Friends, I tend to have serious misgivings whenever confronted with the purchase of printing equipment and supplies. The idea of intended obsolence or rather time limited utility of printing equipment as seems to be the modus operandi of the printing equipment and supply industry is what bothers me most.
What resources are there that inform consumers and organizations as to the issues surrounding these purchases? I'm not really speaking of a consumer reports rating, but a question of costs involved alongside environmental issues such as the disposability/full replacement framework How long should a printer last? Will you have to replace specific parts (drum)? At what interval? Will you be able to? What is done with old or replaced parts? The business model for some equipment lines is that the profit comes from sales of supplies such as toner and the actual equipment is expected not to last more than a certain period of time, with replacement of key parts being comparable to full replacement of the device. Without moving to high-end models, where I think the issues arent necessarily that different, just the direct costs possibly more easily absorbed (and accounted for by the organization) and the indirect and environmental externalities not borne (by definition) by the company alone What role do we play in DDN and CTC communities in our purchase decisions and in critique of this segment of the tech industry? What is our relation to these industries, in terms of general environmental and sustainability issues? All devices have an expected life-cycle. But is "built to last" something we can achieve in a commodity framework? How do we achieve that? Can we play a role? Regards, MM ____________________________________________________________________________ Michael Maranda President, The Association For Community Networking (AFCN) http://www.afcn.org Executive Director, CTCNet Chicago Chapter http://www.ctcnetchicago.org Co-Chair, Illinois Community Technology Coalition (ilCTC) http://www.ilctc.org Vice President, CAAELII http://www.caaelii.org Vice President, NPOTechs http://www.npotechs.org Attend the Illinois Community Technology Conference, November 16-17, 2005. http://www.ctcnetchicago.org/conference _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
