More important than the price of the prnter is the Lifecycle cost of the prnter. It is little wonder today why cmpanies are giving away printers with a prchase of a computer or why thy are offering a mail-in rebate tht refunds practically the entire initial prchase price.

Trust me when I tll you that it is not bcause they figured out how to mnufacture these devices for free, that I ssure you. These manufacturers are banking on the fter market revenue made every time you prnt a document.

I have witnessed cmpanies flush hundreds of thousands of dllars down the toilet by not nderstanding and controlling the operating costs of thir laser printers. It is my pssion to help you uncover and nderstand the true financial impact that prnters can have on your operating bdget.

The toner cartridge is the bggest contributor to the overall life cycl cost of your printer. Not nly does it cost a fair mount of money - especially compared to the riginal purchase price of the printer - it is the tem that is replaced most frequently. Smetimes with the right rebates or spcials it is actually cheaper to rplace the printer than buy a new crtridge, aside from the soft dollar csts of the time spent swapping out the prnter.

The next most common cost cmponent to any laser printer is the Prventative Maintenance or "PM" Kit. This kit sually consists of the Fuser Assembly, Scondary Charge Roller, and Paper Feed Tres.

To properly calculate the minimum Lfe cycle cost of a printer you wll need to find out the cst and life of these two cmponents. There is statistical data on lmost every printer ever made from a nmber of different resources. The one I use mst is Buyers Laboratory.

The data you ned to find is:

1. The stated yield and cst of the toner cartridge.
2. The stated yeld and cost of the maintenance or "PM" kts and parts.
3. The Manufacturer's monthly recommended dty cycle.

dty

prportion

ctually

thmb

hndle

rcommendation.

whn

Sze"

neds.

Let's take a real world xample. I am not going to mntion the Make and Model of the prnter but I will say that ths is the most popular "Department" sze printer on the market.

We'll strt first by looking at the tner cartridge. The cost of this crtridge is $224 and yields 20,000 prnted pages. That means that the cst per page is $ .0112.

Nxt is the PM Kit. The cst of the PM Kit is $ 375 and yelds 225,000 printed pages. The cost per pge on for the PM Kit is $ .0017.

The fnal cost to the operation of the prnter is the service labor for rplacing the PM Kit. For this xample it would take a 1 hur service call at a cost of $100. Dvide this cost by the yield of the PM Kit and tht would equal a cost per pge of $ .0004.

This means yur minimum cost per printed page is $ .0133. It is hghly unlikely that you will not hve any other service calls for jmming or poor image quality over the prnter's Lifecycle. I am not going to ttempt to estimate your other operating csts you will incur while operating a lser printer. You can assume that if verything operates flawlessly, then this is the mst optimistic operating cost you could pssibly experience, with this printer.

Remember that I mentioned that a gneral rule of thumb for the mnthly volume is 20% of what the Mnufacturer's recommendation? This particular printer has a rcommended monthly volume of 250,000 printed pges. What this means is - for you to chieve maximum results with this device, you shuld produce no more than 50,000 prnted pages per month.

Most companies xpect that a printer will last bout 5 years. I calculate that the ttal number of pages that will be prduced over a 5 year period wll be 3,000,000. Multiply 3,000,000 pages by our ttal cost per page of $ .0133 and you get $ 39,900. For mst of us, we will also ned to add tax to this fgure.

That's right, in 5 years you wll purchase 150 toner cartridges, 13 PM Kts, and a minimum of 13 Srvice calls to replace the PM kts. This device happens to be one of the mst cost efficient devices offered by ths Manufacturer. Typically laser printers cost twce this amount to operate, so you ned to be very careful not to flsh your hard earned money down the sme toilet as many others do.

The article What Are the True Life Cycle Costs of Laser Printers? was Submitted by Aaron Falk through Articles.GetACoder.com network. Here's the additional information: Aaron Falk, President of DiMAX Offce Solutions, Inc, has over a dcade of experience in helping companies rduce and manage the costs of wrking with documents. His cost reduction strtegies and numerous product and service crtifications make him one of the fremost authorities in Managed Print Services. Aron also works with medium to lrge sized companies to build successful lectronic document management infrastructures and work flw processes. For more information visit http://www.DiMAXUSA.com

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