October 10, 2005

Printing Photos In the Office: Watch the $

Although color printing vendors like HP, Lexmark, Xerox and Dell would want you to do all of your color printing in the office using their color printing technology keep a look at the costs and carefully analyze how often you print and what size you print.

The NY Times writes The catch is that after you make an initial investment, you are going to pay at least 28 cents a print, if you believe the manufacturers' math. It could be closer to 50 cents a print if you trust the testing of product reviewers at Consumer Reports.

In the meantime, the price of printing a 4-by-6-inch snapshot at a retailer's photo lab, like those inside a Sam's Club, is as low as 13 cents. Snapfish.com, an online mail-order service, offers prints for a dime each if you prepay. At those prices, why bother printing at home?

I love my Lexmark color laser printer, but I've been thinking of going to a commercial printer for some printing jobs. It's easy to instinctively print reams of color prints and forget that it costs about $80 - $100 for each of the four ink cartridges in their.

If you need 5,000 prints of something throughout the year and its going to stay the same it might be cheaper to have a commercial printer print it for you.

Read the full NY Times article here.

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