A Licence to Print Money

Not many of us have considered printing money; it’s illegal for one thing. But yet we all have printers and many of us, in small and large businesses alike, could save a tidy pile of cash by paying more attention to how we print.

It’s hard to deny that printing is an expensive game; the price of playing not only burns a hole in your wallet but also has an impact on the environment. Yet despite the expense involved, everybody plays the printing game; whether it’s printing a few pages here and there at home, or printing thousands of pages per day as part of a business. There’s no getting around it; printing is somewhat of a necessity, but that doesn’t mean that it necessarily has to be as expensive we make it. Here I discuss a few money-saving tips regarding the purchasing and use of printers.

Not many of us have considered printing money; it’s illegal for one thing. But yet we all have printers and many of us, in small and large businesses alike, could save a tidy pile of cash by paying more attention to how we print.

It’s hard to deny that printing is an expensive game; the price of playing not only burns a hole in your wallet but also has an impact on the environment. Yet despite the expense involved, everybody plays the printing game; whether it’s printing a few pages here and there at home, or printing thousands of pages per day as part of a business. There’s no getting around it; printing is somewhat of a necessity, but that doesn’t mean that it necessarily has to be as expensive we make it. Here I discuss a few money-saving tips regarding the purchasing and use of printers.

A common mistake, made by homes and businesses alike when buying and running printers, is to focus too strictly on the initial purchase and start-up prices of the machines. It’s an understandable thing to do; printers can be horrifyingly expensive, especially when many people take the printed-page for granted. However, what people save on initial costs, they very often lose quickly in a variety of other, subtler costs of printing; the total cost of ownership, as it is known, is more important than the initial purchase price. General Manager of Middle East, Oki Printing Solutions, John Ross, advises buyers to “consider the price and yield of consumables beside the initial buying price”. Many small businesses buy cheap inkjet printers, for example, yet soon find that the running costs of these machines soon adds up to far more than the price of the printer itself! Furthermore, it should come as no surprise that cheap printers tend to break down more often than their more expensive alternatives. What is not immediately obvious, however, is that these cheap machines often cost just as much to be serviced, despite their tendency to crash! As such, it is also worth considering the service scheme that is available with your printer; it will probably break down sooner or later and you don’t want to be stung with a huge service charge or stranded with a lack of support.

Instead, consider spending a bit more time deciding which printer will be most appropriate for your needs and spending a bit more money up-front to get it. To start with, get a firm idea of what it is that you are going to use your printer for. It sounds obvious, but often the price difference between a simple printer and its faster or multi-functioning cousin can shock buyers into purchasing what they assume is a cheap alternative that often turns out to cost them just as much in the long run, but without the benefits. If, for example, your office needs a scanner, a fax machine and a printer; consider buying a more expensive printer with all these functions, instead of each machine individually. This is also true for the volume of printing you are expecting to do; it you could easily find yourself spending extra money on a super-fast printer to get through the work as quickly as possible, just to discover that it costs you a fortune to keep replacing the ink. John Ross explains that “If you’re printing 10 pages or more per day, that is almost 300 pages per month and at that rate you’d be replacing an ink tank almost every month. But with the C3400, featuring a 1,000 page toner cartridges and drum life of 15,000 pages you’d be changing toner about three times a year. Also, it would be four and a half years before you would need to change a drum”. The key with buying a printer, as with most aspects of life, is compromise; decide what the main features you need are and buy appropriately, even if the initial purchase price is higher.

When it comes to actually printing, there are a variety of simple ways to save money and paper. Firstly, get used to previewing work before you print it; this is especially important when you are about to run off a thousand copies! It takes a couple of extra minutes to use the print preview function and check for mistakes that could save you a lot of re-printing. Furthermore, when printing things for reference, e-mails or initial versions of documents; consider using printing a draft copy instead of a high-quality version. This uses up less ink or toner on documents that do not need to be glorious to behold and, since cartridges are one of the major costs of printing, this strategy will save you a lot of money!

To summarise, it is easy to save money on printing by making little changes to the way that you print and the type of printer you invest it. Spending more money up front on a quality printer that suits your purposes is a much better plan than settling for a cheap alternative. Make sure that your printer comes with a service plan and is capable of doing everything that you need it to do, from high-speed to colour printing. When it comes to the actual printing; spend a bit more time checking work through and, when you do print, consider whether what you’re printing really needs to be done in super-high-quality mode, or whether a draft version will suffice.

The bottom line is spend more time and less money; more time deciding on the right printer and previewing work will save you money in the long run.

Frank Abbot is an expert in Oki printers. For more information about printers and printing visit http://www.okibuyer.co.uk

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