers with information that can be used to track printing resources.