June Bits-N-Bytes

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Is that $29 Inkjet Printer really a good deal?
By Leo Bletnitsky

The print quality of printers has increased dramatically over the last 10 years. During the same time the cost of the printers has come down to the point that anyone can afford a pretty good quality color printer.

Color Inkjet printers start as low as $24 and color Laser printers start at under $299. What type of printer should you buy? Is the initial purchase price indicative of the cost of ownership?

The answer is that it depends. It depends upon how much printing you are doing and if you want to print photos.

The rule of thumb is that the less expensive an Inkjet printer costs to purchase, the more it costs to operate. The cheap printers typically have either a single ink cartridge or one for black and one for color. If one color runs out you have to buy another cartridge. This costs a considerable amount over time.

Lets take a look as some examples of printer costs. If you purchase a Lexmark Z645 printer for $24.99 and print 3 pages per day (1095 pages per year) here are your costs: $24.99 + 4 Cartridges at $32 = $152.99 for the year (each cartridge prints about 250 pages). Your actual costs will be higher depending upon how much you print of each color. However it is not bad for the light printing you will do. However, if you take the same printer in a medium volume office environment the picture is quite different. If you print 10 pages per day (3650 pages per year) it come out to $24.99 + 15 Cartridges @ $32 = $480. Now the cost is more substantial, especially if you multiply it by the number of employees that have these printers.

To compare this to the cost of a low price network color laser printer, the Lexmark C500n priced at $299. The laser printer's toner costs about $120 for each of the four colors (each toner prints 3000 pages for the color and 5000 pages for the black). Using the same example of 10 pages per day the cost will be $299 + 0 Cartridges at $120 (the printer comes with one of each color) = $299 first year cost. Not only does the laser option costs less, you are able to efficiently share the printer for multiple users since it is also faster than the Inkjet. The more you print the less an Inkjet printer makes sense.

You may ask, what if I want to print photos? The low priced Laser printer will not print high quality photos, therefore you have to choose Inkjet. In order to save money over time, don't purchase the lowest priced Inkjet printer, you will want a printer that holds a seperate cartridge for each color, four minimum. This will not only give you better quality prints, but also save you money by only requiring you to purchase the color that runs out, but the whole tri-color cartridge each time one color runs out.

My recommendation for the office environment is to utilize shared network color and B/W laser printers, and if necessary purchase one high quality Inkjet for photos.

Leo Bletnitsky has been in the IT Consulting and Management business for over 12 years and is CEO/President of Desktop Valet and LBA Networking, Inc.
Leo can be reached at Leob.newsletter@DesktopValet.com or 702-553-3200 x101.