Have You Thought About Cheaper Color Prints?
It’s a little funny being in toner sales here in Denver sometimes. I get calls from people who are upset about toner prices from their retailers and are making the switch to us because we’re $5-$10 cheaper on a common toner cartridge. That makes sense: cost is important. However, what baffles me is the same customers who make the switch because of prices glaze over when I mention how much they could save by switching to a Xerox PagePack program. “Well,” they reason “I’ve already paid off this $2,400 HP color printer, so I’m really not interested in switching to a Xerox plan.” While that logic does make sense at first, what doesn’t make sense is the math! If the same customer uses color toner at high coverage, they will probably end up spending between $6,000 and $10,000 more over three years than they would with a Xerox PagePack plan (which allows for unlimited coverage for a fixed price per month)…including the printer! Here’s how the PagePack plan works: You pay a fixed price per color print no matter how much color you have on the page. This is extremely attractive to Realtors, who’s color house flyers are generally around [...] read more
Xerox Phaser Solid Ink Toner: Save Some Cash!
The solid ink models of the Xerox Phaser series can save you a ton on your toner costs! A lot of printer and printing consumable (toner etc.) companies don’t really like the solid ink technology. First, the margin on Xerox toner is very small, and second, it reduces printing costs so much that it blows the competition out of the water for high-coverage printing. Xerox toner became a whole new ball of wax (get it?) once it adopted the solid toner (or “wax toner”) technology from Tektronix in 1999. While it does have a few disadvantages (machines can’t be turned on and off or moved regularly as all melted wax is wasted), the solid ink technology is something we here at Pahoda Image Products highly recommend. We don’t make much on the toner, and the machines are about average or a little below our profit price points. However, the green nature of the toner, and the savings on printing for our customers make it impossible not to recommend for almost all color printing needs. We advise it for churches, non-profits, and realtors most commonly. This is because all three groups are looking for low cost, high coverage, quality prints. The [...] read more
Coverage and Your Cash Pt. 1
I was talking with a buddy of mine in the industry a couple weeks ago, and he mentioned how few people understood coverage (and how it affects their printing costs). So, I decided to write a post about it! When you’re browsing toner costs, it is tempting to look at a toner cartridge and think 10,000 pages sounds like a lot for your HP 4700 Cyan toner cartridge. However, the 10,000 pages advertised are only counting for 5% cyan coverage per page. The industry standard is 20% of the page covered by color. That means 5% black, 5% cyan, 5% magenta, and 5% yellow. So, if you’re doing a lot of similar prints that use deeper or more color, you are going to be getting much less mileage out of your toner. By figuring out your coverage, you’re able to make better estimates at how much your prints are really costing you. If you’re coverage is 50%, your 10,000 page HP 4700 cartridge is going to yield closer to 4,000 pages. This dramatically increases your cost per print! So, when making your printing decisions, make sure to look at how many pages you’re actually getting per cartridge. This is easily [...] read more
Xerox Phaser 8400 solid ink
The Xerox Phaser line is pretty impressive. It started in 1999 when Xerox bought Tektronix color-printing division, a Wilsonville, OR company. Tektronix had developed the solid ink technology back in the early ’90s, which basically eradicated the toner cartridge and replaced it with the minimalistic ink-block. It revolutionized the toner world, and has made the cost-per-print price drop dramatically over the years. The Phaser 8400 has been discontinued; I was just talking to a gentleman the other other day who traded a couple of his 8400s in for the Phaser 8860 (and received Xerox’s $500 per machine trade in!). However, if you have one that’s been more gently used than his, I’m sure it’s still pumping out the prints for a very good price! In our Print Share Program (where we help Denver non-profits receive printer and toner donations from our corporate clients), the only machines we recommend for color are the Xerox Phasers due to the price-friendly nature of the solid ink technology. The green nature of the solid ink process makes it more attractive to our earth-conscious clients as well. Because there’s no bulky cartridge, it reduces the amount of plastic that needs to be made and eventually [...] read more
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