Individual printers v. Network printer

[Jim Richards]

Either way, color printing is going to be expensive.  As far as how we are going
to handle the people who only want black and white copies, we're working on
that.  My main concern is that the inkjets are not going to hold up.  Every
inkjet that I've ever owned personally or worked on within a company (except for
the old HP ThinkJets) has died a grueling death after a very short period of
time.  I have yet to have seen a good, heavy-duty, inkjet printer that can take
the abuse for under $300.  Sure, you can buy a more expensive inkjet but then how
can you justify spending $500 or more for each machine in the lab?  Maybe it's
just me, but I just can see using a $300 inkjet for anything more than home use.

Jim Richards    Network Administrator
Naperville Public Libraries

Dan Lester wrote:

> At 11:28 AM 12/30/97 -0800, Jim Richards wrote:
> >We use a networked printer in our word processing lab.  We are planning on
> >setting up an Internet lab very soon and I am considering doing the same for
> >one reason.  I know that most of our patrons are going to want to print in
> >color so I want to set up a networked color laser printer instead of
> having to
> >deal with a bunch of inkjets.
>
> Most interesting.  Either the Naperville Public Libraries, or else the
> citizens of Naperville, must be pretty well heeled.  Actually, both will
> need to be.  Have you checked out the cost of printing to color inkjets or
> laser printers, or the cost of the color supplies for inkjets?
>
> Also, even if you have a way of billing/collecting funds (assuming you
> can't afford to give away all these color copies, of course), how are you
> going to deal with the person like me who wants to get cheap printing of
> black and white.  If you charge a dollar for a color print, and I only want
> a page of black and white text, I'm not going to gladly pay more than a
> dime for MY page.  I imagine one could develop a software solution for the
> differential pricing and printing, but I've not seen one on the market yet.
>
> I'll be interested in learning of your implementation of it and the issues
> that arise.
>
> cheers
>
> dan
>
> Dan Lester, 3577 East Pecan, Boise, Idaho 83716-7115 USA 208-383-0165
> dan at 84.com   http://www.84.com/  (check out our 1997 holiday letter)
>
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