"Arthur Entlich" wrote in message
news:fw1Di.125315$rX4.7991@pd7urf2no...
| Although not yet available in Canada, and without comment about
| reliability or quality or other issues, Kodak is trying to break the
| business model currently in use, by charging more for the hardware and
| lowering prices on the consumables considerably. So far they haven't
| seems to make the splash I was hoping for (I don't know how they feel
| about it).
|
| It might be interesting for a company/retailer to offer some type of
| consumable contract, where you would buy the hardware which came with a
| one or more year consumable contract for a flat fee (depending upon the
| item) and that would allow the person to buy consumables at a steep
| discount. The only problem would be people abusing it by buying one
| contract and using it to supply consumables for many machines which they
| didn't buy the contract for.
|
| However, that is almost beginning to sound like a lease program as some
| companies like Xerox has offered on their high end copiers...

Much of Xerox's lease business model was based on patents. When the patents
expired the lease model went away as a viable option for Xerox.