The charging rate for printing increased this month, going from 8 cents to 10 cents per 8.5x11 page B&W, and 25 cents to 50 cents per 8.5x11 page colour.
The new prices are campus-wide and for Engineering are the first price increase in many years.
Engineering Computing manages 15 printers in our labs and some departmental labs, some offices, and the colour printer located near the help desk. We print hundreds of thousands of pages per year, though the number has been steadily declining as more work can be submitted electronically. Last year students printed 400,000 B&W pages on our printers.
The price of higher end printers has actually been falling, but so has their quality of construction; newer printers may require more frequent replacement. Also, the cost of consumables (paper, toner), maintenance and co-op labour (to refill the printers) are all increasing. WatCard’s 0.5 cent per page transfer fee cuts into the price too. But the biggest factor is that we are now hit with GST and PST, whereas we were previously exempt. That 13% increase was much too big to absorb.
The cost of running the printers is higher in Engineering than other faculties because we maintain so many printers in all the labs. It is more cost effective to have two or three heavily used printers and force everyone to walk to them, however, that would not be as convenient for students.
About 13.5% of student B&W jobs are printed duplex (double sided), leading to 15% of our printed pages to be double sided. Duplex printing is charged at a rate of approximately 75% of printing two single sided pages. The actual cost to us of printing double sided is closer to 85% of the rate of single sided.
In 2009/2010 we printed 20,000 colour pages. We never hoped to break even on colour printing, but last year we were losing too much per page at too high a volume to continue at these rates. Other faculties were charging several times our rates, and the CTSC committee decided to standardize on a new fair rate for everyone.
With the new rates we can afford to replace printers sooner. We hope that will lead to fewer breakdowns and clearer output.
Printing at UW is still a good deal. B&W output on a home inkjet costs roughly 50 cents per page. Colour output at home is usually even higher, though it depends on how much ink is used.
If you think a particular printer is giving poor output, be sure to contact our consulting office so we know to have the printer serviced. We are alerted when it runs out of toner, or when it is running out of paper, but we can’t tell remotely if it needs a cleaning or other work.
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