Buy Laser Printer or Use University?

devoncat

I am finishing up my PhD in Art History--well maybe . It is over 450 pages, about 140 of which have colour images. It is required to be laser printed. I can get b/w pages for 3p each, and colour pages for about 35p each. :eek: I will have to make about 4 or 6 copies-depending on how many corrections they request. Does anyone know if there is a cheap laser printer that would cost less to buy than print out the document at the printers or university?
I havent worked in the last 3 months to concentrate on finishing and I am BROKE (and broken!). Any advice would be appreciated...I dont have much time to look around and compare prices.

EileenH

Why does it have to be a laser printer? You can get very good quality cheap inkjet printers. You will pay about £195 for a decent colour laser so if you have to make at least 4 copies it will work out cheaper, not sure about the toner costs though.

Dark_Forces

Canon printers are quite good and their cartridges can be found for around £7.00 and by far the cheapest to buy ink for at the moment. Try and use the university printer for black and white pages at 3p and the remaining colour pages on a printer. That way it looks like it may work at cheaper.

http://www.argos.co.uk/webapp/wcs/....canon+cartridge

gizmoleeds

devoncat wrote:

I can get b/w pages for 3p each, and colour pages for about 35p each. :eek:

I thought my college was extortionate charging 10p! Can't you try find someone you know with a colour laser who will let you print it for the cost of the toner? When I needed college coursework printing I went back to my old high school where they didn't charge for (work related) colour printing!

blinky

You can get decent laser printers quite cheap these days.

Surprisingly the Lexmark laser printers are supposed to be quite good and they are cheap. Samsung do some cheap laser printers too.

You'd have to work out how much it would cost per page buying the printer + consumables.

When I was a research student everybody printed their theses on the bosses laser printer. We just used our own paper.

MarkyMarkD

If you just needed monochrome, I would strongly suggest buying an old second-hand laser printer - you can pick them up for next to nothing and they cost hardly anything in toner to run.

But given the need for both colour and monochrome, it's a lot harder. The cost per sheet on a colour inkjet will not be much better than the 35p and they will look RUBBISH compared to a colour laser printed job.

Given that you are only really talking about a few thousand sheets, it would be a lot easier and probably no more expensive to pay the University the going rate. Otherwise you are going to incur a lot of capital expense, and a lot of running costs, for the dubious privilege of doing all the production yourself.

Jay_Wiseman

you can pick up new laser printers dead cheap on ebay, have a look around. I bought one a couple of weeks ago and its great for text, though I would use an inkjet for photos to get the best results. Bought one from this guy, arrived next day and does exactly what it said on the tin and a lot cheaper than i.e. amazon too.

http://search.ebay.co.uk/_W0QQfgtpZ1QQfrppZ25QQsassZjvthegreat