Cost of Printing a PDF at home?

[trancejeremy]

Pretty expensive, on an inkjet. Figure 150 pages per cartridge, $25 a cartridge

 

[gariig]

150 per cartridge? That's a little steep. I think about $.10-.15 a page is about average and that is not including the .03-.05 cents per page. Also, I said average, I know a few years ago the Lexmark Z series was like .25-.35 a page! Laser is really the way to go, you can get lasers for less then $200 pretty easily now.

Gariig

 

[JiffyPopTart]

I got a B&W Laserjet 6L with a toner cart with it for 30 bucks plus shipping off ebay.

You can get very small very cheap laser printers nowadays.

DS

 

[Krieg]

When looking into laser printers be sure to figure in the cost of other consumables besides toner.

I have a HP LaserJet 4500 & the cost of print drums, transfer kits etc can really add up.

Not all machines have the secondary costs of the 4500 but it is something to keep in mind.

 

[Dimwhit]

My laser printer cartridge gets about 3000 pages and cost about $80, if memory serves. That works out to about 2.6 cents per page to print for the ink. Plus the cost of paper. So I'd be looking at just under 4 cents per page to print a pdf.

 

[Nellisir]

I've got a hp 6110 all-in-one, and I sprang for the two-sided printing module. Both my wife and I prefer to read printed material over on-screen, so we do lots of little 1-2 page print jobs, which we pretty much automatically print double-sided and on the "economy" ink setting.

I've been buying Hammermill Premium Inkjet paper, which is 24 lbs and 106+ brightness.

Paper runs about $6/ream (500 sheets) at Staples.
A 2-pack of black cartridges runs $36 at Staples. It's almost never worth the bother for me to print color. Probably 90% of the color in pdfs are in the (too-heavy) borders.

I'm pretty certain I can print 500 pages on one cartridge on the economy ink setting, but for argument's sake, we'll put it at half that (250 pgs/cartridge).

Printing one-sided, that's $42 for 500 pages + 500 sheets. Printing double-sided, it's $39 for 500 pages + 250 sheets, or .078 cents per page (and you've still got 250 sheets for pictures of Lucy Liu or Antonio Banderas...your choice).

500 pages is the PH and 1/2 the MM (up to "manticore"), and not including covers.

Cheers
Nell.

 

[Norfleet]

The cost of printing can be significantly reduced if you avoid several "schmuck" behaviors that can become very expensive over the long run.

First, many people replace the entire toner cartridge. These things cost over $50, and all you REALLY need is an toner refill.

Secondly, most people buy this crap retail. That costs up to 50x more than buying them by the truckload.

So, you can reduce the actual cost of printing even massive numbers of PDFs to practically nothing by first, buying by the truckload, and second, not actually buying a ton of toner cartridges, but instead buying just the toner....by the truckload. Because anything worth buying is worth buying in truckloads.

 

[Mean Eyed Cat]

The cost of printing can be significantly reduced if you avoid several "schmuck" behaviors that can become very expensive over the long run.

First, many people replace the entire toner cartridge. These things cost over $50, and all you REALLY need is an toner refill.

Secondly, most people buy this crap retail. That costs up to 50x more than buying them by the truckload.

So, you can reduce the actual cost of printing even massive numbers of PDFs to practically nothing by first, buying by the truckload, and second, not actually buying a ton of toner cartridges, but instead buying just the toner....by the truckload. Because anything worth buying is worth buying in truckloads.

I'll second the notion of buying a toner refill kit if you have ink-jet. Saves lots of money. Next, buy paper in bulk (truckload?). Finally, buy a binding system. These tend to be expensive, but sometimes you can get a good deal on one. I have filled a file cabinet with printed PDFs for a very low cost.

 

[Mark]

Printing on both sides of the paper is called duplexing, and it CAN be a pain if your printer doesn't do that automatically. I don't think there is a way in Adobe to print 1-2, 5-6, 9-10, etc... all the way through a document then put the paper back in and print 3-4, 7-8, etc....that would be hand if you were trying to print 4 pages per page without a LOT of hassle.

Print odd pages first, remove pages and turn them around, then print even pages. Be sure to put them in the right way so that every other page isn't upside-down...

 

[jmucchiello]

Print odd pages first, remove pages and turn them around, then print even pages. Be sure to put them in the right way so that every other page isn't upside-down...

That doesn't help when you are printing 2-up, which was the example you replied to.

The answer there is not to print 1-2, 5-6, 9-10 and flip for 3-4, 7-8, 11-12, but to print 1-2, 7-10, 15-18, 23-26 and flip for 3-6, 11-14, 19-22, etc. Yes it's still tedious, but at least it's only half as tedious as the other method. After doing this many times, I've decided duplexing is good enough for my purposes. Odd, walk away, flip, even, walk away, fini.