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Color Your World
Color printers for the business masses:
How much capability do you need?
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Business New Haven
6/4/1995
By: John Ludtke
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The time has arrived when those of us who desire color in our documents can include it at a reasonable cost. That doesn't mean that the desired output will necessarily match our desired price, but rather that color printers are priced within most business budgets.
With the latest round of price cuts, the entry-level price for color printers is just over $300 for an ink-jet model (Hewlett-Packard's DJ-540 ink-jet with optional color kit). At the other end of the spectrum, high-end thermal wax and thermal dye-transfer printers have dropped from an average of $15,000 to about $8,000, with the entry level being $2,000 (Fargo's PrimeraPro, a thermal dye transfer printer).
For most of us, the choice of a color printer is limited by price and ease of use. And since most of us don't need photographic-quality images with deep color saturation, we can focus on the ink-jet or laser color printers, which represent tremendous values in color printing.
Ink Jet Printers: $300-$1,600 - the entry-level Hewlett-Packard DeskJet 540 with optional color kit is the most affordable ink-jet color printer, it lacks a separate black ink-jet. To overcome this, it produces black by using a composite of color inks, producing a less-than-perfect black image. The next grade up is the four-color ink-jet printer, best suited to applications needing some color within text. The Hewlett-Packard 560C is a top-rated example and has a street price of under $500.
Another is the Cannon BJC-600, which has more built-in fonts than the HP and the ability to handle wider paper. For serious color users, the HP DeskJet 1200C (about $1,600) is rated to accurately reproduce the Pantone color chart. Since ink-jet printers are easy to use and replacing color cartridges is simple, they offer a great color alternative to most of us. A disadvantage, though, is their relative slowness at one to two pages per minute in color mode. Per-page cost is 25 cents to $1.25.
Laser Color Printers: $6,000 to $9,000 - While laser color printers are somewhat faster (two to three pages per minute) than ink-jet printers, their chief disadvantages include complexity and cost. All require four toners (one for each color) and either two developers (HP) or four (QMS & Xerox). Even after coughing up the purchase price for one of these babies, their print resolution is 300 dpi, acceptable only for general business use. But if high-resolution is the name of the game, Xerox and QMS offer high-res upgrades for $900 and $1,300, respectively. These units output images on a par with thermal wax transfer printers, but more quickly and quietly. Per-page cost is ten to 25 cents.
Thermal Dye, Thermal Wax and Solid Ink-Transfer Printers: $1,600 to $16,000 - While it's fun to think about ink-jet and laser color printers as nice add-ons to a system, when we enter the transfer printer arena, we step into the yard where the big dogs play. These machines are meant to recreate photographic-quality images with precise color matching. Except for Fargo's PrimeraPro model, none weighs in at less than 40 pounds (the average is more like 90).
• Thermal dye transfer printers work by heating a dye ribbon and applying the dye either to a coated paper or transparency. By layering the colors, a continuous image is created without dithering. Price per page is $2 to $3.50.
• Thermal wax transfer printers are somewhat faster than thermal dye, but don't quite match the continuous image capability. Applying a heated wax-based ink to paper or transparencies, these printers use some dithering in forming the image. Per-page price: 50 cents to $1.50.
• Solid ink printers melt a wax-based ink and jet it onto paper or transparencies. They can print onto most papers with excellent results, but transparencies fall short in clarity because of the uneven thickness of the spray-applied ink. Price per page is 95 cents to $1.35.
If you've got it, flaunt it. Each day we receive or send materials meant to grab attention. There's no doubt about it: Color grabs the eye, and therefore our attention.
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