How Well Do You Know Your Print Drivers?

It seems that I don't know them as good as I thought I did.  But where do we find the time?  PCL5, PCL6, PS, Universal drivers, I can't stand it! 

Just the other day I had a demonstration with one of our devices and I was asked about color balance, and it could be controller from the print driver.  I'll admit it's been awhile since I went through all of the feature of the Ricoh print drivers.  My response was "I'm pretty sure there is", and with that I checked the PCL5, PCL5c, Universal Driver. Mini PCL Driver and the Postscript driver. I found nothing on all of the those drivers.  Two weeks later while preparing for another demonstration I found what I was looking for, the color balance feature was hidden by a slider that I did not see in the PCL5c driver. 

I learned a lesson the hard way and thus

Network Setup of Print & Scan Drivers "Who Pays" ?

From time to time we'll post some polls on the Print4Pay Hotel forums.  One poll from last year asked "Who pays for Network Setup of Print & Scan Drivers?

Here's how our Print4Pay Hotel members responded:

21% My company includes it @ no extra charge.

25% My company charges me back per device.

7% My company charges me back and has a flat rate for multiple units.

7% The customer pays for all print and scan drivers to be loaded.

39% I setup the print and scan drivers and do not charge the customer.

Why is it that sales people are wasting time setting up print and scan drivers? Is it because the dealership does not have the resources to accomplish this? Or, could it be that the dealership charges their sales people too much to have an SE on site. I think our time is much better spent selling than loading print and scan drivers. It should also be included in a sales persons base price.

-=Good Selling=-

Ricoh Color SPC831DN "Top Ten Features"

In last weeks blog on the Ricoh SP831DN we focused on hardware specs, this week we'll tell you more about some of the awesome print features that come with the Ricoh SP831DN Color Printer.

Printer driver features is not something you can learn from reading the brochure, nor when you are looking the printer up on line to review pricing. Most end users and sales people ignore the awesome printer driver features and options that are included with laser printers. Thus a customer could purchase a laser printer and never be aware of the advanced printer driver features/functionality that are available, and some of these features are capable of improving business process and cutting costs.

Top Ricoh SP831DN Printer Driver Features:

1. Black Over Print: Black over print is available to enhance the quality of  text and black images  printed on colored backgrounds. Think of it this way, the color image is printed first and then the black text and graphics is printed last, thus this will prevent blurred text or haloing with the final rendering.
2. CMYK Simulation Profile: When using the Ricoh Postscript 3 driver, you can turn on US Offset Print CMYK Simulation Profile which enables a color profile that closely reproduces colors that are used with ink based commercial offset printing in the US. Even though this feature will simulate SWOP (Simulated Web Offset Printing) it is genuine SWOP an is not supported.  When I've used this feature with other print devices I've found that it gives you an additional way to reproduce or come close to the colors of your choice.

Selling Copiers "Machines in Field" Review

Dig this, while you're out there selling your systems or servicing your systems, guess what your competition is doing? Well, if they've seen the "MIF" (Machines in Field) Webinar from Print Audit, then they're attempting to steal or have stolen your pages and migrate them to their devices!

Think about this, you've got an account that has 25 MFP systems and a boat load of printers, the MFP's are serviced by one vendor and the printers are service by another vendor. Guess what! The printer vendor who also sells MFP's and Print Management showed the "MIF" Review to the your client.

Now they couldn't get MFP's in their because your systems have been entrenched for years, however your competition demo'd Print Audit's "MIF" and sold them Print Audit 6 with Rules Based Printing. Six months later you find out that your volumes are down 50%!!! Where did they go? The other vendor set Rules Based Printing through Print Audit 6 and set a rule that most of the prints now go to their devices!!! My God they've stolen your revenue!

A little far fetched? Maybe, but if I was a vendors rep and I wanted those pages, that's what I would do. Combine this with the fact that MPS is here to stay and you're taking quite a gamble. These MPS providers will look to capture YOUR pages!

What to do? Take the time to view Print Audit's Webinar on Machines in Field Review. Protect your base before someone else steals your revenue!

When:

February 10, 2010, there will be two webinars one for Central and East Coast and one for Mountain and Pacfic. Exact time will be posted, plus a link to register.

“The Print Audit MIF Review has received a lot of acclaim from Office Equipment Dealers. The hour long, comprehensive overview starts with case studies that show you how much dealers are increasing their revenues. It then details the incredible value that your customers receive by implementing print management into their environments. Finally, you will be taught how to take the MIF Review to your customers right away through a customer presentation that will be given to each participant.

Every day Print Audit dealers increase their hardware sales “click” volumes by introducing their customers to print management. Print Audit dealer’s customers save millions of dollars while at the same time saving hundreds of thousands of trees, and all of the other environmental impacts created by making paper.”

Space is limited.
Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/472296019

-=Good Selling=-

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=-

Managed Print Service for $9.99 per Year?

Yes, the title of the blog is whimsical, but that's the one of the first things that came to mind when I read a press release from Inkgard today.

If you haven't read the press release yet, I'll give you some of the details. Wait, wait......, I did have the chance to call Inkgard today and was not able to get a hold of someone in the marketing department, but I was able to ask one of the customer service reps if this software was both commercial and consumer use, the answer was yes.

Inkgard is software that actually allows the end user to dial their savings from the print driver. Inkgard claims that a setting of 75% savings will allow one cartridge to output as many pages as the equivalent of four uncontrolled cartridges. This really raised and eyebrow from me and if anyone else is skeptical, well join the club. The software is down loadable from thier website on an annual flat rate subscription for unlimited usage starting at $9.99 for single users.

This is an excerpt from the press release "The Inkgard™ solution is created to appeal to a broad base of users – including individuals at home, small businesses, educational, corporate, government and institutional users. The underlying technology increases the ink & toner efficiency of any printer by up to 4 times. Inkgard™ guards from excessive ink and toner waste by removing redundant print drops with intelligent image processing, while maintaining maximum document and/or image quality."

I also took a trip to their web site and tried the gains calculator which is pretty cool, give you amount of pages that you can input along with type of pages that are printed. I then though, well how can they tell you the savings if they don't know what brand or model number of printer you have. Digging deeper there were some additional setting named "change setting", once you click this you're taken to a new page where you can customize your "cost per milliliter or gram of ink. Oh, that's great let me pull out the epson cartridge find how many milliliters and then divide by the cost of the cartridge and then for color I need to do this for all four?? Plus there's a few other settings that I can't seem to figure, well I didn't bother with those anyway. If you run the gains calculator it will give you averages and may not reflect your exact savings for your device.

I then downloaded a free version of the printer driver, now what happens here is that when you select your printer and then select ok to print the page, this is when inkgard opens a program for you to dial in your settings. On my notebook I have about 16 different drivers for laser devices. Everyone I opened would only let me select a max savings of 30% and not the 75% that I expected. I think I forgot about the word "up to" and the up to may refer to savings when using an ink jet printer.

Well, since I'm at home writing this so I couldn't select print output from the inkgard to look at printing quality, the statement on the web reflects that you can maximize quality of the print and still have a savings. I'll give this a whirl over the next few days and let you all know what I came up with. If this works, and I am skeptical at this time, this could be a BIG thing, and could save some companies thousands of dollars.

Here's the link for the press release Inkgard™ Software Reduces Printing Costs Up to 75%

-=Good Selling=-

Ricoh Universal Print Driver

The Ricoh Universal Print Driver uses bidirectional communication to connect with and determine the capabilities of the printing device. For newer devices, the Universal Print Driver provides the full functionality of the device including advanced features and finishing capabilities.

Ricoh Corp. Press Release

Ricoh Americas Corporation, a leading provider of digital office equipment, today announced the latest release of its PCL6 Driver for Universal Print designed to expand the versatility of an organization’s printing network. The Printer Command Language (PCL) driver enables users to print from a wide range of systems without downloading separate drivers for each output device, reducing a company’s total cost of ownership. It is compatible with a wide range of PCL printers and multifunction products (MFPs) from Ricoh, as well as other major manufacturers.

Ricoh’s PCL6 Driver provides a single, flexible driver that eliminates the need for product-specific drivers in order to operate print devices in one network. Time-consuming tasks such as analyzing driver compatibility, installing drivers at individual workstations and retraining users on how to access specific print features are no longer necessary, streamlining the printing process throughout an organization. In addition, the PCL6 Driver shortens the certification process for new print devices and enables administrators to integrate new machines onto the network without installing any new drivers.

“The versatility Ricoh’s PCL6 Driver provides to a business’s printing capabilities truly simplifies operations, both for IT administrators and regular employees,” said Hede Nonaka, executive vice president, Ricoh Americas Corporation. “Managing multiple print drivers is a constant battle for an organization, particularly for companies with multiple printing devices and employees working remotely. We are excited to introduce the PCL6 Driver, as it increases workflow efficiency by enabling seamless printing from anywhere in the network.”

The PCL6 Driver for Universal Print is available as a free download from Ricoh’s website. For more information on all Ricoh products and solutions, please visit www.ricoh-usa.com.