The Downside of Desktop Printers

August 23, 2019 by Drew Smith

In nearly every workplace, printing remains a crucial productivity tool, as well as a significant expense. So whether your employees rely primarily on mobile printing solutions that they access from the field, or your paper-intensive office is moving toward a more digitized process, printing in the modern office still warrants a plan.

With the ultimate goal of identifying the best value, Print Management provides organizations a strategy for achieving their printing needs, based upon industry standards and analysis. At Copiers Plus, our specialists assess print volume, hardware, maintenance, consumables, security protocols, and color usage before making a recommendation to clients.

Hidden Costs at the Desk?

In offices nationwide, we’ve seen a strong trend away from desktop devices to a consolidated, managed print environment. Even so, offices large and small still rely on ink-based multi-purpose (all-in-one) desktop printers that include scanning and fax options. At first glance, these might seem like a bargain. Yet, even when usage and volume is moderate, ink cartridges can be prohibitively expensive. Consider the ink cartridges market was valued at 10900 Million US$ in 2018.

Typically, it falls to the IT department to research and purchase devices from a store or online retailer. Aside from set-up and daily maintenance, they’ll also be charged with calculating the Cost per page (CPP) based on the ink cartridges your office purchases.

This job can be time-consuming and thankless. Remember: different printers use different cartridges, and different cartridges offer varying page yields. Many people buy a printer based on the upfront cost of owning one without considering the cost of consumables.

Fortunately, industry regulations do provide some guidelines. The page yield of a cartridge is based upon the ISO standard for measuring ink cartridge yields by printing out pages with 5% page coverage* until the cartridge runs empty.

On the flipside, to get a true page yield and not just an estimate, you (or your IT professional) will need to take into account the following variables:

  • Content: Colored images vs. mostly black and white text
  • Content size / length
  • Print quality

Remanufactured Cartridges are one alternative to brand name ink cartridges; industry experts claim some can save customers upwards of 70%. But, Buyer Beware: make sure the distributor you buy from adheres to industry standards by testing their products.

If this sounds like a lot to keep track of, that’s because it is. What’s more, because desktop printers are so inexpensive, many consumers replace them when they break rather than repair them. Then, you’ll need to start all over again!

Want to stop the vicious cycle of managing your printers? Put Copiers Plus and their Managed Print Services program to work for you!

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