[Rant] Ink devouring PDFs

[Mark]

How much would it cost to get things printed at Kinkos?

I know they like getting PDF files for printing, and the last time I checked they were a lot cheaper than a $30 ink cartridge. They even have different binding options.

Has anyone looked at this as a serious option? This is the way that I'm thinking of going, I'm wondering if anyone else had considered the pros and cons of using the local copy shop.

dr jekyll

Although I have a Lexmark color printer (and go through those $30 ink cartridges when necessary), I still send some things to Kinkos. I find that with really high end stuff, or when I have many copies that I want to also have bound, it can be worth the extra cost.

I don't know if some other copy shops in towns outside of Chicago might have different numbers (or lower price breaks). I do know that my local shops charge $.08 for B&W printing up to 99 pages and $.05 thereafter (everything beyond 100). Four color pages will cost a buck apiece. This is all assuming you are OK with standard 80lb paper. There's no extra charge for three-hole-punch paper, but you need to specify this. If a couple of color pages fall in the center of a document and you make sure to let them know which ones, they charge an extra $.25 per page to take the extra time to colate them. All of these costs are the same no matter if you choose to have them double sided or single, as the cost is in the ink and handling, not so much in the amount of paper.

Binding is an added cost, of course, and at a Kinkos runs either four or five bucks.

A Velo binding is $3.95. That's a binding, that actually appears like a strip of tape run up the side and folded over the sheets. In actuality, it is a plastic, where holes are punched in the sheets and the plastic is heated into these holes, holding them together.

Comb binding, at $4.95, is when they punch that series of rectangular holes down the spine of a stack of papers and hold them together with that cylinder of plastic with a series of curled tabs. (I hope that makes some sense, though a quick google search will probably glean some diagrams.)

Both binding techniques include a clear plastic cover and opaque backing in the color of your choice.

Least expensive way, IMO, is to have the whole thing printed on one of the home style, workhorse printers (as mentioned above) and send out to have those few pages, where color is a must, printed at the copy shop for a couple of bucks. In this way you get the whole thing (50 to 200 pages) printed for only a few bucks. Add the cost of a binder (pick them up cheap, by the stack, sometime in November when stores have tons of leftover "Back to School" stock).

Of course, getting a job at a school or office where they do not mind you using their equipment is also nice...