🚀 go-pugleaf

>In article <1429@sol.deakin.OZ.AU> Phil Carter writes:
>> We are finding that students are using an enormous amount of paper and
ink...
>In <KIRAVUO.91Jun13212300@vipunen.hut.fi> Timo Kiravuo writes:
>> ... [they] can't think any farther than their own nose. Like
>> those that print ten copies of a single document instead of using
>> a copying machine, since copying costs but printing does not. 

But it should be noteed that printing on a laser printer can be a lot cheaper
than copying on a photocopier. There is a lot of folklore about printing costs
-- and it sometimes distorts resource consumption almost as much as bad pricing
structures do. 

Impression cost on a Xerox 4050 running at typical volume is a little over
.02/impression; a desktop photocopier is about .07/impression. So making copies
on the 4050 rather than a desktop photocopier *saves* money. Ok, make the laser
printer smaller and the photocopier bigger and soon the comparison is reversed
-- better to make those ten copies on a Kodak 300 Ektaprint or Xerox 5200 than
an Apple Laserwriter NT. But in the grey area of the middle it is harder to
say: should you make copies on a HP IIISi or QMS workgroup printer or carry
them to the office Canon NP5(???)?  

This takes only cost into account and ignores revenue and labor. Add those
things in and things become even more complicated. For instance, I don't like
to see some professional staff person (professor, programmer, engineer,
scientist, manager, etc) walking a master from the laser printer to a
photocopier across the street to do 5 copies of a short document.  That doesn't
pay. Sure consumable supplies for cartridge based marking engines are expensive
(that, by the way, is where the cost is) but people are much more expensive.
And I *never* want to see staff walking a master printed on a mid+ volume laser
printer with independent consumables to a photocopier, any photocopier. That's
just throwing money away. 

oops, I forgot. These are students. Well, maybe that changes it. And they are
digging into their pockets in front of some machines and not others. I dunno. I
like Douglas Houweling's attitude in a computing planning report he wrote when
he was Vice-Provost for Computing and Planning at Carnegie-Mellon:
"Carnegie-Mellon University...places very heavy demands on the time of its
students and faculty ... CMU is very conscious of the need to make efficient
use of student time..." John McCredie, ed. *Campus Computing Strategies, 1983. 

Anyway, wherever possible lets encourage rational pricing schemes that really
reflect costs and encourage productivity and discourage 'islands of automation'
(printing a master on one marking engine and then hand carrying it to another
-- yuck).