I've had numerous lasers and inkjets. For high volume text or b/w printing,
I agree that a laser is a better choice. Both from a speed and durability
standpoint. But, don't be fooled into thinking that you can print the rated
7000 - 10000 pages from a toner cartridge if there is more than minimal
coverage on the page. The yield figures are based upon 5% coverage. What is
5% coverage? IIRC, it is based on text and is about 300 upper case 10 point
H's. 5% of a standard size sheet would be a block about 2" x 2.8". That's
not much. I've owned several print shops and in addition to using the
lasers for DTP, we did a lot of custom training manuals which could only be
done from a laser as they didn't lend themselves to offset printing. I'd
have been thrilled to have gotten that kind of page yield from a toner
cartridge. At 5% text coverage, a 16oz bottle of ink will yield more than
the 1300 pages you questioned and the cost per page would be a small
fraction of a penny. For you to make a global statement that lasers are
less costly to run than inkjets isn't what I experienced. For the type of
printing I now do, which is digital photo printing (not something a b/w
laser can do) and forms generation and signs for my store, if I was using
OEM ink cartridges every time one ran out, the cost would be prohibitive.
However, with refilling, the cost of printing an entire sheet - full
coverage photo, not just text - is less than 2¢ per page. And no, my lasers
weren't the cheap to buy, expensive to run ones. I've had HP 3's, 4's and a
5000 and Lexmark Optra S models.
--
Ron Cohen
"Warren Block" wrote in message
...
Ron Cohen wrote:
A laser is typically faster than an inkjet for text printing and there
won't
be any problems from smudging due to moisture. As to cost, laser
printers
are economical if you aren't printing large solids or entire pages of
single
spaced text.
Even if you are, they are still far less costly to run than inkjets.
Page yield is usually based on 5% coverage which isn't a lot.
But it really isn't too far from what you get with a normal page of
text.
As to inkjets, there are fast inkjets on the market such as the Canon
i860.
It will have the added advantage of color output if that would be
needed. I
refill my Canon inkjets and the cost is much lower per page than for my
laser.
It's one of those cheap-to-buy but expensive-to-run ones, isn't it?
You can get a 16oz bottle of black refill ink for around $20 or so.
That much ink will print far more documents than a standard laser toner
cartridge.
A customer gets between 7,000 and 10,000 pages from HP C4127X toner
cartridges at $105 each. That comes to 1.5 cents per page at most. Do
you really get more than 1300 pages out of the $20 ink bottle?
--
Warren Block * Rapid City, South Dakota * USA
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