Print Manager Plus questions

[AndyD]

Cost per page

I have read various threads on what people have set as their cost per page. How do you work out the cost per page for a specific printer? What do I need to work out once I have the cost for toner?

Our main printers our HP Color LaserJet 2605n and pay £40 for each toner on average.

Automatic Footer

Is there a way to add an automatic footer ie username to the bottom off every print ? We occassionally have sheets printed and left and would like to find out who it is.

[localzuk]

For the prior, cost per page for us is calculated by including all the consumables, services etc... So on a colour laser it'd be the 4 cats, transfer units, waste toner units, fusers etc... divided down to a single sheet. We don't just go by toner on its own.

For the latter, you can't do this with PMP as far as I know. I think you could do it if you use cups+pykota and some scripted wizardry though.

[Ric_]

Cost per page = cost of cartridge / number of pages (You can use the web interface to see how many pages you get out of each cartridge)

Unfortunately, PNP does not have a facility to do the footers. It would require intercepting the document, adding the text, spooling it and pnting it - quite complicated!

[AndyD]

Thanks for the replies

So if I estimate at £160 / 3000 estimate pages = £0.053 for toner and then just add in the cost of paper etc if we wanted to. Is that right?

[elsiegee40]

It is a bit more complicated because you should allow for the cost of replacing drums, belts, etc

We came up with 10p per page on the mono (a little over-priced, but a deterrant the the lazy photocopier bunch) and 35p for colour (based on the page-count and consumable spend over 12 months) on our OKis

[sahmeepee]

A small mono laser printer will cost you about 2p/sheet for toner and about 0.3p/sheet for paper. A large mono laser works out at about 0.8p/sheet for toner.

With your CLJ, the black toner is cheaper per page than the colour. Also, if it's anything like the 2550, a colour page counts for 4 "hits" on the drum, whereas a pure mono page is only 1 hit so you can use that in your calculation (on the 2550 a drum has 20,000 hits, so 5000 colour or 20000 mono).

I think the web admin on the 2605 gives you usage on each toner individually, so you can work out roughly what proportion of pages are black-only. It might be quite high even if there is a mono printer in the room. We have a 2600n sat next to a mono printer and the config page currently reads:

Page Counts

Total Pages Printed: 2928
Color Pages Printed: 2465
Total Mispicked In Printer: 0
Total Jammed In Printer: 0

... admittedly some of those pages may be blanks.

[AndyD]

Thanks for the replies. Very useful