John Rowe said:
We're looking to buy a laser printer, I would guess we do around
50,000 pages per year. Does anybody know of any cost-per-page
comparisons out there?
Thanks
John
John:
I've read every post to your question and I wanted to step in and help
out a little. I run a print industry consulting firm and trust me we
get this question every day. Some of the posts have it right. Page
coverage is definitely a major factor. But one point I wanted to make
is that 5% page coverage is actually a decent amount for a B&W
printer. If you want to see what 5% looks like go to
http://usa.kyoceramita.com/KMAGlobalpub/jsp/Kyocera/home.jsp# click on
TCO tracker, then get started now, then "How to estimate page
coverages". But as a rule of thumb most B&W will be between 5% and
12%. The other major factor is cost of the printer and consumables.
The printer comes down to buying the right printer and not going too
big. For 5,000 - 6,000 prints a month you would probably want
something like the HP LJ 2200. It has a monthly duty cycle of 20,000
prints. You need to cut that number in half in order to get a
realistic number and you want to aim for 50% - 70% utlilization for
cost effectiveness so you end up with 5,000 to 7,000 prints per month
for this unit or exactly what you need. The second peice is the
consumambles side of things. HP rates each of their cartridges for a
page yeidl based on a 5% coverage model. Now as I said above, that
may or may not be the case so you need to do a high and low cost based
on 5% and 12%. Additionally, you might want to look at remaned toners
btu stick with the big boys. Nukote and GRC are the largest two reman
houses outside of HP themselves. For this example though we'll just
use HP. CDW has this cartridge listed for $98.99 with an estimated
yield of 5,000 pages at 5% coverage which would give you $0.0198 per
impression. At 12% coverage you would need to take the above yield
times .41666 (or 5/12) to get 2,083 prints which would yield a cost
per impression of $0.0475. So your consubale cost only on this
printer would be around $0.02 to $0.05. So you see you need to look
at a lot of factor in order to figure out what your price per print
is. The most important thing I can tell you is:
1. Take a very close look at your consumables cost first. If you
can, only pick models that allow you to buy reman toner.
2. Do take a look at purchase price but only as a secondary to the
consumables.
3. Do not buy too big, right size your equipment.
4. Pay very close attention to the yields on the toners. Some toners
are cheaper but have half the yields.
Well I hope that helps (and not just confuses the subject for you).
Bill Frankel (
www.theaschergroup.com)
