Printing B&W by default

The easiest workaround would be to try a different ppd that is meant for a black $ white postscript printer, such as the Apple LaserWriter 4/600 PS.

Make the changes and save it as a preset?

That can be a lengthy exercise when you have a number of workstations. Plus the user can change the preset and then waste a lot of ink/toner before they/you become aware of this.

Another option, if there is ppd available for the printer, is to modify the ppd so that Grayscale is the default, rather than colour or Auto. However if you are not sure what you are doing then you can stuff things up very easily. I'd recommend you contact the vendor before going down this path, as they may already have created such a ppd.

There are two possible options: turning off color printing in the printer, or modifying all of the workstations. I do not know whether the first can be set from the printer's control or utility interface (probably a web page), but why buy a color printer if you want to turn color off? Whether you change the PPD or the presets, that has to be done to each workstation. If you change the PPD, users changing the preset will still be possible.

I am not certain why this is an issue. Most color lasers print the black and white portions of a page using only black toner, and to do a small amount of color printing is not that much more expensive. It can be more expensive to print things in grayscale, only to find that the result is unusable.

Having worked in the copier servicing industry, I found that there were numerous times when a business would buy a colour device yet wanted to control who could print in colour. The reason for controlling the colour printing is that the vendor would charge considerably more for a colour click (A$0.16 per page) than a b&w click (A$0.01). One business example is a school, where the teachers need to print in colour yet the students need to be restricted to b&w only. Setting the printer to b&w stops the teachers colour printing so this is not an option. And setting a preset to b&w using a colour ppd is an easy workaround for a student.

So installing a b&w only ppd on each workstation was often the preferred method. The other was to install devices to control the colour printing, but that would mean additional costs.

Did you try installing the driver/utility for OS X from http://www.savin.com/downloads/Default.aspx?hbn=drivers

We are in a similar situation where we have to track color usage per department...with a Canon C5180, we were able to implement department codes, requiring the department codes when printing color (job acounting)...no code was required if printing b/w...color mode was set to auto-detect, but anyone on a Mac would get prompted for the code whether printing color or b/w...in this instance, we had to rely on presets to differentiate between b/w (no job accounting) and color printing (job accounting)...

Preset settings are stored in the ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.print.custompresets.plist