*NEWS*DELL CONDEMNS L.PRINTER POWER WASTE

[Anonymous]

Dell condemns laser printer power waste
Personal printers are grossly inefficient compared with network printers
burning
extra power which dwarfs the toner bill and bloats companies’ carbon
footprint, according to Dell.The company claims personal laser printers
cost €85 per year in power costs alone, compared with €5 per user each
year for a networked printer. Users continue to provide them because
they are simply unaware of the costs involved, says Dell’s
research.Seventy-nine percent of IT managers simply don’t know the cost
of running their printers, according to a Dell survey of
small-to-medium businesses in the UK, France and Germany. Ninety
percent of managers don’t restrict printing in any way, and more than
half of them (58 percent) don’t even know how many printers they have
in their organisation.”There are thousands of personal printers out
there, because IT staff feel people need them,” said Stephen Burt,
Dell’s European imaging business manager. Around 40 percent of these in
business are personal laser printers, he said which are power-hogs:
“The power costs are much greater than the toner costs.”

Laser
printers are inefficient when they are lightly used, because the drum
mechanism is kept hot for half an hour after each use, in case of
further printing, he said. A group of thirty users with personal mono
printers will use 17,000 kWh of power per year, costing €85 per user,
he said – figures which assume three hours printing each day, and the
power consumption of a comparatively efficient modern laser such as
they Dell 1110.A single networked printer could replace all thirty
personal printers and print the same number of pages for only 1,000 kWh
per year, which works out at €5 in power costs. Consumables would also
cost less for the networked printer.Centralised printing could also
manage the arrival of colour lasers, which are now becoming cheap
enough to use across the organization, said Burt. Networked printers
are more likely to have controls that can ration colour printing to
certain users, so it is used where it will be effective.Currently at
number eight in printer market share in Europe (and number six in
colour lasers) Dell hopes economy and efficiency measures will move it
up the league table. Higher placed manufacturers such as HP are often
felt to be focusing on selling more ink and toner.Comparing efficiency
of colour printers could become easier with the arrival of new ISO
standards to compare printer yields, including ISO 24712, a set of
colour test pages. “You can now compare colour printer yields between
vendors,” he said. Till now, printer makers have been free to define
their own test pages, allowing them to achieve unrealistically high
yields.Lexmark’s recent inclusion of Wi-Fi as standard in lower-end
printers, is misplaced in devices which are rarely mobile, said Burt:
“Ninety-eight percent of people don’t use Wi-Fi,” he said, asking why
the majority should pay for a feature which can add an extra £50 to the
price of a printer. Dell offers Wi-Fi with optional USB dongles. “When
98 percent of people want it, it will be a standard.”

[Author]

May 8, 2007 at 12:24 PM