managing colour printing by the public

Hi,
 
We have received a grant from the government to install
colour laser
printers on the networks for the public. In our libraries,
we charge for
printing. Heretofore, we only provided black and white
copies. Now that
we have the option of colour the issue of charging different
rates
arises. The colour printer uses four toners (cyan, magenta,
yellow, and
black) whereas the black and white printer uses one toner.
This
presumably will not quadruple the cost.  Few colours will
require the
use of all four toners and four popular colours require only
one toner.
We are thinking of charging three times as much for a colour
copy as for
a black and white copy. Are our assumptions correct? Does
colour
printing cost approximately three times as much as black and
white
printing? We are only interested in recovering the cost of
printing, not
the cost of the printer.
 
Secondly, when a user clicks on print, we would like them to
be given
the option of choosing colour or black and white. Is there
any software
that will do this for us? At the moment the user has to go
into
properties and make the change here. It is difficult to
always remember
to do this and it is somewhat unfair to penalize someone for
this
oversight. In many of our libraries, the printer is at the
circulation
desk. The user goes to the circulation desk to receive their
copies.
This means that we do not need a print server solution. In
our larger
libraries we use LPT1. Is there cheap software that will
simply prompt
the user to choose colour or black and white copies?
 
Regards
John

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agus aon iatán a ghabhann leis agus is leis an duine/na
daoine
sin amháin a bhfuil siad seolta chucu a bhaineann siad. 
Mura seolaí thú, níl tú údaraithe an ríomhphost nó aon iatán

a ghabhann leis a léamh, a chóipáil ná a úsáid. 
Má tá an ríomhphost seo faighte agat trí dhearmad, 
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agus scrios ansin é le do thoil. 

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John,

One solution would be to have two printers available for
printing -- one being 
your new color printer and the other being a plain B&W.
Make the B&W the 
default printer, but have the color also available so that
people wanting to 
use it can select it from the print dialog box. That way you
are less likely to 
have people printing in color by mistake. You can even put
the price of the 
copies in the printer name so that they will know what they
are getting into 
when they select a printer.

We charge 10 cents for B&W copies and 25 for color at
our library, but have 
never done any kind of cost study. I'd be interested to
learn if someone has.

Bill Teschek
Assistant Director
Lane Memorial Library
2 Academy Ave.
Hampton, NH 03842
603.926.3368
bteschekhampton.lib.nh.us

John Fitzgibbon wrote:

> Hi,
>  
> We have received a grant from the government to install
colour laser
> printers on the networks for the public. In our
libraries, we charge for
> printing. Heretofore, we only provided black and white
copies. Now that
> we have the option of colour the issue of charging
different rates
> arises. The colour printer uses four toners (cyan,
magenta, yellow, and
> black) whereas the black and white printer uses one
toner. This
> presumably will not quadruple the cost.  Few colours
will require the
> use of all four toners and four popular colours require
only one toner.
> We are thinking of charging three times as much for a
colour copy as for
> a black and white copy. Are our assumptions correct?
Does colour
> printing cost approximately three times as much as
black and white
> printing? We are only interested in recovering the cost
of printing, not
> the cost of the printer.
>  
> Secondly, when a user clicks on print, we would like
them to be given
> the option of choosing colour or black and white. Is
there any software
> that will do this for us? At the moment the user has to
go into
> properties and make the change here. It is difficult to
always remember
> to do this and it is somewhat unfair to penalize
someone for this
> oversight. In many of our libraries, the printer is at
the circulation
> desk. The user goes to the circulation desk to receive
their copies.
> This means that we do not need a print server solution.
In our larger
> libraries we use LPT1. Is there cheap software that
will simply prompt
> the user to choose colour or black and white copies?
>  
> Regards
> John
> 
>
************************************************************
******* 
> T eolas at probhideach agus rnda sa romhphost seo 
> agus aon iatn a ghabhann leis agus is leis an duine/na
daoine
> sin amhin a bhfuil siad seolta chucu a bhaineann siad. 
> Mura seola th, nl t daraithe an romhphost n aon iatn 
> a ghabhann leis a lamh, a chipil n a sid. 
> M t an romhphost seo faighte agat tr dhearmad, 
> cuir an seoltir ar an eolas thr aischur romhphoist 
> agus scrios ansin  le do thoil. 
> 
> This e-mail and any attachment contains information
which is 
> private and confidential and is intended for the
addressee 
> only. If you are not an addressee, you are not
authorised 
> to read, copy or use the e-mail or any attachment. 
> If you have received this e-mail in error, please
notify 
> the sender by return e-mail and then destroy it. 
>
************************************************************
*********
> _______________________________________________
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> Web4libwebjunction.org
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While we only have a B/W printer, a few months back, I
posted a
similiar "what do you charge" question and
remember being amazed at
the costs.  B/W averaged 10-20c a page, but colors averaged
$1-$1.50 a
page.  I remember someone replied that their colors were $3
per page!

Hope this helps,
~michele~

--
**************)0(**************
Mrs. C. Michele Haytko
Montgomery County-
      Norristown Public Library
MC-NPL Computer Lab
1001 Powell Street
Norristown, PA 19401
610-278-5100 Ext. 141

"Be the change you wish to see in the world."
-Gandhi
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Our campus recently looked a bit at charges for printing
across campus labs.
We found that on our own campus there is a very wide range
of charges, from
free to quite expensive.  Correspondingly there is a range
of reasons given
for the chosen charges, from cost recovery to saving trees
to subsidizing
particular instructional uses of printing or using low cost
printing as a
way to attract users to other services.  Those units who use
cost recovery
as a criterion report widely different prices, suggesting
that the details
of what printer you choose, what your volume is, how you
account for
maintenance and support, and how you manage the service can
have a big
impact on your actual costs.

Costs for b&w printing have been fairly stable for
several years, but the
cost of color printing and copying is falling quite quickly,
mostly due to
economies of scale and reductions in fixed costs rather than
cost per page. 

Note that if you are doing color printing you may also want
to consider
various specialized color printing services (large formats,
transparencies,
glossy stock, etc.) which often have wildly different costs.
 Also, toner
costs vary widely depending on type of print job -- a web
page with 5% spot
color is very different from a full page photo.

You might also look at commercial providers for insight. 
Our local Kinko's
charges $.08 for single sided b&w on
8.5"x11" plain paper, and $.89 for
single sided color.  I believe that most universities can
get their actual
costs down substantially below that for color, but I suspect
the
differential between mono and color is currently more like
5x than the
proposed 3x.

JQ Johnson, Director                 Office: 115F Knight
Library 
Center for Educational Technologies  mailto:jqjuoregon.edu
1299 University of Oregon            phone: 1-541-346-1746;
-3485 fax
Eugene, OR 97403-1299                http://darkwing.uor
egon.edu/~jqj/

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Sometimes you can also have the same printer set up twice on
each 
computer; configure the default printer as b&w, and the
second instance 
of it as color, so that could be chosen if the patron so
desires.

Cindy

-- 
_________________________
Cindy Murdock
Network Administrator
Meadville Public Library | Crawford County Federated Library
System
meadvillelibrary.org | ccfls.org
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