Color Costs Not Black & White

By John Mayock Up until now, if your company wanted a color project printed, it was sent to a commercial printer. Those few companies with in-house color capabilities used the slower ink jet printer. But the recent introduction of color laser printers into the market has small companies excited about the in-house potential while wondering which model best suits their needs. These printers can offer attractive benefits, such as the ability to make short runs at lower costs than a commercial printer. Some printers offer "editing as you go" or the ability to import addresses from Microsoft Outlook for mailings. But the convenience of printing color copies in-house can be dampened by hidden costs. One customer purchased a $300 color laser printer. A few weeks later, the printer displayed a 'toner low' message. The customer bought a yellow toner cartridge for $79, installed the toner and before printing a single page another error message appeared telling him to purchase a new drum for $179. He got rid of the printer! Cost per copy While color laser printers will produce high quality documents, the real cost per copy takes exploring. Printer price, speed and quality can help eliminate some models over others, but other factors should be taken into consideration to get a real cost per copy estimate. A quick and easy printer-to-printer comparison is to check out the cost of toner on a per-page basis. Here's how: go online to one of the office stores and check out the price of toner for a specific printer. Divide the price by the page yield. (Note that the page yield is based on 5 percent coverage and the average color coverage is 20 percent.) Many times printers come with low capacity "starter" cartridges. These can be replaced with high capacity cartridges for a lower price per page yield. Since most printing is black, the cost of the black cartridge yields a lower cost per page. Only the high end, expensive, color laser printers achieve a monochrome cost per page approaching the cost of the heavy-duty workgroup laser printers. A more accurate measure A more accurate measure of the total cost of ownership takes into account the cost of all the consumables such as toner, drums, waste bottle, transfer belt, fuser, ink and print heads. Lyra Research performed an analysis on a dozen color laser printers priced at less than $500. They assumed a printer life of five years, a monthly volume of 450 pages with 50 percent black and 50 percent color printing, and compared color and black and white costs per page (CPP). The results from Lyra Research on total cost over the five year period were revealing: The HP business inkjets were the least expensive with a total cost of $1500. Brother HL 2700, Ricoh Aficio G500, Dell 3100 and Samsung CLP 600 all stayed under $2000. Dell 3100 and Konica Minolta Magicolor 2400 were under $2500. The Xerox Phaser 6120 and Lexmark C510 approached $3000. The highest total cost of ownership went to the Samsung CLP 300 at an astounding $3340! Further savings Further savings of approximately 30 percent can be realized with the use of aftermarket cartridges. Recharger Magazine (February 2007) surveyed small and medium business users of aftermarket cartridges. A large majority of these users rated the aftermarket cartridges the same or better than the OEM (original equipment manufacturer) product in five different metrics. Print quality was the highest rated metric with 55 percent stating print quality was equal to the OEM, 16 percent saying it was better and 22 percent saying it was much better. Aftermarket cartridge life was the lowest rated metric of the five with 82 percent of the respondents saying it was the same, better or much better than the OEM life. In-house color printing provides a company with numerous hands-on options for creating presentations, collateral materials, promotional flyers and more. These new printers are easy to operate and generally have long life cycles if properly maintained. But to make them a cost effective option for your business, do a little exploring before you buy. John Mayock, owns Imaging Solutions (www.printforever.com ) in Longmeadow, MA. He can be reached at either, 413-567-9777 or john@printforever.com.