Topic: colour printers -

[ava_banana]

Tim,

sorry I didn't see this post earlier..............however, there has been some really good advice and experience on this post.

I work in the Printing Industry (on the Digital Printing side), and although our printers are a little larger than the "desktop" models, I can give you an indication of Industry costs and charges.

(Although, you could always give KallKwik a try, they will give you quotes over the phone for colour prints, you could base your charges on those).

We charge 15p - 50p per A4 single-sided page of colour printing.

The variables tend to be the stock that is to be printed on (some of the heavy card stock, labels or acetate sheets are quite expensive) and the quantity that will be printed (economy of scale and all that).

Some companies will charge a "set-up" fee, depending on how the job is presented and whether scanning needs to be done etc etc...............(although I have just re-read your original post and see that you ask for "ink alone" costs).

We tend to get charged by "Xerox" about 5p per A4 colour image, this just tends to be for the "ink" (toner).

Alternatively, you could look at it another way......if you approximated a "set" of inks at around £25..........as you pointed out earlier......it would depend on how many images you achieved......

Thinking aloud....100 pages would work out at 25p per page (ink alone), 200 pages - 12.5p, 300 pages - 8.33p, etc, etc.....

I don't think it unreasonable to assume that based on an average coverage of ink, you should get at least 100 pages printed per cartridge "fill", if that were so, I reckon 25p is a good starting point.........bearing in mind that is what a person would have to pay, should they go to a high-street copy shop (plus set-up, normally £1 per page, plus scanning if necessary.......etc).

Hope that helps, if you want more specific pricing/breakdowns etc, feel free to PM me........ :) :)

[tim]

I just KNEW there'd be someone. No wonder she married you? BRILLIANT!

Thanks to all for valued contributions. = Tim

[BikerBob]

Hi Tim, the Epson 750 has a 5colour cartridge and a black cartridge, thus 6 colours in all. Gives excellent results as I said.
Bob

[tim]

Very superior!! = Tim

[Shuffles]

Just saw this thread, and as it's one of the only topics on this board I can add anything useful to, my thoughts as an 'IT bod'


Regarding the seperate or combined catridges, although it obviously costs more to fill a printer in the first place with 3 or 5 cartridges it does work out cheaper in the long run as you only need replace the colour that has run out. With a multi-colour cartridge as soon as one colour goes you have to replace the whole thing no, matter how much ink is left in the other colours. However as rdak suggested, multiple cartridge machines are quite a bit more expensive.

Epsons have a long held reputation of producing the best value inkjet printers in terms of quality for your £.  I'm sure they have made a few duff models like everyone else, but generally they are good kit.

The HP Deskjet range is pretty good too. Also HP's have good warranty extensions (not such a con on printers as they do have a lot of moving parts and things that could go wrong) You will probably be able to extend it to a next-day on-site repair for about 20% on top of the printer, which is a bargain if you're using it for paid work...


HP and Epson both sell their budget printers for about the same or even less than it costs them to build them, all the profit is in the ink they hope to sell you afterwards...

In my opinion, & depending on the quality & quantity you're printing it may be worth just getting a price from a printer to do it, at least you know you won't lose money on it that way?

Hope this is of some help?

[tim]

Greatly helpful - printed off to digest at leisure.

Mine is an HP psc 2210 - I like it a lot, but it is certainly not tops for colour accuracy.

Dare I say, after that, that you're another person using our Dan's icon? Gets confusing. = Tim

[Muddy_Boots]

I have HP Office Jet K80, which is scanner, fax, copier and printer in one.  Fairly expensive outlay, with both colour and black ink cartridges but colour quality is superb, especially for photos!

Produced wonderful Christmas Cards when I first had it and, using photo paper, was really great.  Took a heck of a lot of getting used to though! :)