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Costs of printing

515 views 8 replies 7 participants last post by  notjustmamie 
#1 ·
I have a laser printer, which has a cost for the toner of somewhere under 2 cents per page.

I was looking today at getting an inkjet printer so I could print homeschooling materials in color, and was appalled at the price of the ink. It looks like it would cost between 8 and 10 cents to print a color page -- and I'm not talking about a photo, but just a page with color graphics on it.

How do you wrap your mind around this cost? Do you just factor it into your homeschooling budget?
 
#2 ·
I've never done a lot of printing related to homeschooling, although I know some do... but there are lots of fairly cheap ways to get ink for an inkjet printer. I buy remanufactured cartridges on ebay - I think the store is called Abacus, but there are many - and that brings my price down to about .03 a page, according to their specs. I usually just use black ink and fast print, which uses less ink...

In the past, I've also used ink refill kits, which are less than half the cost of a remanufactured cartridge (actually, Walgreens occasionally throws out free coupons for them).
 
#3 ·
This is how my husband convinced me to stop copying/printing and using more "workbooks" for that kind of activity, it's most often cheaper, even if you have to buy new for each child.
 
#4 ·
About a year ago I purchased a black laser printer. My well used printer/copier/scanner (pcs) stop printing. The scanner worked. I looked at what I printed and what I bought the most (black ink). My scanner died and I bought a new PCS because it was cheaper to do it that way than just buy a scanner. I had never done much color printing for school. I did mostly black.

The few things that I do in color I will split the print job. Color sheets on the PCS and the rest on the laser printer. We do refill our ink carterages and that saves money.

I personally think you need to sit back and look at what you would actually be making colored copies of. It is not that much compared to what you do the black. As your kids get older you most likely will find that you need a scanner. Having two printers was the most cost effective things I have done.

You can get buy color laser printers. The intial out lay is expensive, though. And then you might find later you need to spend money on a scanner which is cheaper to buy as a pcs that you can use as a copier. Or scan it in and send it to the laser printer for printing.
 
#5 ·
We had an inkjet, but when we went to replace the ink cartridge, it was a whole 4 bucks more to buy a new printer WITH cartridges! That really ticked me off, so we spent an extra 80bucks and got a colour laser printer instead. Ours was about 180 Australian dollars and has been a great investment. We've had it probably 6months and love it... it's supposed to get about 4000pages of b&w printed before needed a new toner cart. I can't remember how many colour pages, but it's got way more colour toner left than b&w so it lasts a LONG time. The cartridges are about 60-70 bucks I think but imo you get a lot more for your $.
 
#6 ·
Thanks all for your comments.

I did go out and buy a color printer, after carefully comparing the ink costs of various models.
I decided to get one with an integrated scanner, because although I already have a good scanner, the integrated scanner can be used like a photocopier, which will be useful for me.

I wound up getting an HP Officejet 6500 with wireless networking, currently available at Costco for $140. A full set of high-capacity replacement ink cartridges is about $70. The whole decision was really hard for me -- so many factors to consider!

I have no plans to get rid of the laser printer, so I'm still able to print things that are just black and white on the more economical printer. And I am really enjoying printing things like pattern block mats and game pieces in color!
 
#7 ·
Does anyone has any B&W or color laser printer recommendations?
 
#8 ·
I've been happy with my Brother 2170n laser printer, which I've had for a couple of years. The 2170w, which has wireless as well as wired networking, is available for $100 from Amazon right now.
 
#9 ·
I also wanted to point out that if you are mostly printing things out for one-time worksheet-type use, rather than photos or projects that you will be saving on the long term (not just for your files), you can dramatically reduce the ink you use by printing in "draft" or "fast" quality. Most printers also have an option to manually adjust the ink use and you can turn it down. This wouldn't be appropriate for stuff you want to look really nice, but if it's just a sheet of equations or a fill-in map that you'll only use one day, it does stretch your ink cartridges quite a bit.

Oh, and also, probably everybody already knows this, but don't replace your cartridges as soon as the computer tells you to. There is still quite a bit of ink left. Wait until the printer starts fading and you'll know you've actually used up all the ink in the cartridge.
 
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