A printer to keep pace with your demands

Pro

1 April 2005

A long time ago my mother used to say apropos some new tabloid absurdity, ‘Sure paper never refused ink!’ Now that I am myself on another wing of this occasionally esteemed journalistic profession, I am inclined to agree — but point to the wonderful and sometimes wacky world of computer printing, in offices and homes and throughout our paper-chewing Western civilization. The ink and toner industry is certainly thriving as never before, dragging in its slipstream the paper and printer manufacturers. Some random and necessarily fuzzy statistics: the USA alone churns out nearly 1,000 billion printed pages annually from fax, copiers and printers and that type of communications paper accounts for 40per cent of world paper consumption. The world usage of inkjet printer cartridges is reckoned at about 400 million and growing rapidly — certainly much faster than the recycling rate of 5per cent or so. And then there is China which is currently buying about 7.5 million new PCs a year and 4.75 million printers, so chronic consumptionitis is clearly going to be pandemic there as well.

Yet there is simply no denying that being able to produce crisp, smart documents is — ironically — one of the most enduring and endearing benefits of our otherwise electronic age. Hard copy is still more flexible for lots of purposes than screen copy and arguably more aesthetically satisfying. But perhaps the biggest fillip has come from the spread of colour printing and the increased range of output types that has followed. Photo quality printing is a major new category — indeed phenomenon — that has hit the business market as well as digitally dextrous home users with cameras, kids and cats. At a serious level, estate agents, holiday shops, doctors, accident inspectors and umpteen other professionals are increasingly using the digital camera/printer combination for ease of use and speed of results.

Once upon a time, the drawings (does anyone remember blueprints?) of architects and engineers were printed on plotters in a single colour. Today, they are all into wide format inkjets which in turn have created a new category of instant, one-off posters with photographic fidelity — or in fact are used by poster publishers to output small runs or on demand. When you remember that inkjet print heads are self-contained and will run along their steel rails to whatever distance the control software instructs, it is clear that only the paper width and transport mechanism limits the output size. So guess what? Supermarkets and travel agents and department stores are printing their own posters and window display banners in-house and the outdoor advertising industry’s long affair with silk screen printing is threatened by this younger newcomer.

Laser colour has come down to affordable levels, so colour printing is becoming ever more common in business because laser can (usually) print more speedily and with a lower unit cost per copy than inkjet technology. There are now several brands offering entry level models under EUR1,000 including Hewlett Packard, OKI   (first in at this level but still at EUR999), Samsung and Minolta QMS at a market leading EUR845 with its basic Magicolor machine. For businesses, the salient point is that it is a realistic option as a personal desktop machine — as staffers will increasingly draw to the attention of their purchasing people. Colour laser is affordable by even micro businesses, but in larger organisations there will be many IT and purchasing departments that will actually welcome colour laser as a preferable alternative to cartridge-crunching inkjets. For executives with their own offices it is not uncommon to have a small mono laser for quick printing of routine documents and a colour inkjet for occasional colour.

Pay now — save later

I sometimes suspect without much evidence that ‘seeing what that PowerPoint presentation will look like’ is a common activity that consumes vast quantities of quickly binned paper, but I may be too cynical. Colour laser offers a more manageable solution: lower cost per copy, a single printer and a chance to rationalise the ‘fleet’ throughout an organisation and, with network connections, usage monitoring and control. The capital cost is higher (although often the mono laser and inkjets will be due for replacement anyway) but at today’s prices a three-year horizon with lower running costs offers a more attractive deal than persevering with the separate machines.

But all this colour talk should not obscure the workhorse of the personal desktop for many years — straightforward mono laser. Many of us well remember the days when such machines passed out of the 4-6 pages per minute and accelerated to the giddy speed of 8 or even 10ppm, long before there was any distinction between desktop and departmental models. It was simply ‘the laser printer’ and one per company or one per floor was about the norm. Today, entry level is around 12/14/16ppm and there are models from all of the leading manufacturers under EUR400, many under EUR350 (where OKI has an 18ppm model) and the newly launched Samsung ML-1510 offers real value at EUR247 ex-VAT for a 14ppm machine with USB connection. It also has a tiny footprint, the smallest cassette-fed printer on the market with none of those plastic trays sticking out.

What all of this represents in business terms is simply temptation! The printer market right now is characterised by choice — a dazzling and sometimes confusing range of options, in fact — and good to excellent value across the board in everything but inkjet consumables (inks and specialist papers). To be fair, the top end with photo paper (never cheap at any time) and perhaps six-colour cartridges for maximum colour fidelity, can produce quality results that justify the unit costs. But run-of-the-mill inkjet colour and coated inkjet paper are fine for home use but can be real money soakpits for businesses. Estimates and surveys and analyses differ, but it seems clear that ‘standard’ colour printing by inkjet can cost up to 10 times the same copy on colour laser. Obviously enough, smart True Cost of Ownership calculations might differ when the sometimes minuscule inkjet printer purchase costs are factored in, but laser still wins hands down both in colour and black.

But Epson sales manager Katrina Timmis points out firmly and correctly that it’s a question of horses for courses: ‘Photo printers deliver high quality output on a variety of media, many of which other technologies cannot handle at all like CD disks or specialised papers. Businesses and professionals like designers, advertising agencies, architects and others make valuable use of this technology to present things to clients quickly and easily from in-house resources.’

But in fact most organisations today have a mix of printer types from different manufacturers and of different ages. That potpourri of printers is commonest at the desktop level and almost always masks an array of hidden costs, all experts agree. Giving individuals a convenient personal printing facility is no luxury these days and the entry level prices mentioned would certainly tempt managements to be generous. The ratio of devices per person certainly has to be watched and it’s a statistic that will make sense to all staff. But in fact the range of different brands and models with consequent multiple consumables is insidiously expensive and gives no prospect of rationalisation or bulk buying discounts. Similarly older and cheaper printers are unlikely to be equipped with network cards (and it’s not worth retrofitting) so smart central control and monitoring software cannot be deployed.

Consumables management

In essence, ‘What you’re after is manageability across the whole range of printers in your organisation,’ as Hewlett Packard’s Les O’Reilly, presales technical consultant, puts it. ‘When you consolidate and standardise you can start to have control over the whole print or output function in your organisation.’ That, of course, is particularly true for the many desktop machines that are often overlooked when management looks at the big departmental machines and the organisation’s highest volume printing tasks.

These days too we have to remember the mobile worker and the increasing numbers who work at home at least part of the time. There are portable printers on the market that complement the ubiquitous laptop admirably, notably the Canon bubble jets that have been around for some time and the HP photo quality DeskJet 450ci with a quite speedy 9ppm mono. As with their computing partners, battery life can be an issue.

Multi-function devices, all-in-ones or whatever you call them have been around and improving for the best part of a decade but somehow have never really become the definitive solution despite their apparent handiness and obvious economy of space for SOHO users. There are up to the minute models from HP, OKI, Epson and Samsung to name but four, with a recent emphasis on the flat-bed scanner copying function — a one-touch local copier is certainly a handy item in any business environment. The emphasis varies: OKI models are, in a sense, printers added to the fax while others scan and send by PC soft fax. The printer can be inkjet colour or laser mono but almost all scanners are limited to 600dpi. Samsung’s latest SCX 4016 is based on a 16ppm copier/printer at a EUR495 value mark.

But there is another approach for organisations with a mix of printers from about a dozen or so up into the hundreds — just buy the service. Dublin Ergo offers what it calls PrintPlan: ‘We’ll give you free printers and take over looking after existing machines in return for all of your consumable business over a three-year contract,’ explains MD John Purdy. ‘Obviously, we audit what you have and your usage up front and then make the specific proposition based on your forecast consumption, including refreshing your printer fleet but also perhaps cutting down on numbers. We would usually put in a low level print server on your LAN that will monitor usage and also check status twice a day, so that alerts for ‘toner low’ or faults or whatever can be notified automatically.’

‘You pays your money and you takes your choice….’ and there’s certainly plenty of it.

15/05/2003

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