The Cost of Colour Printing: How does your school go about colour printing?

[mstore]

Hi rogerblue,

I presume it's the Konica service, not the Arena service that leaves a lot to be desired?

The reason I ask is that I actually work for Arena (and have done for 15 years). If you have any issues I would be more than happy to try and get them sorted for you?

By the way - we can also supply a fully managed print service that includes the supply of the printers (A4, A3, colour and mono), any labour required for service and all consumables (excluding paper) for considerably less than you are paying at the moment.

Regards

Ian

[OverWorked]

Hi

Give the children a black laser as the default that they can print to. On the print server change the permissions so that only staff can print to it. You also need to allow staff access to the childrens areas with shortcuts for them. Then when child wants a colour print they have to ask the teacher who can open the document and print it for them.

Richard

We also do that - restrict colour to staff only and give them the ability to print the pupils documents.

We have two MFPs provided by Arena (as well as our laser printers) and are very pleased with the service and cost.

I now believe that printers themselves are virtually free and that the makers make their money on the consumables alone. For example, we have several HP CP1515n printers. They cost £150, but come with £200 worth of toner. It's not the low-volume cartridges that are often included with new printers, either. Work that out. It's cheaper to buy a new printer than a set of toner.

One department here has just chucked out a new CP1515n when they discovered the printing costs.

[Nikolai]

It's true. Printers are often sold at a loss. I think its called the Razor and Blades marketing.

[dirtydog]

we use a Ricoh MPC4500 which I is leased for our art/design departments, all other colour goes through Reprographics.

[Bezwick]

We have one colour printer for each department in the school, the rest are bw lasers, each staff member of each department has full access to their printer and print only permissions to all the others. This means that whenever a pupil or a staff member from another departments wants to print to the colour printer they have to ask a member of that department to un-pause the printer. So in other words each department has to pay for their own colour printing, and as a result dont really use it unless they have too. Implemented this method last year and our toner bills have dropped by over 30%.

[TechSupp]

I'm in primariy schools as well and managing printing costs is a nightmare. Currently have a few options being used, one has a b+w copier as the main default printer and a colour copier as an option, works well and costs are managable as there are no print per page costs just a fixed cost no matter how much you print b+w. Another just has a colour copier but its defaultsed to B+W and coulour must be selected each time it is wanted. Another has a b+w laser and a colour laser which seems to prove the more expensive option as it all comes out of our budget for PC's etc.! Gone on to buying toner and refilling the printer myself at the moment to reduce costs. Have the print reporting software installed and print off reports to name and shame users but this seems to have an effect for about a day then thay go back to normal.

[rogerblue]

Yes Ian, no problem with Arena, so far!! lol

apart from a singular lack of ability in the software to produce a list by department for the whole school split into colour and mono quantities, without printing out and collating the detailed report for each dept, sort of contradicts saving printing costs with 70 dept codes.

[mstore]

I'm not sure which school you are from, but if you are using the Toshiba or Kyocera copiers then call me on 0113 2880282 and ask for Ian Fox and I should be able to provide you with a free utility that can collate the department readings for you.

Regards,

Ian

[SteveR]

Thanks all for the replies.

I have been running papercut NG on a trial basis and have to say it works amazingly well, our printer use has fallen like a stone and staff members are now more careful what they print.

Great stuff!