What’s Your TCO?

There are many acronyms and abbreviations for almost everything in today’s business vocabulary, but “TCO,” which stands for “Total Cost of Ownership,” and how it relates to your office printing, packs a lot of definition into those three simple letters.

The total cost of ownership or TCO is more than just what your office machine alone costs you. It includes the resource or “soft” costs that this piece of equipment brings with it once you plug it in and begin utilizing it.

TCO = Machine + Supplies + Repairs/Service

Depending on what your office needs may be, choosing a machine that fits into your print environment and your budget at the moment is usually a top priority. However, over a printer’s “lifetime,” it will require regular maintenance, supplies (consumables), and possibly regular repairs and maintenance.

However, if you’re not looking down the road at what this machine will end up costing you throughout its operational life, you may want to look again.

Example:

A new inkjet printer, which may only cost you $199.00, uses cartridges with a yield of about 400 pages.

That cartridge in today’s market costs you approximately $ 30.00 each.

Based on a page printed at 5% coverage (a brief office memo printed in only black and white), each printed page costs you $.075. ($30.00/400=.075) The machine itself was so inexpensive that if it breaks, you’ll most likely throw it away and buy another one because inkjet printers typically cost more to fix than to replace.

A new black and white laserjet printer may cost you up to $500.00 or more, and the cartridges, on average, cost about $150.00.

However, at that same 5% of coverage, these cartridges yield up to 10,000 pages each!

That’s only a penny and a half per page!

The upside is that toner cartridges don’t need to be replaced as frequently, and they won’t dry out if you don’t use them every day. Best of all, they’ll only cost you $.015 per page!

It would take $750.00 worth of inkjet cartridges to produce the same amount of pages as it would on a laserjet cartridge for only $150.00.

If your office is printing on average at least 2,000 pages per week, that’s $30.00 worth of laserjet toner.

If you’re using an inkjet machine (black only), that same number of pages costs you $150.00! That’s almost what you paid for the machine!

Every printer has its place…

If you’re buying a printer for home use, an inkjet may be a better choice since you’re most likely not producing more than 10-20 prints per week.

But for a busy office environment, it makes sense to invest in a laserjet printer as you’ll end up saving hundreds if not thousands of dollars over the useful life of that machine.

Laser Line specializes in keeping your new or existing laser printers in top condition. With every toner replacement, our technicians will clean and check your machine to provide preventative maintenance that will save you money in the long run. And get this…when you purchase your toner supplies through one of our comprehensive, contract-free programs, we’ll provide that added service absolutely FREE!

Call Laser Line today to discuss your business needs. We can recommend the right size machine for your business printing environment. There is no one size fits all when it comes to printers but for busy office environments, laser is the best way to go. Call 410-636-1700.