Color Cost Per Copy

Have fun with this one....lol took me several tests to figure out. From what I can tell, you are correct in your assumption of process black. That is exactly how it occurs. As soon as the color device sees a color page, from then on they are process black. Again, the best that I can tell. The workaround for this involves batch mode. Let me know if you find anything different. BTW, This was brought up to me by a customer.....UUUGGHHHH!

This is interesting but from the Gestetner Sales Information Guide, page 21 "When printing mixed documents, only the black toner/PCU are used unitl a color page is encountered; then all four toners and developers are used for the remainder of the document, irrespective of whether they are in color or black & white". This would imply that all copies are "clicked" four times but the remainder of the paragraph says "However, subsequent black & white pages will be counted only as monochrome (1 click)". This last sentence seems contradictory to the first one. We NEED clarification. Anyone?

It doesn't contradict, using the colors and CLICKING the colors are two different things...

Yes, it's using all 4 colors, but it's only charging the customer for 1 click. So service and supplies are being given to customer for free.

Yes, it does. How does the printer know when to count four clicks as one. It has no way of knowing what the page looks like???? Is this somehow referring to the differences on page clicks verses development clecks. THIS REALLY PUTS INTO QUESTION HOW AFFORDABLE THE UNITS ARE TO OPERATE AND SEEMS TO GO AGAINST RICOH'S MATRA OF LOWER TCO.

The color clicks are click based on the meta data of the file not whether or not the page has color on it. You can have pages with no color printing and clicking as color if the job was sent as color and the document has the color meta data in it. At least this is how I understand it to be. Maybe JasonR has some input. He is very knowlegable on this stuff.

Jayson, you are correct regarding printing..... but we are referring to copying.

I'd like to get this question answered both for print and copy.

When talking about printing, you refer to meta data. Please explain meta data. I assume this is information sent with the print job to the printer. So if I send a BW or color page to the printer and have color selected in the driver, meta data is sent to the printer and all prints whether BW or color are printed as color. Therfore BW pages are printed using "proceesed black". If BW is selected in the driver.all pages print as BW using "true black". Is this correct?

Then when copying, if "color" is selected on the control panel everything prints as color using "processed black". If this is true why do we have "autocolor select"

And if all this is true, then much of Ricoh's literature and such is misleading. From 3224c brochure, "No more paying expensive per page prices for occasional color printing." BUT if we're correct, you pay less for color output than you would out sourcing, but you pay more for any BW pages included with the olor output. ???????