The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group
Costs of printing: A comparison
Tom Coleman

There are some costs to consider when choosing a printer, I quote them regularly to anyone who will listen. They are not absolute values, rather they are typical, average values, from the past few years. They are good enough to use generally but should be re-calculated with current data for any specific case.

These are the costs for black printing on standard 70 gsm paper for an average page with 2000 to 3000 characters per page. The calculations include the costs of consumables (electricity, paper and ink) and maintenance (cleaning, minor repairs and adjustments) but not depreciation. Nor do they include other costs such as labour or incidentals such as freeing paper jams or troubleshooting.

Cost to print a page
Dot-matrix 1.5 to 2 cents
Laser  7 to 10 cents
BubbleJet/InkJet  30 to 50 cents

(for convenience I will refer to BubbleJet and InkJet printers as jet printers)

Taking the lower figure in each case consider a typical situation printing ten pages a day. Let's say 50 pages per week for 50 weeks a year.

Printing costs per year

Dot-matrix  $37.50
Laser  $175.00
Jet  $750.00

An interesting fact becomes obvious immediately. You can purchase a low end ($600) laser printer and run it for a year for about the same cost as just running the ink jet.

Let's see how it works out over the depreciated life of the printer (that's three years). I will add in the purchase costs so that we can see what the total cost of owning and running the printer is over the three-year period. This assumes that the printer is worth nothing at the end of three years. Although that may not be true, it will not be worth much.

However the calculation does not include the purchase of a replacement printer. You will still have to find that money from somewhere when you start all over again.

Printer  Purchase 3 years running Total
Dot-matrix  $400  $112  $512
Laser  $600  $525  $1125
Jet  $350  $2250  $2600

In round figures a laser printer costs about twice as much as a dot-matrix to own and run for three years and a jet printer costs twice as much as a laser over the three year period, for the volume of printing assumed.

It will cost about the same amount to print one page a day on either a laser or jet printer, if you include the difference in purchase price in your calculation. Any less than one page a day, the jet printer is cheaper, any more and the laser comes out in front.

Looking at total costs, the jet printer looks like economic suicide.

Remember that these calculations are for black printing. A rough rule of thumb for calculating the cost for colour printing, is to multiply the cost for black printing by three or four.

Now we have a handle on the costs, let's look at the benefits of the different types of printers.

A typical 24-pin dot-matrix printer will do an adequate job of printing text, not quite good enough to use for a job application or a business letter, but more than adequate for draft copies of the great Australian novel.

Whilst most dot-matrix printer can produce a number of fonts they can not compete with the range offered by laser and jet printers.

Dot-matrix printers have limited colour capabilities and are usually regarded as a black-only printer. Dot-matrix printers also have limited graphics capability, especially for producing detailed or shaded pictures. They have some useful graphics functions but only at a very simple level. They are sometimes OK to use as a draft printer for graphics. Dot-matrix printers are suited to only the most primitive desktop publishing applications.

On the other hand, they are the most rugged of the three types of printers considered in this article, and will survive a lot of abuse. The technology is well developed, having been around for more than 20 years.

A laser printer produces the best print quality, has good graphics capability and resolution, but can be a bit costly if you are doing a lot of draft printing and test runs.

It is only recently that laser colour printers have started to come down in price. It will still cost you around $3000 for a colour laser printer. This puts them out of contention for most home or small business operations.

For most users a laser makes an excellent choice as a black-only printer. Laser printers support an almost unlimited variety of fonts, and are well suited to desktop publishing.

Because laser technology is an extension of photocopier technology, it is well developed and understood. Although laser printers that are moved frequently may develop problems, those that stay in one spot usually run for ever, or at least until they need more toner.

Jet printers provide a cheap entry to colour printing. Their print quality is almost as good as a laser printer's and a colour jet printer is much less expensive than a colour laser printer. Jet printers handle graphics very well. Don't be taken in by those beautiful photo quality images that the salesmen show you. They take 10 or 15 minutes to print and cost $2 or $3 per page. However they will do the job and nothing else will.

Like laser printers, jet printers support a huge variety of fonts. But they are not very robust and will not take rough handling. The technology is relatively new and is still developing.

Based on their high running costs, jet printers should be considered as a specialised printer for a special job. The low purchase price is seductive but that advantage is quickly lost on the high running costs.

So, when you choose a printer, you'll need to be prepared to sacrifice something, to compromise. If you sort the following features according to your priorities, your printer choice will just about be made for you.

  • Cost
  • Text quality
  • Graphic capability
  • Colour
  • Resolution
  • Shading
  • Fonts
  • Desktop publishing
T he only other consideration is the number of pages you will print per week.

If you absolutely must have colour, then a jet printer is the only one that will suit except in a limited number of circumstances or if you are prepared to spend enough to buy a colour laser printer. If you do not need colour then a jet printer may be eliminated on running cost.

If you are going to do any sort of desktop publishing you may want to try a method used by some commercial sites. They use a dot-matrix printer to print draft and test prints. Then print the final on a jet printer and send files to a commercial printer for the finished product.

At some point you will need to sit down and work out just what you are going to do with your printer. Colour is attractive and kids at school may suffer loss of peer status without a colour printer in the home. They usually lie about their computer gear anyway. That won't stop them from putting pressure on you to buy a status symbol.

Before you do, ask yourself:
  • How much colour printing do they need?
  • How much do you need?
  • How many draft colour prints are they going to make?
  • How many are you going to make?
E ventually you'll need to make a subjective decision based on the quality and type of print you want, then reconcile that with an objective decision about how much you want to spend in the long term.

Reprinted from the June 1998 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia

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