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From: rouben@math9.math.umbc.edu (Rouben Rostamian)
Newsgroups: comp.text.tex
Subject: Re: laser printer fees
Keywords: we pay through the nose.
Message-ID: <3434@umbc3.UMBC.EDU>
Date: 12 Jun 90 20:47:34 GMT
References: <1091@unicorn.WWU.EDU>
Sender: newspost@umbc3.UMBC.EDU
Reply-To: rouben@math9.math.umbc.edu.UUCP (Rouben Rostamian)
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Organization: University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Lines: 71

Jeff Wandling writes:
>
>At our fine university, LaTeX and all it's cousins are available for
>student use.
>
>Currently, the powers that be at Western charge 25 cents per page
>for laser printed output.
>
>I'd like to know if this asinine policy is popular with other system
>administrators.

There are two issues involved here: a) Is the 25 cents fee fair, and
b) whether the students should be charged for using a printer.

The fee of 25 cents is a bit off the mark if the administration indents
to make the laser printers only self-supporting.  I oversee the operations
of math department's computing equipment at UMBC and I am very aware 
of the expenditures involved in providing a laser printing service.

Here is a breakdown of the costs for an LN03plus laser printer, suitable
for most text and graphics printing jobs:

Fixed costs:
Purchase price:                        $ 4,000
Terminal server port:                      400

Annual costs:
Maintenance contract with DEC:         $ 700

Variable costs:
Ream of paper (500 sheets)                $ 4
Toner (prints 3,000 pages)                 85
Maintenance kit (for every 10,000 pages)  200

From this data you may compute cost/page on this printer.  
You may need the following additional information:
Pages printed per month at our cite:   8,000
Expected life of the printer:        5 years

Therefore, over five years we print about 480,000 pages and 
we have the following expenditures:
Cost of printer:      $4,000
Server port:             400
Maintenance contract:  2,800  (first year under warrantee)
Cost of toner:        13,600
Cost of maint. kits:   9,600
Cost of paper:         3,840
TOTAL EXPENDITURES:   34,240    for 480,000 pages

Cost per page = 7.1 cents

Note that this 7.1 cents is the _average_ cost of printing per page,
so it applies to *everything* that you print, including those messed up 
sheets in TeX'ed documents that you later discard.  

At our site the policy is not to charge students (or anyone else) for 
printing costs.  Printing is assumed to be a general operating expense
as is providing heat and lighting in the buildings.  We try to make the
students aware though that laser printing is not entirely without its costs
and that thoughlessly printing just about anything that comes across your
screen should be avoided.  In particular, for multiple copies of documents,
it is generally cheaper to print one copy on a laser printer and reproduce
additional copies by photocopying.  For processing TeX documents we encourage
the students to use workstations with dvi previewing capability. That way,
they can fine-tune the appearance of your document on the screen before you
send the (hopefully) final version to the printer.

Rouben Rostamian                               Telephone: (301) 455-2458
Department of Mathematics and Statistics       e-mail:
University of Maryland Baltimore County        rostamian@umbc.bitnet
Baltimore, MD 21228,  U.S.A.                   rostamian@umbc3.umbc.edu