WANTED Federal Printers "Dead or Alive"

Going through my alerts last night I ran across and article from the Washington Post, the Federal Bureau of Engraving and Printing has posted WANTED Posters for desktop printers.

Get this the Bureau of Engraving is offering to Federal employees $75 gift cards for their desktop printers.

From the Washington Post Article:

"For a limited time, to incentivize you to voluntarily give up your active personal printer, BEP will share the savings with you," the flyer said. "You will receive a gift card in the amount of $75 if you turn in an active personal printer."
Get this, our government paid for these printers and now they're giving employees gift cards to relinquish them! I've got a better idea, take them away, no gift cards given, use the network printer for you prints and get up off your butt!

There is an estimated 534 printers, at $75 a pop that represents a total cost of $40,050. Atta boy Feds, way to spend our money when you could easily just take them away and tell everyone to print to the network printer or multifunctional device.

I for one applaud the fact that finally the Bureau has recognized that small convenient lasers printers have an extremely high cost per page, and the work or 10 oer 12 small printers can be done by one network printer or one multifunctional device. However, giving out $75 gift cards to relinquish something the Bureau provided the employees with is downright wrong!

Here's a few facts that most people don't realize about networked multifunctional devices:

Lower cost per page, typically multifunctional devices can have a page cost of .007 or less compared to .03 cents per page for small desktop printers

Less consumable items, most desktop laser printer utilize and AIO (All in One Cartridge), and these are thrown away after a few thousand prints, multifunctional devices use bottles or cartridges of toner which can last as much as 30,000 pages and then the container is sent back to the factory to be refilled.

Longer life span (who the heck is going to repair a $300 laser printer when the cost to have someone on-site to replace a part will cost $200 or more, fact is the printer is thrown in the trash and another is purchased. How wasteful is that?

Virtual mailboxes, users of multifunctional products now have the luxury or printer to a mailbox (space on the hard drive) and then can walk to the printer, enter their pin code and have all of the documents print while they're at the printer!

These are just a few of the features that are available on most multifunctional devices and networked printers.

My God, what's next, we'll offer employees additional gift cards to print on both sides of the paper, or give them gift cards for not printing at all and creating electronic files?

The Bureau needs to get a set of balls and tell it like it is, we're taking your printer, get up off your butt. If you don't like it, show them the door!

-=Good Selling=-