TCPglobal - news, views and issues on total cost of printing

Issue #0314/1 - Lexmark offers UK buyers an Easter present in a clearance sale – worth up to 23 percent ‘while stocks last’.

In a round of special offers that essentially represents a clearance sale on several products, Lexmark has announced reductions on ink jet printer and multifunction products, ‘while stocks last’, as follows:

Issue #0314/2 - Taking a leaf out of the Minolta QMS book, in addition to the special offers above, Lexmark is currently offering free black cartridges with purchases of two printer models – one laser and one ink jet. The products concerned are the T420 laser printer and the top end X5190Pro ink jet All-in-One device.

Issue #0314/3 - Offering users higher print speeds, faster processors, improved first page to print speeds, increased duty cycles and a new high capacity (32,000 page) mono print cartridge, Lexmark has revamped the majority of its laser printer and mfp product range – all brought to market at a lower cost.

Issue #0314/4 - Print and copy volumes can be hard to establish. Estimates of cut sheet paper usage run to trillions of sheets annually – not all of which is used in an office environment. However, something that is certain is that there has been a steady shift over the last few years from copy volume to print volume because of the ground gained by digital copiers and their ability to be used as printers as well as copiers. We can see that, in the workgroup environment, network connectivity of copy machines is running at 50 to 60 percent and that the proportion can be as high as 80 percent with the faster machines. Furthermore, print to copy volumes overall are running at roughly 75 to 25 percent in favour of print at the low end - but struggle to exceed 60/40 at the high end (because of the nature of high end copy machines and the environments they are used in). Of course, this is very dependent on the business environment – for instance, the legal profession will always have an overall weighting in favour of copy even though print volumes are themselves high.

Issue #0313/1 - Businesses in Norway are being asked to pay an average 6 percent more for their Hewlett-Packard products from the beginning of April. In a move that encompasses almost all business products, including ink jet All-in-One and OfficeJet products, Hewlett-Packard has raised its prices in Norway by between 4.7 percent and 8.4 percent. Significant in this pricing adjustment is the fact that consumer oriented ink jet products are completely immune from these price increases.