But be careful to check cost of consumables. The same game that is
played with inkjet printers has now hit the laser market and the color
laser market in particular.
As a n example, last week a chain was offering the Konica Minolta 2400W
color laser printer for only $250 CAN after rebates. That seemed almost
too good to be true, and, really, it was.
It came with a set of toner cartridges rated at 1500 copies at 5% each.
The Toner cartridges alone sell here for $89, however, the black is not
available as a separate 1500 version. It is only sold that way in a
"set" of cartridges. Otherwise the black is $89 for a 4500 sheet at 5%
yield. The 4500 sheet at 5% toner cartridges sell for under twice as
much as the 1500 sheet do, so it is not great economy to buy the 1500
sheet ones. I suppose refilling is an option.
The drum, which is good for about 11-12K color copies, again at 5%
coverage per ink color, costs almost $200. Without going into the
details of my calculations, I figured out a few things. The printer is
basically "free', you are paying or the consumables, which still cost
more than the printer and consumables. The toner set (1500 copies) is
about $400 CAN. The drum is another $200 CAN, so the printer costs $250
and gives you the printer plus $600 worth of consumable parts. The
rebate is good for 3 printers per household or business, so you might as
well buy three machines at that price for parts and consumables alone.
However, here's where it got interesting. I figured in my type of
usage, which is mainly nearly full bleed photos, the toner use would be
about 35-55% of each color. When I figured it all out, the cost per
copy came to about $.75-$1.00 per copy, which is more than i pay to
outsource the work, and once you get the printer and have to refill the
cartridges, the cost per copy goes up, unless you use a generic refill
toner powder, because new cartridges cost more than the originals that
came with the printer, inclusive of the printer.
Art
