The Real Cost of Printers
on January 24th, 2009The Real Cost of Printers
When shopping for printers, the printer that cost the least to purchase is not necessarily the cheapest printer to own and operate. In fact, the cheaper printers usually cost more over the long haul to operate. So in addition to the initial cost of the printer, you should also consider the cost per page.
Cost per page is a calculation of how much it costs, per page, to use a printer. It takes into consideration the cost of the ink for that particular printer. The cost per page for a printer is different for black and white printouts versus color printouts. So for a color printer, you will usually find a cost for each.
Here’s an example. The HP OfficeJet J5780 sells for around $150 while the HP OfficeJet K5400dtn sells for around $200. The J5780 is cheaper to purchase, but let’s take a look at the cost per page and figure out how much it really costs to operate this printer. The J5780 has a cost per page of 4 cents for black and white and 10.7 cents for color while the K5400dtn has a cost per page of 1.5 cents for black and white and 6 cents for color.
So if you owned the printer for several years and printed 1000 black and white pages and 2000 color pages, you would spend about $255 in ink for the J5780 versus $135 for ink for the K5400dtn. That’s a difference of $120. So even though the K5400dtn costs $50 more, in the long haul, you would have saved $70.
Notice that both of the printers in this example are HP. That means you can’t assume that all printers made by a certain manufacturer have a lower or higher cost per page than another manufacturer. So be sure to look at the specs for each specific printer model.
There is another factor that is important to consider. You know that a printer will start alerting you when the ink starts getting low. You probably also know that you shouldn’t change the ink cartridge just because the printer says it’s low. You should wait until one of two things happen before you change the ink cartridge.
1. If you see a degradation in print quality.
2. The printer refuses to print until you replace the cartridge.
Number 1 is obvious, but number 2 is the one I want to touch on. Tests show that some printers will tell you the cartridge is empty and refuse to print, even though there is a substantial amount of ink still left in the cartridge. In some cases, the cartridge is nearly half full (or half empty if you are a pesimist)! That’s a lot of wasted ink!
It’s also important to point out that it also depends on if you are using an ink cartridge from the manufacturer, or a 3rd party cartridge. Tests show that 3rd party cartridges report being out of ink before the cartridges from the printer manufacturer.
The worst offender was Kodak printers which wasted 43% of the ink.
Next was Canon which wasted anywhere from 24% to 42% depending on if you use a Canon ink cartridge or a 3rd party cartridge.
Next was Epson which wasted anywhere from 8% for Epson cartridges to 41% for 3rd party cartridges.
The one anomoly to this is HP. Unlike Canon, Epson, and Kodak, HP printers never refuse to print based on the amount of ink it thinks you have in your cartridge. So with HP printers, just keep an eye on the print quality and when it starts to degrade, replace the cartridge.
One other important point to consider. Some color printers have one color cartridge that contains several colors while others have seperate cartridges for each color. The disadvantage to the single color cartridge is that if one color inside the cartridge runs dry, you have to replace the cartridge, thus wasting what was left of the other colors. When you have seperate cartridges for each color, there is less ink waste.
Do you need a new printer?
on October 11th, 2007Printing problems can often be attributed to a configuration problem in Windows, a driver conflict, a bad cable, or a bad or incorrectly replaced ink cartridge. These types of problems can be fixed. If the lights on your printer are on and look normal, but nothing prints, chances are we can fix that problem for you.
If the printer tries to print, but the quality is bad or there are colors missing, then run your printer’s cleaning cycle first. If that doesnt help, replace the ink cartridges.
If the printer lights are not on, or there are red flashing lights or if you tried replacing the cartridges and it still does not print, then chances are something is broken on the inside of the printer. These days, it is cheaper to replace a printer than it is to fix it.
If you need a new printer, here are some things to think about when buying a new printer.
There are two basic types of printer technologies. Inkjet and Laser. Inkjet’s print color. Lasers come in monochrome (black and white) or color. Inkjet printers are cheaper, but they are slower, the print quality is not as good as laser printers, and they are more noisy.
Laser printers are more expensive but have a higher quality of print, they are faster, and they are more quiet.
Laser printers are more expensive but have a higher quality of print, they are faster, and they are more quiet.
For your average home user, an inkjet is fine. Small businesses may want one laser printer for certain types of printing jobs, but may also want to have several inkjet printers for other jobs. Big businesses will probably mainly need laser printers.
Once you decide on the printing technology that is right for you, you must decide on what features you need. Printers are generally either basic printers, or multi-function printers. A basic printer just prints. A multi-function printer will print, but may also scan, fax, and copy as well. If you need to scan, fax, or copy (on a limited basis) and have limited space, then a multi-function printer may be right for you.
Other features to look for are how fast a printer prints. This is usually expressed in pages per minute (PPM). Also look for how much paper the printer will hold so you know how often you are going to have to be loading more paper into it. For laser printers, a feature to look for is duplexing. If a printer can duplex, this means it can print on both sides of the page without user intervention.
Something else to look at is the cost of ownership. Here’s how to figure out the cost of ownership. First, figure out about how many pages of black and white you print a month and how many pages of color you print a month. Now multiply that by 36 to get the number of black and white, and the number of color pages you print in 3 years. Now find out how many pages a black cartridge will print for each of the printers you are considering. Do the same for color. You can then figure out how many ink cartridges you will need. Multiply that by the cost of the ink cartridges. Add that to how much you paid for the printer and you’ll get the total cost of ownership. You can then compare printers that way. Note that one particular brand is not consistently the highest or lowest cost of ownership. You must check it for each model.
Another feature to be concerned with is compatibility. If you have a network with different versions of Windows, then mae sure the printer you are purchasing provides drivers for all of the different types of windows other operating systems (Mac, Linux, etc.).
In our experience, HP printers seem to be the most compatible and have the least problems with different types of computers printing to them over the network.
Speaking of printing over the network, did you know that you can have a printer installed on one computer on your network, and print to that computer from any other computer on the network? You can. Doing this cuts down on the number of printers you have to have. It saves space and saves you money.