Choose A Business Printer - Dell...office solutions. But Mast claims that there is still a demand for high-quality printing technology. òI think we saw a significant impact from the

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HOW TO…

Choose A Business Printer

in association with

http://www.eweekeurope.co.uk/

http://www1.euro.dell.com/uk/en/enterprise/Peripherals/printer/ct.aspx?refid=printer&s=pad&cs=RC1050265/

HOW TO GUIDE________________________________________________________ 1

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INDEX

Quality is always in demand……………………………………………………..... Page 2 Money may be tight, but people are still prepared to pay for quality printing, says Dell’s senior manager of SMB

printers, Steven Mast. Companies do want to reduce costs, but they'll be doing that by applying efficiency practices, he said, in an interview with eWEEK Europe.

All change in printers………………………………………………….……………. Page 4 Printer technology is always evolving, but the real driver for change is what people buy. Tough times have held back the market, but we expect a shift towards faster, shared printers, special niches for multi-function devices and,

ultimately a service-based world for many customers.

What to look for in a Printer……………………………………………………….. Page 7 Monthly capacity, print speed and maximum graphic resolution are key criteria when it comes to choosing a printer, but TCO and some specific functions also need to be taken into account.

Total cost of ownership and green considerations.…………………………….. Page 11 The total cost of ownership argument is well established in IT circles, but why is it so rarely applied to printers? Is it because printers are such a common sight in offices that they tend to be overlooked, until something goes wrong with them?

Glossary of Terms……………………………………………………………………. Page 14 An explanation of the key terms and concepts used in this guide.

Peter Judge

Editor’s Note

Printers are all too often overlooked in an IT purchasing strategy - and this is a great shame. Your printers directly produce the material customers and business partners see, and they also represent a large and mostly unmanaged cost to your business.

Recent research found that most organisations are blissfully unaware of the financial costs their printers are racking up, and the environmental cost they are adding to the company's footprint.

This is a shame because printers are easily managed and the decision criteria can be easily understood. Printer choices are being driven by the recession and a new environmental awareness - backed up increasingly by regulations. Printer makers are responding to these demands, and the market is moving into a new phase. Users will be choosing to have fewer printers, but larger, more efficient and smarter printers. They may increasingly also choose to buy a print service instead of running and managing all.

If you understand the direction of the market, and the specifications of existing printers, and if you can calculate the output you require, you can compare the likely total cost of ownership for a range of models, and find the one that suits your needs best. We hope this guide will help you do that for your company.

Peter Judge

HOW TO GUIDE______________________2


Money may be tight, but people are still prepared to pay for quality printing, says Dell's senior manager of SMB printers, Steven Mast. “Companies do want to reduce costs, but they'll be doing that by applying efficiency practices”, he said, in an interview with eWEEK Europe.

The recession has hit many printer manufacturers hard, as companies put capital acquisitions on hold while looking for more economical office solutions. But Mast claims that there is still a demand for high-quality printing technology. “I think we saw a significant impact from the economic recession on pretty much every part of the printer business – the whole space – from inkjets all the way up to the high end boxes,” he says. “We did see that our toner sales actually held up fairly well over the course of this year,

“We put duplexers on the vast majority of our product lineup, and we offer it as standard on everything in our mid and high-range products”

which to me serves as an indication that customers are still out there printing, they are just trying to extend the life of their existing products as long as they possibly can.” That's probably just as well, since the company has pushed the performance boundary with the world's fastest A4-size colour laser printer, the 5130cnd, which can process up to 47 pages per minute. It's aimed at medium to large size businesses with heavy printing needs and, Mast says its cost of ownership should appeal.

Despite the demand for high performance, multifunction printers and advanced features are still wanted, says Mast: “We did not see a move away from colour or a move away from MFPs [multifunction printers] last year, so we did not see any kind of effect of customers saying “OK I no longer want colour - I'm just going to stick with the cheapest black-and-white box that I can”. Demand for these features is, in part, kept up by the fact that these printers are smart enough to keep the costs under control, he adds: "When you buy a box we provide tools for our customer that allow them to have a colour box deployed in their network, but only allow certain users to print in colour on it. You can still get a colour box and - for a very competitive price – but if you only want a couple of users to be able to print in colour you can lock the other users just to print in mono.”

IT TAKES SMARTS TO GO GREEN

These document managed software solutions cut costs, but they also help organisations to address the environmental impact of wasteful printing practices. Dell has set itself the target of becoming the greenest technology company on the planet and, according to Mast, printing is an

Quality Is Always In Demand


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Steve Mast hit list: the most important decision criteria for choosing a printer:

Do you want a networked or locally connected printer? Because if you get the wrong kind you're in trouble from the start.

Do you want colour or is mono OK for your business?

Do you want multifunction or just a single function printer? That

depends on the upfront decision of how you are going to use this

product.

Duty cycle – how hard are you going to be using this product? If

you don't figure that out before you buy, you may waste money on

one that is way over spec, or buy a printer that is under spec and

never runs reliably.

Speed. This goes pretty much hand in hand with duty cycle.

Print management applications: what sort of security do you

require, and how will management affect the cost per page?

Management, usage and overheads can end up being three to four

times the cost of the initial hardware purchase.

Finally paper handling. Do you need to have just one paper tray or

are you going to need multiple different paper types, legal as well

as letter size, and do you need to collate or staple?

important part of that effort.

“We put duplexers on the vast majority of our product lineup, and we offer it as standard on everything in our mid and high-range products. We also offer it as an option on the bulk of our low-entry class products because it's very important to us, as a green feature, to enable customers to print on both sides of the page, and even to set the printers up where that's a standard.

“The most important thing for IT managers is to assess the needs of their own company before going out and shopping for a printer”

“We continue to strive with our partners, working on lower power consumption in our boxes. The 5130 actually has a new toner formulation that fuses at a much lower temperature than past boxes, and that allows the printer to consume a lot less power in the printing process. That toner also takes a lot less power to make at our vendor, which cuts the carbon footprint for production of the product in the first place.”

That should go down well with Green ICT advocates who stress the importance of counting the whole life cycle of a product when calculating its carbon footprint. UK government advisors have called on the public sector to green its IT, and UN agencies have backed that with advice on green principles.

SUSTAINABILITY - IT'S PRACTICE, NOT TECHNOLOGY

But while printer makers can add features

to make sure their equipment supports sustainable printing practices, the real responsibility falls on user companies - and the end users themselves - to make sure those abilities are put to good use.

That is a struggle, and has led some printer companies, to offer to take the responsibility offering managed print services, which help

businesses consolidate their products from widely distributed, very small devices to a few fast networked machines with high duty cycles. Dell runs managed printing in the US and is looking at expanding these into the UK. However, it's quite possible to consolidate your printers without outsourcing print, says Mast, as long as you get the right sort of printers: no company can offer printer consolidation without the right kind of printers in its portfolio: “A customer that manages a printer environment can clearly do that and can clearly set up that kind of environment,” says Mast. “I do think that in order to successfully go after managed print though, you have to have those kind of boxes in the line-up.”

According to Mast, the most important thing for IT managers is to assess the needs of their own company before going out and shopping for a printer. Colour MFPs are currently the largest growth sector in the market but, as Mast says: “You don't want to buy a giant moving van if you're just going to be hauling a couple of potted plants across town.”

KEY CONCEPTS FOR CHOOSING A PRINTER


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Printer technology is always evolving, but the real driver for change is what people buy. Tough times have held back the market, but we expect a shift towards faster, shared printers, special niches for multi-function devices and, ultimately a service-based world for many customers.

What output do you need, and what printers will you buy? Most users' needs are broadly similar, and the market for printers gives a good idea what companies have been opting for in the past – while the way that market is moving shows how printing needs have changed.

Like most IT sectors, the global market for printers has been badly hit by the recession, with the number of printers shipped declining 21 percent year-on-year in the second quarter of 2009, to 24.1 million units,

according to research by IDC. The total value also declined 23.2 percent over the same time period to $11.6 billion (8bn), suggesting users have shifted towards cheaper models.

Colour laser printers, still seen as a luxury, actually declined during the recession, but are getting ready for a surge in popularity as prosperity returns. IDC expects us all to be making the shift to colour - partly as a means for companies to improve business communications and stand out in a competitive market. Colour laser printers will grow at a compound rate of 12.1 percent per year between 2009 and 2013 in EMEA, it predicts. And within colour printers, multi-function devices are doing well, having weathered the downturn better than single-function devices, with global unit shipments declining just 6 percent year-on-year in Q3

In some large markets there is actually pent-up demand, says Mitri Roufka, research director of imaging and hardcopy devices at IDC: “Many of the largest markets in the CEMA (Central Europe Middle East and

Africa) region, such as Russia, Turkey, Poland, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, UAE, and the Czech Republic, are still far from saturation, offering growth potential at 15.7 percent CAGR (compound annual growth rate) for colour laser devices in the next five-year period,” he said.

During the recession Western Europe has slipped to third place in unit shipments, but is still second in terms of value, which suggests that Europeans are not opting for short-term investments in cheap printers, even if money is tight.

Users are pretty conservative in their choices, according to the figures, with the top five printer makers remaining unchanged: HP keeps the top spot, despite selling 28 percent fewer printers in the second quarter of 2009, and is followed by Canon, Epson, Brother and Lexmark. However, in a more volatile market, more recent entrants such as Dell have been increasing their share by offering better services and using the synergy with their systems business.

WASTING PAPER AND ENERGY

The real driver for change will be an increased focus on efficiency, coming from a combination of three factors. Firstly, there are increased economic pressures to cut costs, and secondly there will be greater "green" regulations forcing companies to waste less. Thirdly, and most surprisingly, despite the obvious benefits, most companies are still blind to the efficiency savings that can be made from printers.

Every country in Europe has a

long way to go in improving printing efficiency according to the Document Governance Index

Despite a lot of talk by

manufacturers and users, efficiency has made very

All Change In Printers


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Inkjet printers are still the popular favourite, but are really a consumer

technology according to market researcher IDC. They made up 70 percent (18.6 million) of

the printers shipped in Q3 of 2009. In particular, people are searching for value by

investing in multifunction peripheral (MFP) devices, which can photocopy, scan and fax as

well as print. This part of the market actually showed a year-on-year growth of 13 percent,

and now makes up 24 percent of inkjets.

Laser printing is the future, and is already the most common technology in

offices. Once the preserve of top-end systems, it is continuing to extend its foothold, and

because of the larger cost of these devices, laser printers make up a much bigger part of

the revenue in printers.

Personal printers had spread to many desktops in offices, but IT managers

eager to reduce their costs and their environmental footprint (as we shall see later in this

guide) are starting to cut that back, pushing shared printers.

“New devices are becoming faster with higher monthly duty cycles, increased

paper management, and greatly improved connectivity levels, and as a result

organisations will continue to replace multiple older devices, which are often single

function monochrome printers, with a single new device, often a colour MFP," said Julio

Vial, research manager for European Printers at IDC EMEA.

This will make the laser printer the first choice in offices in the future. Already

laser printers are the greatest part of the market by value, and monochrome laser printers

make up the biggest part (42 percent) of the market at $4.9 billion (€3.4 billion). They

outsell colour laser printers by about four monochrome units to every colour device. They

also tend to be single-function workhouses; around two thirds have no other functions.

IDC predicts that in Europe, the monochrome peak is past, and these will

decline during the period to 2013, while colour lasers rule the roost. Already, selling at a

significantly higher price, the colour printers make up almost as much value as the

monochrome ones.

Source: IDC

little headway in people's printing. practices or

purchases. Printing is a ripe target for both reducing

both environmental and economic footprints.

Paper wastage is a significant cost, with

businesses spending up to five percent of their annual

turnover on document management, a total spend in

Europe or around 14 billion per year. Despite this, 32

percent of business leaders in Europe allow employees

to do what they like with regard to duplex printing

(printing on both sides of the paper), according to a

study by printing specialist Ricoh, and 19 percent are

either still in the planning stages or have no plans to

implement a duplex printing policy. Only 18 percent

have implemented such a policy company-wide.

Sustainable printing strategies are poorly

adopted right across Europe, according to the Ricoh

study. The UK, Spain, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany

Italy and France all scored between 38.5 and 43.5 out of

a possible hundred on the Document

Governance Index – which assigns a

numerical value to environmental aspects of

document governance such as recycling,

setting targets, auditing and employee

behaviours.

Although the UK placed worst, every

country in Europe has a long way to go in

improving printing efficiency, Ricoh found. Only

33 percent of companies have implemented a

fully developed strategy to deal with paper and

energy wastage. This means that many

companies are overlooking tactical actions they

can take, not only to improve sustainability but

to reduce costs as well.

This blind spot in companies won't

remain for long, and it is certain that users will

gradually become more aware of efficiency. The

recession itself has lowered demand - the

market for consumables dropped 13 percent in

EMEA in the first half of 2009, and the fall was

more pronounced amongst businesses than

consumers. Cost-conscious buyers are less

likely to accept vendors' assurances that only

"genuine" toner is good enough. Sales of

manufactures’' own-brand toner fell by 24

percent, and own-brand inkjet cartridges fell by 19

percent. Meanwhile, third-party toner went up by 5

percent to take 37 percent of the toner market.

As businesses get more careful with their

spending, printer manufacturers will step in and

respond to the changing demand. However, in the

process, they must create new business models, as

today's printer market does not operate in favour of

efficiency. Again, this is an opportunity for newer

challengers such as Dell.

As organisations move towards efficiency,

this will tend to shift the market towards fewer

small printers, as individuals are no longer given

personal desktop printers. Users will buy a smaller

number of larger printers, which tend to use fewer

consumables per page, and have a lower overall

total cost of ownership.

WORLDWIDE PRINTER UNIT SALES


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Do you need

colour?

Do you need

colour?

Do you need multiple

functions?

YES

NOHow many people

will use the device?

How many people


How many people


How many people


YES

NO

YES

NO

Mainstream laser colour

networked

Advanced / Performance laser

colour networked

Entry level colour laser USB

Entry level colour laser

networked

Mainstream laser mono

networked

Advanced / Performance laser

mono networked

Entry level mono laser USB

Entry level mono laser networked

Mainstream laser mono

networked multifunction

Advanced laser mono networked

multifunction

Entry level mono laser USB

multifunction

Entry level mono laser networked

multifunction

Mainstream laser colour


Advanced laser colour networked

multifunction

Entry level colour laser USB

multifunction

Entry level colour laser


1

11-50

6-10

2-5

1

11-50

6-10

2-5

1

11-50

6-10

2-5

1

11-50

6-10

2-5

Printers will increasingly be sold on efficiency characteristics such as the ability to set policies for duplex printing, and take part in remotely managed schemes such as "pull printing", In this system, output is not actually produced when the user asks for it - instead it goes into a print queue. The user must identify themselves at a printer using a swipe card or security code, before the document is delivered. There are several benefits: it is more secure, as as documents can only be delivered to the user who asked for them, and are not seen by others, and it is also more flexible, allowing users to skip queues as documents can be delivered to any available printer. And it also uses less paper - as it avoids having documents which are printed but not collected.

Efficiency features may cause changes to device

makers' business models, as the main way to reduce printing costs is to print less, using fewer consumables. These make up to half of the revenue of printer manufacturers - and in some case seventy to eighty percent of profits.

THE MOVE TO SERVICES

One way to reduce consumables and still keep hold of customers and make a profit is to shift to a service based model, where the user pays a fixed price per page, and the printer provider operates a service to deliver this. This model is been promoted by companies including Dell, and it seems likely to spread down through the middle market, to companies that currently have many printers and want to consolidate to fewer printers, without facing a

confusion of different toner types and service contracts. For vendors, services will give a means to keep on selling despite customers' demand to actually buy less. Some companies are widening their document mana-gement software and services offerings – selling the prospect of lower costs and better mana-gement rather than new hardware. “Now that many end-user organisations have frozen their hardware spending, vendors are increasingly looking at alternatives such as managed print services and document-managed software as ways to increase revenue, said Tosh Prabhakar, senior analyst at Gartner. “Vendors must sell services to businesses that will help them better control costs, save on running costs, reduce cost-per-page issues and consolidate devices.”

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MONTHLY CAPACITY, PRINT SPEED and MAXIMUM GRAPHIC RESOLUTION are key criteria when it comes to choosing a printer, but TCO and some specific functions also need to be taken into account.

Hordes of cheap inkjet printers may make up the big numbers at the low end

of the hardcopy peripherals market but, with significant price reductions and improved performance, lasers are the top choice for small and medium sized businesses. With so many factors coming into play, the first thing to do when buying a printer is take a step back and ask: what are your organisation’s particular needs?

To help you make a decision, eWEEK Europe has compiled a list of the main decision criteria, and looked at how these can affect your company.

MONTHLY CAPACITY

Printing capacity is the top priority for most companies when it comes to choosing a printer. While inkjet printers are less expensive to buy, they incur a much higher cost per page over the long term than their laser counterparts. Inkjet printers are therefore suited to very small businesses (freelancers, very small companies, etc.). An inkjet printer should only be used by a user or a group whose total printing needs do not exceed 1,000 pages per month. Over that threshold, laser technology is generally considered the better choice, particularly as these machines have a much longer service life. They are faster, so they should also be chosen if your company’s business involves printing peaks, for example, needing to produce a high volume of brochures in a short space of time. Printer makers quote a "duty cycle" as the number of pages a printer can produce in one month without any performance issues, but suggest that the actual print volume per month should be kept lower than this.

Cheaper laser printers usually have a lower recommended duty cycle - cheap 200 multi-function unit may only be rated for 6000 pages per month, but print-only units, designed for high usage can manage 80,000 to 100,000 at prices for a purchase price of £600.

Although devices with a high duty cycle are more expensive to buy, they work out cheaper if the user's print volume is also high - as low duty cycle printers must have a maintenance kit applied to them more often. Since the maintenance kit for a 1000 printer can cost around £250, maintenance is a major part of the lifecycle cost - and choosing a printer whose duty cycle matches your print volume need can keep that cost down.

What To Look For In A Printer

Monthly Capacity

Print Speed

Quality (partly defined by the

print resolution)

Cost of ownership

Energy use

Noise

Colour output

Paper handling (including A3/A4)

Multifunction(scanning and faxing)

M

A

I

N

DEC I S I ON

CR I T ER I A


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PRINT SPEED The printer’s speed becomes a deciding factor for companies when they need to produce a large quantity

of documents in a limited time. This value, expressed in pages per minute (or ppm), can differ depending on the print quality. For example, printing in draft mode is often much quicker than in optimal mode.

While traditionally colour printing has been much slower, there are now numerous printers that feature the same speed for colour or monochrome printing. Dell, in particular, claims to have the record for the fastest colour laser printer, with its 5130cdn. However, printer performances vary greatly in this area. Models in the region of £450 usually offer a speed close to 20 ppm, while the fastest models can reach almost 50 ppm.

Power consumption is a driver towards running fewer shared printers, and also towards using newer printers

PRINTING QUALITY Requirements in terms of printing quality may also be taken into account when choosing a solution. It is worth noting that while significant progress has been made over the past few years, laser printers are yet to match their inkjet counterparts in this area – especially when it comes to printing on photo paper.

The precision of a printer is determined by it resolution, expressed in dots per inch (dpi). This measurement corresponds to the number of pixels the machine can print on a square inch. Depending on the type of documents you need to print out, you will need to make sure your printer can handle the right range of resolutions.

COST OF OWNERSHIP As a general rule, the cost-per-page for laser printers is lower than for inkjet models when handling large

volumes. However, the various models of laser printers differ greatly in this respect and costs can vary by as much as 200 percent.

One of the reasons for such disparity is the use of high-capacity cartridges in some models, which generates savings on the purchase price and also means that cartridges need to be changed less frequently. When it comes to buying a printer, therefore, companies and individuals should assess the total cost of ownership, taking all these factors into account.

SPECIFIC FUNCTIONS

Some companies may be looking for their printer to be more than just a printer. Multifunctional devices which can handle photocopying, scanning and faxing are well established. When they arrived, some people expected multi-function machines to replace single-function devices, but in fact they are only a niche - albeit a large one - in the printing ecosystem.

Multi - function devices are more expensive. Also, although they can do different jobs, it is not much help if one user monopolises the machine for a complex photocopy job while someone else has a print job waiting - or vice versa. It is also essential to

consider whether the organisation needs to produce colour documents or whether monochrome would be sufficient. The price differential between the two is currently quite steep, but is reducing. At some point, printer manufacturers predict that the difference will be small enough for users to simply opt for colour so they can have the benefit of better output.

The price comparison between colour and monochrome printers, like all such comparisons, is a complex one, involving both the purchase price and the cost of consumables and maintenance. Even if the purchase price comes down, consumable costs will still be higher for a colour device, and some organisations may feel they can afford to buy one but fear the consumable costs will spiral out of control.

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For these users, colour print management functions will be an important feature to watch for. Printers with strong intelligence features can handle printing policies, so that only specific users, or job types, can print in colour.

Other specific functions that may be required include Wi-Fi connection as well as wired Ethernet, smartphone compatibility, local storage, and printing from USBs.

As more complex functions are added, this adds other requirements such as physical and data security of any hard disk - thieves could steal it for the corporate data it contains.

LIMITED LIFE CYCLES

In the retail printer market, the price of a set of cartridges can be as much as 80 percent of the total value of the printer, although most devices are delivered with cartridges from the outset. As a result, very small companies sometimes choose to buy a whole new

printer once the cartridges have run out rather than buying new cartridges, which is a disaster ecologically speaking.

However, the ink (or the toner for laser printers)

is not the only thing that needs regularly replacing. Other parts of the printer also have a limited life cycle, such as the drum, the transfer belt, and the photoconductor unit.

Some manufacturers cover the replacement of these parts free of charge during the warranty period, while others leave it to users to buy and replace them for themselves.

WARM-UP TIME

“Time-to-first-page” is also a factor frequently put forward by manufacturers when it comes to choosing a printer for SMBs. This is defined as the time it takes for the machine to warm up and be ready for use. This can be an important issue in an office that prints small quantities of documents at regular intervals throughout the day, as having to wait 20 seconds for a printer to warm up every time you use it can be a serious inconvenience. A short warm-up time is also essential for companies who want to reduce their overall carbon footprint by having their printers shut down or in a low-power standby mode when not in use.

Some manufacturers have made significant efforts to improve performance in this area, and most professional models now.

PRINT LANGUAGES

To communicate with and receive instructions from computers, printers use different languages which provide a description of the pages. PostScript 3, initially developed by Adobe, is currently the most widespread, and has become a standard now found on almost all models. Note that some manufacturers offer emulations of PostScript such as BR-Script 3 by Brother.

Another standardised language is PCL (Printer Command Language) developed by Hewlett Packard, and currently available in version 6. PCL 6 compatibility is also sometimes provided by vendors including Dell and Lexmark.

POWER CONSUMPTION

The actual power consumed by a laser printer can be a massive component of its overall cost, particularly for a cheap model, or an older printer which is due for replacement. Older printers do not have efficient reduced settings for standby power, and printers with a particular usage pattern can be left on full power all the time, burning electricity.

Personal laser printers, which only cost approximately £200, can look cost effective if users say they need them to be more productive, but research by Lexmark found that these can use up to 85 of electricity per year, making their overall cost vastly higher.

Power consumption is therefore a driver towards running fewer shared printers, and also towards using newer printers, which benefit from improvements in printing technology, such as a lower temperature toner in use by Dell, which cuts energy use still further.


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CAPACITY, WARRANTY, NOISE Although arguably less significant than the previous categories, other criteria that may tip the scales when making your choice of printer include:

Input paper capacity, which is why most professional printer models allow optional trays to be added.

Sound level, which should be checked for convenience, particularly in already noisy environments. This is expressed in decibels, with a difference of 3 decibels corresponding to a doubling of noise level.

Warranty, which generally lasts for one year but can be extended (for a price) with most manufacturers. In this area, it is important to note the difference between a standard warranty covering common defects and faulty material, and an extended warranty that covers wear on parts such as drums.

Consistency. A clear overall print strategy will usually aim to use a minimum of vendors and a minimum of models. This will cut the cost of spares and consumables that need to be kept available, and will make it quicker and easier to manage the printers - and also end users will find it easier to get the output they want using the same user interface.

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Total Cost of Ownership and Green Considerations

The total cost of ownership argument is well established in IT circles, but why is it so rarely applied to printers? Is it because printers are such a common sight in offices that they tend to be overlooked, until something goes wrong with them?

In these tough economic times, the strategy for managing an organisation's printer resources is incredibly important. Most companies are having their IT budgets squeezed, and printers can often be overlooked as a way to help an organisation save money.

Careful planning is required when installing a new or replacement machine in a department, even though the end users may be demanding a replacement printer immediately.

Your total cost will depend on the monthly print volume you require from your printer, and that may also depend on what the printer is capable of doing For example, does the replacement machine really need to be a colour laser printer? Does this department really need a multifunction model? Is it time to replace this inkjet printer which is consuming expensive cartridges with a more expensive laser printer, but whose consumables are cheaper?

Inkjets are still hugely popular at the low end of the market, but the downside is the cost of their consumables, and so the total

cost of ownership angle needs to be carefully considered before a purchasing decision is made. Last year, for example, HP made $33 billion in annual revenues, $12 billion of which came from ink cartridge sales.

TOTAL COST OF OWNERSHIP

The importance of the TCO argument can easily demonstrated by the following example. People looking to buy a new car have the choice between petrol and diesel cars. Many people are opting for diesel cars: they rightly reason that they will be able to get better miles per gallon (MPG) from a diesel, and will spend less

money on petrol. However, what they don't consider is that the purchase price of diesel cars is more than petrol cars, that diesel fuel is more expensive than petrol, and servicing a diesel car is more expensive than a petrol equivalent. Take all of this in account, plus the amount of time that person is expected to own a diesel car, and often people discover they are out of pocket because they opted for a diesel.

HOW TO CALCULATE THE TCO

You can often calculate a printer's total cost of ownership by combining the acquisition price, the consumables and electricity cost of all the pages you will produce, and all the other incidental costs including service, repairs and replacement parts. Your total cost will depend on the monthly print volume you require from your printer, and that may also depend on what the printer is capable of doing. For example if the printer has the ability to save money by printing duplex, and whether that ability is easy enough that users will bother with it... or whether it can be set as the default mode.


12


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Source: DELL

Each printer will excel in one or more areas, but all must be considered when defining TCO.

It is worth remembering that cost is more than the purchase price, as mentioned in the diesel car purchasing decision described earlier. If purchase price was the single criterion of TCO, everyone would buy an inkjet colour printer. However, the design of a inkjet printer that keeps the initial cost down, raises the cost of ink cartridges and other consumables. After a year of printing, a small inkjet may actually cost more than a colour laser printer when operational costs are accurately counted.

Printers also consume paper. Sounds obvious I know, but does the printer need special photographic paper or can it use standard paper? Also printers need servicing at some stage. For example, a transfer belt that can print 100,000 pages before needing replacement, is considered a maintenance item and will usually require the attention of skilled member of staff.

One of the most effective techniques for reducing the cost of printing is to simply add more users to an existing print device. However, the trade-off here is that more users mean more print volume and more maintenance over time. There are also hidden costs to consider for the lifetime of the printer, such as network management.

For example, one or two networked printers will need network connections and a small degree of network management. However, a larger printer population will demand increased network management time.

Networked printers obviously require a network node, but does the company also consider desk space as a cost? Rental prices in some cities can be very high, and landlords typically charge by the square foot. Printers can occupy desktop space, which can reduce a user's workspace, or even floor space. Sometimes large companies operate dedicated printer rooms which obviously add floor space costs and construction costs. Also, what about the electricity and air conditioning needed?

Another consideration is controlling the end-users. For example, using a top-end printer for printing emails obviously will cost a company more for its resources. Also, is the user wasting valuable time using the fancy printer at the other end of the office? Is a small printer being overloaded with too many users, which will translate into increased orders of paper and ink cartridges through stationery?

Finally there is a software angle. Some printing jobs require special software, or even special fonts. And sometime a software upgrade is required in order to take advantage of the latest printer capabilities.


HOW TO GUIDE_____________________13

Do you know the full purchase price and

the price of consumables?

Are there special offers from

distributors or vendors?

Is leasing or hiring an option?

Does a printer vendor offer a "package"

or "service" approach?

Do you know (and can you control) your

real printing demands?

Can users get draft mode for example for

internal documents?

Should colour printing only be available

by authorised access?

Can two departments share the same

printer instead of having two separate

machines?

Instead of excessive white spaces on a

printed page, can recto-verso mode be

considered?

Can duplex printing (printing on both

sides of the paper) be used?

Does the printer have the capability for

high-capacity cartridges?

Can non-official consumables (generic

and refilled cartridges) be used?

Can the cartridges be recycled?

GREEN CONSIDERATIONS There are a number of environmental charges laid at the door of printers, not least of which is the toxicity of toner. However a much more common issue comes from wasted power and wasted paper. Recently, an energy consultancy in the UK by the name of Power Efficiency said that companies could see up to a 75 percent reduction in their energy costs over the 11 day period between Christmas Eve and 4th January 2010, if only they switched off their non-essential office equipment during that time. Will your office printers be left on over the festive period, even when no one if in the office? Yes, printers have a standby mode, but that still consumes a small amount of power. Proper power management is just one way a company can reduce their electricity costs, as well as reduce their carbon footprint. In the UK, large organisations in the public and private sectors are facing a mandatory cap on carbon emissions, due to be introduced in April next year under the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC). But a recent SAP survey of 400 British businesses qualifying for the CRC, found that the majority of respondents were unprepared for the forthcoming legislation. Meanwhile other research has found that the UK is the worst country in Europe for sustainable printing, with companies wasting up to five percent of their turnover in printouts. Paper wastage can be a significant cost to businesses. Despite this, the Ricoh report found that 32% of companies allow employees to do what they like with regard to duplex printing (printing on both sides of the paper) and 19% are either still in the planning stages, or have no plans to implement a duplex printing policy. Only 18% have implemented it. Some manufacturers, such as Dell and Brother, are now integrating management software into their print equipment by default, so that printer access rights can be clearly defined, such as limiting the number of copies a user may print out, or restricting the use of colour to departments

that really need it. Also, all modern printers now have a draft quality print mode, which saves a considerable amount of ink and speeds up the printing process.

TCO CHECKLIST


14

GLOSSARY

Consumables All the material a printer uses in normal option, typically inkjet cartridges and toner for laser printers.

Other parts may also need regular replacement in planned services, such as the laser printer drum, toner waste container, belts, transfer roller and/or fuser. These should be considered as consumables, and should be included in calculations - along with paper, of course.

Dot matrix printers Dot matrix printers use pins that strike an inked ribbon to print the paper (like typewriters). The

technology is still in use as it can print on multi-part stationery creating carbon copies.

Duty Cycle The theoretical number of pages a printer is rated as being able to produce per month without undue

wear. Printers are rated for the amount they can support, and anyone buying a business printer should have an idea of the duty cycle each printer can support. This is different from the monthly print volume.

Inkjet printers Inkjet printing technology is based on an electric heating system that sprays droplets of ink by

varying the pressure in the cartridge. The ink used is therefore liquid, unlike laser printers. Colour inkjets use multiple cartridges, sometimes combining small colour tanks in a single cartridge.

Laser printers Laser printers use a "xerographic" process, in which an image is created on a rotating drum which

attracts particles of ink or "toner" by static electricity, and then deposits them on the paper, where they are fused with heat. Colour laser printers use four colours of toner. These are now most usually applied to the drum in a single pass, although older and cheaper colour lasers use four passes of the drum making their output much slower.

Monthly Print Volume The number of pages a given user requires from a given printer. This should be less than the

theoretical duty cycle of that printer. Printer Language The page description language used to send pages to the printer - most commonly Postscript, or PCL.

Resolution Print resolution is the number of dots (or pixels) printed on each square inch of the sheet. It

determines the end quality of the documents and is expressed in dots per inch (dpi). On multifunctional print devices, be aware of the difference between the print resolution and the scan resolution.

Spool The spool is the print queue, and originally stood for Simultaneous Peripheral Operations On-Line.

The spool contains all the information a computer sends to a printer and manages the print job queue, storing the data in RAM or on disk space. The spool file is written in a description language.

Time To First Page The time it takes for a printer to warm up and print its first page, from the point when it is switched on.

A low time-to-first-page is essential if a printer is to be kept switched off or in a very low-power standby mode.

Total Cost of Ownership The cost of buying and running a printer, including consumables for the actual workload that will be

expected by a given user. The cost should also include any services and repairs and disposal of the machine at the end of its life. You can mention toner waste container, belts, transfer roller or fuser liberally as many manufacturers are not covering in the warranty.

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HOW TO GUIDE_____________________14

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