Why does everyone think they need their own local printer?

[IceBergSLiM]

its not your budget so what the fvck do you care?

 

[yuppiejr]

Originally posted by: parasitic

Why should you care? Are they taking that $3-400 out of your pay?
Sure it's wasteful, but if you're not in charge of it, just leave it be.

Actually, yes, in my world the expense dollars takes a chunk out of my pay and everyone else's when you consider the direct impact it has on annual expense dollars / ebit which is a major component in our bonus structure. Not to mention the responsibility a good IT department has to deploy cost effective, supportable solutions rather than what some random user decided they wanted to purchase for themselves at Office Depot over the weekend....

Originally posted by: Baloo

Originally posted by: PimpJuice
The main reason is because they could possibly be printing sensitive information. I know at my old job, my boss sent something to the wrong printer and we all got to see how much of a promotion someone was getting including new salary. That kind of stuff is confidential and should not be printed to a shared printer.

A true enterprise printer has a feature to hold the document in the que until the user meanders over to the printer and types in a password to print it out.

.. exactly, the Canon ImageRunners that we've moved to all have a private mailbox feature that can lock print jobs with a PIN for sending sensitive jobs which removes any business justification for keeping a local printer around. The appropriate technology solution is not the client's decision, they get to define their printing requirements and it's up to IT to decide how best to implement a solution that's stable, supportable and cost effective based on the whole company's needs and technology standards. The key to being successful at this is earning your client's trust and getting buy-in from senior management that lets you deal with resistance appropriately.

I work for a company that operates on very thin margins so one my first IT expense reduction projects was analysis of opportunities in our printing related costs. Itemizing the cost of toner & ink and pulling appropriate page count estimates from a seemingly random mish mash of local and network laser + inkjet printers into meaningful "per page" printing cost numbers was a royal pain in the ass. However, once I arrived at some hard numbers I found huge opportunities to reduce our annual per page expenses by a factor of 300+% by consolidating 20 or so local + network printers into 3 high capacity/high performance units.

I also consolidated our existing service contracts with 3 local providers into a single vendor at a far better rate equal to half of what we'd paid previously. At our current margin rate, the savings was was the same as selling $2 million in product every year in perpetuity... and we're a relatively small (150 people) company.

Moral of the story - your IT Director needs to pull hard numbers on what it's actually costing today in terms of maintenance, support and supplies to keep deploying local printers, then compare this with some consolidated network printing solutions. Heck, you could probably do this for him and get all kinds of gold stars for the effort - not to mention making your life easier. It may require capital expense to get the right equipment in the door initially and a bit of cultural change for the users. However, the expense reduction and infrastructure simplification soft costs are an easy sell to a competent senior management team.

 

[Tobolo]

I have two in my office. A black and white laser and a color laser,

 

[sdifox]

Originally posted by: Superself
Damn some of you IT guys seem like real jerks.

If you work in a big corporate law firm (like I do), they run through a ton of paper and it really doesn't make sense to have lawyers running back and forth all day long just because the IT dept doesn't want to manage more printers. That IT dept gets replaced quickly.

Inkjets may not be the answer of course, but if a person has a genuine business need for a printer in their office, the IT dept should make it happen.

Sure there are more printers to manage, but who has a gun to your head forcing you to work in that field??

Big network printers are designed for that kind of volume and speed. Your desktop printer is not. Unless you spring for some high end ones that do 30ppm, most of the desktop printers are slow. We are not talking about genuine need here. Some people do need a local printer for confidential prints, but these would be the minority.

 

[sdifox]

Originally posted by: Tobolo
I have two in my office. A black and white laser and a color laser,

what's wrong with printing just to the colour one? It has black toner too

And ozone is bad for you.

 

[TruePaige]

If only they had built it with 2001 and hulls!

 

[krunchykrome]

I prefer my own printer. Otherwise, when I go pick up my printed items from the network printer, I dont have to track down the idiot who took some of my papers along with theirs.

 

[Tobolo]

Originally posted by: sdifox

Originally posted by: Tobolo
I have two in my office. A black and white laser and a color laser,

what's wrong with printing just to the colour one? It has black toner too

And ozone is bad for you.

Government! Nuff said.

Actually, the black and white one was here and then we bought a network color. So it is in my office, but 6 people print to it

EDIT: Also, Black and white printer cartridge $35. Lasts about 9-12 months. Black cartridge for the color printer, $150 and lasts about 15 months. (If I used it that would prolly drop by a month.

It actually is more cost effective to use both, mainly because crap I don't need in color doesnt waste ink.

 

[PingSpike]

Originally posted by: dullard
Why blow all that money on ink jets? Give everyone a personal laser and have one nice inkjet/color laser for the very rare prints that actually need color. You'd save a bundle AND everyone can have their own printer.

You and your logic, you obviously know nothing. Those lasers cost almost $100. I can get a piece of shit inkjet for $40...nevermind it will print roughly 20 pages before the cartridge runs out and then I have to pay $35 for a new one, while the laser will print 10,000. The bottom line is productivity will definately increase if every worker has a (broken or out of ink) printer on their desk.

And what about color? That laser won't print color! How else am I going to add cool colored balloons to that document I shouldn't have been printing out in the first place? I'll bet you didn't think about that.

Some people just don't understand business!

 

[911paramedic]

Originally posted by: Sphexi
Track the costs of the ink cartridges, and the printers, and start charging it to the departments individual budgets, NOT IT's budget. Very quickly they'll cut it back.

You need to balance that on the waiting/walking/shooting the breeze when you print remotely. You are eating up salary when you do that, time probably better spent at your desk.

Opportunity cost.

 

[piasabird]

I often print out E-Mail if I think it is something that might be important later. I consider it evidence. People will stab you in the back if you dont keep track of them. E-Mail can be deleted. I work in an office with 4 people and the old geezers had a laser printer between them and would not let the newer people print to it. Then my boss would not authorize a jet direct unit to set it up as a network printer. These people were just idiots.

So for like 2 years I walked to the third floor to get access to a printer when there was a black HP Laserjet 400 in my office.

 

[PingSpike]

Originally posted by: Chaotic42

Originally posted by: spidey07
Once you realize that people are not really removed from tribal behavior it all makes sense. "He's got 3 feathers in his hat! Therefore I must have 4 feathers!"

No, I agree, that happens. What IT must guard against, however, is confusing that concept with legitimate complaints:

IT: "Oh, Steve has a Core 2 Duo, so you have to have one too, right?"
Bob: "But it takes me five times longer to run a process than Steve. It's costing the company money."
IT: "You should see the computers that the janitors have."
Bob: "But they don't do what I do..."

Just buy a C2D sticker, leave his computer on your desk for 2 days and then return it with the sticker on the front. Problem solved.

 

[Jeff7181]

Originally posted by: Superself
Damn some of you IT guys seem like real jerks.

If you work in a big corporate law firm (like I do), they run through a ton of paper and it really doesn't make sense to have lawyers running back and forth all day long just because the IT dept doesn't want to manage more printers. That IT dept gets replaced quickly.

Inkjets may not be the answer of course, but if a person has a genuine business need for a printer in their office, the IT dept should make it happen.

Sure there are more printers to manage, but who has a gun to your head forcing you to work in that field??

For me it has nothing to do with supporting it, and everything to do with someone who doesn't need it demanding it. A 20 page weekly report can be sent to the network printer and the 5 page long email that contains a "good one liner" that was forwarded 80 times doesn't need to be printed.

 

[sdifox]

Originally posted by: Tobolo

Originally posted by: sdifox

Originally posted by: Tobolo
I have two in my office. A black and white laser and a color laser,

what's wrong with printing just to the colour one? It has black toner too

And ozone is bad for you.

Government! Nuff said.

Actually, the black and white one was here and then we bought a network color. So it is in my office, but 6 people print to it

EDIT: Also, Black and white printer cartridge $35. Lasts about 9-12 months. Black cartridge for the color printer, $150 and lasts about 15 months. (If I used it that would prolly drop by a month.

It actually is more cost effective to use both, mainly because crap I don't need in color doesnt waste ink.

Yeah, consumable costs matter. We have a HP Color LaserJet 4730mfp PS that we are treating as b&w network printer.