Do consumables (notably ink) matter to IT departments?

Posted on February 7, 2007
Filed Under Marketing |

I just went through a process to buy a color laser printer for our office as I was just burning a big hole in our budget with our HP OfficeJet, which is a great printer but simply cannot compete with color lasers on a cost per page basis.

What was interesting about this buying process is that I went to HP first because I have never had a bad experience with their printers and looked at their CLJ2605DN (who comes up with these product numbers!) finding a best price of $425 and was ready to click buy-it-now when I decided I had better look at the price of the consumables. Holy crap, when it comes time to buy new toner cartridges you would be better off throwing printer out and buying a new one, and getting a renewed warranty.

The price of HP’s toner cartridges went up dramatically when you consider the above mentioned toner cartridges are 2,000 page units versus 5,000 page for both Dell and Samsung printers (I didn’t look at Kodak) that are priced 30% higher but have 2 1/2 times the page life. I went with the Samsung for a few dollars more than the HP but have a printer that will cost less to operate and because it has duplex printing I can save on paper as well.

I think Dignan is right on this one, Kodak should be targeting the SMB market to reach prospects like me that didn’t even consider a Kodak printer.

» Do consumables (notably ink) matter to IT departments? | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com:

Shope’s conclusion is that Kodak doesn’t stand a chance against Hewlett-Packard’s printing juggernaut. And he’s probably right.

But Kodak’s argument is still valid even though its products are targeted at the wrong market. Kodak’s printer line should target medium-sized and small businesses.

“Samsung CLP-510N Network-Ready Color Laser” (Samsung)

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