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Home > Choosing a Printer > Printer purchasing and management strategy
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A printer purchasing and management strategy
We recommend that you should adopt a printer purchasing and management strategy aimed at minimising your total cost of ownership. This includes purchase price, operating costs, support and repair costs. We recommend that you standardise on a small range of printers to ensure ease of support and to minimize the number of different toner cartridges that you need to hold in stock.
We recommend that you do not make extensive use of inkjet printers as these models are very expensive to operate due to the high cost of ink cartridges. They are also relatively slow and unreliable. We recommend that you should avoid light-duty laser printers as they are expensive to operate and repair: their toner cartridges are expensive and have a only a small capacity eg 3,000 to 5,000 pages; their paper feed mechanisms are relatively primitive and often give trouble after only a limited number of pages; their construction is not modularised and repairs are labour intensive. We recommend that you avoid models with vertical paper feed mechanisms as these are prone to multiple feeding and require frequent replacement of paper feed and separation rollers. This replacement can cost up to $250 each time. However, their vertical feed systems do have the advantage of making them a compact design and this makes them suitable for locations where they will be little used and desk space is at a premium.
Commercial duty printers
We recommend that you standardise on commercial-duty laser printers. They are bigger and heavier than light-duty models but their size is the key to their reliability, high performance and ease of maintenance. The laser printer market is dominated by Lexmark and HP and we recommend that you choose one of these brands: their printer drivers are well developed and tested; their network software is comprehensive and well tested; high quality remanufactured toner cartridges are readily available at economical prices; high quality after-market replacement parts are readily available at economical prices; and most printer technicians know how to service and repair these brands.
We recommend that you choose a family of printers that have common toner cartridges; common printer drivers; a standard user interface; a standard network setup and network software; and many common components. Choose a printer family with a range of models with different page per minute capabilities, duty cycles and purchase prices. In this way, you can select different models within the family to suit the needs of particular locations. At the prices we offer on refurbished laser printers, you can afford to choose printers that might be over-specified for some locations and thereby avoid the complications of supporting many different makes and models. This strategy will minimise your service and support costs. On this web site, we have attempted to group the various members of each printer family together.
For example, the Lexmark range of Optra S laser printers each comprise a series of models with different printing speeds (12 to 32 ppm A4), rated production capacities and prices. However, all models in the Optra S range (eg 1250, 1255, 1650, 1625, 1855, 2420, 2450 and 2455) use the same toner cartridge; they use the same print servers (network cards); most accessories are interchangeable; and the drivers and user interface are common across the range. Similar remarks apply to the Lexmark Optra T61x family of printers. The T61x series (T610, T612, T614, T616) are more expensive but they represent a later generation with faster processors, improved mechanicals and 500 sheet input and output trays. The more recent Lexmark printer families include the T52x/T62x series (T520, T522, T620, T622) and the T63X series (T630, T632, T634).
All of these Lexmark printers share a similar basic design which has evolved and improved with each succeeding generation. The principal differences are in processor speed, memory capacity, output in pages per minute and progressively higher duty cycles and maintenance intervals. All T series Lexmark printers can use the same duplexers, additional paper input trays, output expansion units, memory expansion DIMMS, etc. Hence, you can upgrade a Lexmark T series printer to a later model without the necessity of replacing all of the installed options. This can represent very significant savings.
The HP range of A4 LaserJet printers is not quite so consistent and does not usually offer you different model choices within any given generation. However, there are some obvious family groups, each member of which represents a successive generation. These successive generations share many common features including toner cartridges (sometimes), memory expansion modules, internal print servers, user interface, etc. Examples include the relatively light duty HP 2xxx family (HP 2100, 2200, 2300, 2400) and the more commercial duty HP 4xxx family (HP 4000, 4050, 4100, 4200, 4250, 4300, 4350). The HP A3 LaserJet range of 5Si, 8000, 8100, 8150 provides another example of continuity in development. The 5Si and 8000 models share almost the same print engine and the same toner cartridge. Similarly, the 8100 and 8150 share these same features.
Colour printers
Colour printers are expensive to operate and maintain. Colour inkjet printers are very expensive in terms of the ink they consume but they have a relatively low capital cost. An inkjet printer is appropriate if you only print low volumes. A light duty home/office colour laser printer can cost up to 30 cents per page to operate: the purchase price of the printer is subsidised by the profit the manufacturer hopes to make by selling you small capacity, expensive toner cartridges. After-market cartridges are not generally available for many of these printers so you are captive to the original manufacturer. These printers usually come with only token toner cartridges: you may find that buying a full set of high yield original cartridges may cost you twice the purchase price of the printer. The print quality produced by these cheap colour laser printers is usually very ordinary. They are usually very slow in operation and their life expectancy is short.
A commercial duty colour laser printer will be much more expensive to purchase. It will cost around 15 cents per page in consumables (toner cartridges, photo-developer drums, fusers and transfer kits). However, the print quality will be up to your expectations. By comparison, a commercial duty monochrome laser printer will cost you around 1 to 2 cents per page to operate. If you really need a colour laser printer eg if you are a graphic designer, buy a commercial duty model.
Unless you really need colour prints and have the money to pay for them, we do not recommend buying colour laser printers. If eighty per cent of your requirements are for monochrome printing, we suggest you buy a commercial duty monochrome laser printer for the bulk of your work and buy an inkjet printer for the limited number of colour copies that you need. If you are in a large organisation, we suggest that you that you buy mainly monochrome laser printers and a limited number of commercial duty colour laser printers for those applications where colour is essential. It is not sensible to incur the expensive running and repair costs of a colour laser printer if you are mainly printing in black and white.
Maintenance and support
Once you have made your purchasing decisions, you must then protect and maintain your investment. You should read the User Manual that we provide on CD in PDF format with every printer - learn how to use your printers properly and exploit all of the features that they offer. You should also encourage all of your staff to do the same. As an alternative, you might consider holding a brief in-service course for staff to teach them how to use the printers effectively and how not to damage them by misuse. For example, not many people know that the fuser temperature should be reduced before printing on labels or transparencies: refer to the user manual.
You can save a lot of money if you train staff in how to load paper correctly and thereby minimise the chance of paper jams; if you train staff in how to clear paper jams without damaging the printer; if you train staff in how to look after a toner cartridge so that it is not prematurely spoiled. Alternatively, you can instruct staff to call for trained assistance rather than attacking the printer themselves. You will find lots of useful information in our Support Section.
We find that many service calls result from the damage done to printers by staff trying to clear paper jams. We suggest that it is more cost effective to buy better quality, more appropriate paper and ensure that it is loaded correctly: you thereby minimise the chance of paper jams occurring in the first place. We also find that many service calls result from damage to the printer caused by leaking toner cartridges. Do not buy cheap remanufactured toner cartridges that are poorly assembled and often leak toner ie do not buy remanufactured toner cartridges on the criterion of price alone. You should use original cartridges or premium remanufactured toner cartridges from a known good supplier rather than risk expensive repairs to your printers.
We draw your attention to our list of Do’s and Don’ts at the back of this catalogue. These lists were compiled on the basis of experience in repairing printers after users have damaged them through ignorance or carelessness. You might consider photocopying these lists, laminating the copies and displaying them in a prominent location near each of your printers.
We also recommend that you have your printers serviced once a year or once every two years, depending on their workloads: say every 50,000 pages. Printers gather a lot of paper dust, house dust and spilt toner and these products can reduce the efficiency of the operation of the printer, reduce the print quality and damage printer components eg the fuser. If you keep the printer clean and have its operation checked regularly, you will get better quality output and longer lasting components. You should read the section entitled Does your printer need a service? in our Support Section.
