Printers

Printer Types

Today’s printers utilize 4 different technologies; dot matrix, thermal, Inkjet and laser. Brief comments about each technology follow:

·         Dot Matrix - Today’s fastest dot matrix printer (IBM 6400 Model i2S Printer) costs almost $10,000 and prints at 36 pages
    per   minute. The advantage is that it is very cheap to operate (just 1/5^th of a penny per page), but the resolution is poor.
    This technology is used to print receipts or long reports on fanfold paper. They’re noisy too. Today’s laser printers print
    much faster for far less cost.

·         Thermal – This technology requires special paper and is more expensive to use. Mostly you will find thermal printers in
    use printing bar code labels, but there are other uses such as color dye sublimation to produce color photographs.
    Thermal paper has a tendency to break down quickly and is not good for permanent storage.

·        Inkjet – Inkjet printers today are sold at a loss so that profits may be made from the sale of inkjet cartridges. Inkjet printers
   are slower than laser printers. The fastest Inkjet printer is the Hewlett-Packard HP Business Inkjet 2300dtn Printer – it sells
   for $900 and prints 26 black and white pages per minute and 22 color pages per minute. Compared to laser printers, inkjet
   printers are far more expensive to operate.

·        Laser – Laser printers are the most popular choice for business use, and you should be using laser printers everywhere.
   They offer the fastest and most affordable printing option. The fastest laser printer is the HP LaserJet 9000hns printer – it
   sells for $7,800 and prints 50 black and white pages per minute. However many printers can produce 45 pages per minute
   for far less cost. For example, the hp LaserJet 4300 prints 45 B&W pages per minute for just $1,400.

Printer Market

We analyzed the printer market in early 2004 and determined that there were almost 450 different laser and inkjet printers available in the marketplace ranging in price from $40 to more than $20,000. With so many options to choose from, choosing the right printer can be a daunting task. Here is a summary of our analysis:

New in 2005

In 2005, industry analyst Gartner proclaimed that shipments of printers, copiers, fax machines and multifunction products in the United States increased 11.1 percent in 2004, but end-user spending declined 3.5 percent to $20.5 billion. Photo printers and color laser devices performed well. Color copier/printer multifunction products led the U.S. market in 2004, with unit shipments growing more than 62 percent compared with 2003. Color page printer shipments grew 50 percent year over year.  Inkjet printer unit shipments in the United States grew 7.3 percent year over year in the third quarter of 2004. U.S. unit shipments of inkjet all-in-ones increased 16 percent year over year. 

Printer Brands

Worldwide printer sales amount to almost $8 billion annually based on the sale of approximately 24 million printers – therefore we can estimate that the average selling price for a printer is about $333. While there are dozens of companies world wide that manufacture printers, in 2003 HP was the dominant company with 52.6% of the worldwide printer market. Lexmark International Group was second with 21.8 percent, followed by Epson, which had 13.9 percent, and Canon, with 7.7 percent. These four companies control 95% of the world wide printer market. Surprisingly powerhouse companies such as Xerox, Samsung, Tektronix, and IBM are virtually non players in this market. Recently Dell Computers entered the printer market as well by rebadging proven Lexmark models. Dell’s laser printer line is shown below:

Printer Features

As you evaluate printers, the key features you should be aware of are as follows:

• Page Per Minute (PPM) – The number of pages printed per minute range from 1 to 50 for business grade printers. The faster the better. Many people tell me that “speed does not matter”, which is a ridiculous statement. Given the same price, wouldn’t you always choose the faster printer? Of course you would. Take our word for it and purchase a 45 ppm printer, you simply will not regret it.
   
• Cost Per Page (CPP) – The cost per page is really the more important factor to evaluate. Older printers such as the HP LaserJet 5 printed documents at a cost of approximately 2.5 cents per page before paper cost, while the HP LaserJet 4300 costs just .8 cents per page before paper costs. Based on these numbers, each printed page from the HP LaserJet 4300 saves 1.7 cents, or $85 per box of paper (5,000 sheets). At this rate of savings, a new HP 4300 which costs about $1,400 today, will pay for itself in just 16 boxes of paper. In the meantime, you will enjoy faster printing and higher resolution as well.
   
• Resolution (DPI) – Today’s resolution standard for laser printers is basically 1200 by 1200 dots per inch. However inkjet printers are capable of achieving much higher resolutions up to 5760 x 1440 DPI. The trade off is speed.
   
• Color – Color printing is the fastest trend in printers, and the cost of color printing continues to fall. For example, Xerox claims that its color printers cost about 10 cents a page before paper costs for its Phaser 6200, 7300, 7700, and 8200 printers. Other color printers report that their cost per printed page ranges from 2.5 cents before paper for the Canon printer, to as high as 50 cents per page for other color printers.
   
• Oversized Printing – Some printers can handle oversized paper, 11 inch by 17 inch for example. These printers will cost much more.
   
• Duplex Printing – Some printers can turn a paper over and print on the reverse side automatically. Usually duplex devices are add-on attachments to laser printers and they typically cost from $200 to $1,000.
   
• Collating & Stapling – Some printers can collate reports and even staple them. Depending upon the type of output you produce and the quantities you print, this can be a great savings or a complete waste.
   
• Printer Memory – All laser printers have memory, and as you might expect, adding more memory to your printer yields benefits. However you will typically only see those benefits when printing large documents or when several heavy users share a printer. For the casual user, the base installed memory is usually sufficient to meet your needs.
   

Printer Advice & Tips

It is impossible to make a specific printer recommendation because there are so many printers and so many different types of printer needs in the marketplace. However here are our best pieces of advice regarding printers.

1. Network Connection – Never connect a printer through the parallel port on the back of your computer. Instead, always hook your printer up as a node on your network. It will perform much faster, sometimes 50 times faster when printing large documents with heavy graphics.
    

2. Separate Laser & Color – It is better to purchase one laser printer to meet your black and white printing needs, and a separate inkjet printer for your color needs. You will save money up front and over the long haul with this approach.
    

3. HP Brand – We like to recommend HP printers because they are very compatible, and the drivers are probably already preinstalled on your computers.
    

4. Top Business Printer – For high end laser printing, we recommend the HP 4300 dtn.
    

HP 4350dtnsl

HP 4350dtnsl Print speed, black (pages per minute) - Up to 55 ppm 3 trays, 1100pg input, 800pg output 750 down/50 face up First page out, black - Less than 8 secs Processor speed - 460 MHz Recommended monthly volume, maximum 250,000 pages Duplex printing -             Automatic (standard) 96 MB RAM std. upgradeable to 512MB, HP Jet direct 10/100Base-TX print server card, additional 500-sheet tray, and duplex printing accessory. Optional 20GB HD Dimensions  (w x d x h) - 16.4 x 20.9 x 19.2 in Weight - 74 lb Toner cost $149 but lasts 10,000 pages 2004 Street Price - $2,200

I actually purchased the earlier model of this same printer for my own use at the office in early 2004, so you can see that I put my money where my mouth is.

5. Top Color Printer – For color printing we recommend the Epson Stylus CX6400.
    

    6.   Top Power Printing – For high performance printing, we recommend the HP LaserJet 9000hns.

   7.    Ink Refills – We generally recommend against refills. The ink nozzle built into most printer cartridges is not meant to be run for
          refill after refill. When you replace your ink cartridge, you also replace your old nozzle with a brand new one. Each time you refill
          a cartridge, you keep using the same old nozzle. This can be especially important if you're trying to print out photographs.

8. Printer Set Up – You can set up the same printer multiple times in your printer dialog box, each time with different settings. One option may produce landscape results while another produces draft quality results. Just a thought.
    

9. Shop The Web – When searching for the lowest prince for a printer, use the shopping procedures outlined in our Desktop Computer section in Chapter 2. You will typically save 20% to 25%.
    

10. Printing Web Pages – When printing a web page, here are two tips. First with some printers, you should check the “scale to fit” box under printing preferences so that your printer will not cut off the edge of the document when printing. Also, under page set up, remove any header or footer controls if you don’t want that information to print on the page.

11. Print from Folder – You can actually print multiple files without opening them by selecting them in a folder using the CTRL key, and right mouse clicking. This will automatically print to the default printer, so make sure that you set the correct default printer prior to using this action. This dialog box is shown below.

12. Print E-Mail – Multiple e-mails can also be printed using the technique described above.

Conclusion

Printer technology has always been very good, but today’s printers make yesterday’s printers obsolete. Throw your HP 3s, 4s, 5s, and 6s in the trash can and step up to the newer technology. It’s time.

Links

IDC: HP printer business on a roll  - http://news.com.com/2100-1001_3-985917.html
HP leads in soft printer market - http://news.com.com/2100-1001_3-975514.html?tag=st_rn
Dell Will Find HP's Printer Act Hard To Follow- http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=21130
Reliability & Service Report Card - http://www2.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,112915,pg,11,00.asp
The True Cost of Printing - http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1199746,00.asp
PC Magazine Printer Review - http://www.pcmag.com/category2/0,4148,10,00.asp
Color Printing Solution - http://www.oki.com/en/otr/194/downloads/otr-194-R08.pdf
Spotlight on Business Printing - http://www.qtech.com.au/current/q_specials/Spotlight%20On%20FEB.pdf
Top Printers of 2003 - http://asia.cnet.com/reviews/hardware/printers/0,39001759,39163059,00.htm

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