Cost depends on many factors but is dominated by volume. Most printers specify their cost per page but there is no standard for this calculation and some cheat. Most calculate color with a 10% coverage. If you print pictures the cost is much greater. Unless you buy "throw-away" printers the cost of repair is an issue too. Many companies ignore the per page cost and look at the cost of ownership. This is costing with initial, maintenance, and expendablies included. It does not include the aggravation factor of paper jambs.
My experience has been the Japanese printers have much higher maintenance costs with Epson being the very worst. I call Epson printers "crash and burn" because simple failures tend to domino and take other parts with them. I put the "not to throw-away" threshold (the point where it is cheaper to buy a new one rather than repair) much higher for Japanese printers. I get HP parts off their web page the next day but then again I live in Silicon Valley.
Xerox owns more ink jet patents than HP. Cannon builds many of HP's printers. Lexmark builds Xerox's low end printers.
Before you buy any printer I suggest you go to that companies web site and examine how they support their printers. Software and drivers can be a major issue.
Fred Townsend
Declan Moriarty wrote:
That's the query. 2 of us here in 2 separate cities require a change of
printer. Both thinking of inkjets, but willing to consider any jet or
laser. My brother dopes a lot more colour than I do. He of us is a strictly windows man, I have dual boot.
When you buy three colour & one black cartridge for a Lexmark, it runs to nearly the price of the printer. Ditto HP with the newer models.
No huge special demands on complexity, networking, or dpi. One of us does a number of large volume jobs. A dot matrix seems to be the cheapest to run (remember those ribbons?) but noise rules it out.
Anybody research this thoroughly?
-- Author: Fred Townsend INET: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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