Current thinking on Printing - costs

[speckytecky]

I was trying to get a feel for the current thoughts on costs for printing in educational establishments.

 

We are a small SEN school with 70 KS 3 /4 pupils and I'm told by the chap who supplies our Ricoh C5000 and C4500 copiers which are our network default printers that they run out at circa 4p a copy.

 

On the other hand we have either Brother or Samsung Lasers in many of the classrooms and my guess is that those come in at a heap more per sheet. Added to that staff seem to be totally incapable of changing and ordering toner as well!

[sparkeh]

We migrated from a laser printer for each year group to a leased MDF per building. Initially it seemed to annoy staff but we have saved a significant amount of money.

[FragglePete]

I appreicate your smaller, but we moved away from Ricoh last year. We did a whole proper tender process (through a framework), and since moved to Konica. Estimated cost savings on print costs and leasing, including the fact we've gone from 5 machines to 9 was worked out to be in the region of £52,500 over a three year period. We've been monitoring the costs since inception last September and at Easter we were some £15,000 ahead on savings so definately on target.

 

Our Ricoh account manager didn't even get a bid to us in time, and asked for an extension. As it done through a framework, we politely said "no" and made it clear the rules that govern the process.

 

PaperCut is part of this now and has also helped bring a great level of transparancy to the true printing costs.

 

Pete

[sparkeh]

We moved from Ricoh to Konica too and it was a good decision. We also have been using PaperCut for a while now and that definitely has a big impact.

[enjay]

4p/page for a copier seems like a lot - we're paying significantly less than that on ours, even for full colour.

 

Another vote for Papercut and MFDs. The Papercut client utility app is awesome too, as it gives people a visual reminder of how much they're printing. Amusingly, we also find the students telling the high-volume users "wow sir, you print LOADS more than Mr XYZ" which does make some staff re-think their print strategy.

[localzuk]

For a mono print? We pay around 0.3p per print. For colour, 2.95p. The pricing we're seeing for renewals is lower than this also. However, we print around 1.5m prints per year.

 

4p for colour wouldn't be too bad if you're pretty low volume, but you should be able to get better under one of the framework deals.