Color Print Control

Q1: We leave the drivers defaulted to PCL 6 unless directed otherwise

So Art, you mean they are defaulted to color?

Thanks.

yes, can more people chime in on this?? Every single one of us are installing these units and no one wants to chime in?

We default every color device we install to black & white. Are we losing some revenue on CPP contracts as a result? Of course we are. Is this money the client would spend if they were not covered under a toner-inclusive agreement? No, because there would be no black and white documents that would accidentally use color toner. If part of our value proposition is to help a client reduce the expenses associated with managing their printing systems by creating a strategic outsourcing agreement and we do not take the necessary measures to make this more than an empty promise, we will lose the client to someone who will take these measures. Having been in this industry for awhile now, I have received my share of calls from customers furious that they received a large color overage bill only to do some research and find out that they loaded new drivers and left color as the default. In a competitive marketplace like DFW, we have to take care of the client (by way of education & in the right one-off situation by issuing credits) and help keep this from happening repeatedly in order to retain the client long-term.

Thanks for the feedback. txeagle24, I'm a little confused by this statement: there would be no black and white documents that would accidently use color toner. This sounds like you're talking about process black (which normally clicks as black).

What I'm talking about is if the printing is not defaulted to B&W when the customer prints mapquest or something with a hyperlink it prints and clicks color. This is regardless of whether they have a toner inclusive agreement or not. If the document prints in color, its using color toner.

Does that make sense?

I believe you answered my question though. You set everything to Black & White by default, correct?

I think we're talking about the same thing in different terms to a certain extent just using different examples. Do the newer printers/MFP's still print black using all colors if "Color" is selected in the driver? If so, then you're right that they would spend the same regardless of the type of contract. If only the black cartridge is used to print black even if "Color" is selected in the driver, then they would spend far more on a toner-inclusive agreement than if they were not under contract. It's a good point to bring up; I just wonder how many printers still print process black. I haven't thought of that since "Auto Color Select" became popular, although I think this is only available from the Copy function.

Yes, we default everything to black & white.

Hmm. Good point. I guess the question is more how do they click than what the process is. I can't believe after 10 years in the B2C market we're still debating these simple questions and it doesn't seem like anyone (self included) knows the true answer.

I thought what happened was when a document contained some color in it the document used processed color to make black...this would allow the machine to run at full speed etc...but it would only click color for the pages containing color and black for those without.

I'm pretty sure that if the document is black and white and is sent with the preference set to color it will click black only (I sure as heck would hope so). I'm not so sure if it uses process color or not.

I have heard before that the color settings are in the "header" of the document and either the entire document is color or the entire document is black and white. This concerns me. So, you're telling me if I create a Publisher document with 3 color pages and 100 black & white and I print 50 copies I'm going to get charged for 5150 color pages when actually I only wanted to print 150 pages in color?!? Even at 6 cents a page for color that's a difference of $300. That's nothing to sneeze at.

Sometimes it seems like the more you learn the less you know (or is it just me).

I'm definitely going to do some research with our OEM's to find out how black pages are billed if color is selected in the driver but that only black toner is used to print black pages. Based on a few cases I've had with customers that received massive color usage invoices without receiving any additional supplies, I'm thinking that all pages are billed as color, at least on RFG systems.

I'd be very interested in what you find. I've done some testing in our office and seen that black pages click black and color click color. The main time I've seen problems is with Publisher. I have to believe if it was not more common for it to be incorrect we'd be hearing a lot more. Thanks for any feedback on what you find.

quote:

Originally posted by txeagle24:
Do the newer printers/MFP's still print black using all colors if "Color" is selected in the driver?

No, absolutely none of them do this. There is no MFP/printer (at least from Ricoh/Canon/HP/Lexmark/Kyocera) that will print a (truly) black document and click it for color.

Now, there are many many times that a document appears to be B&W to the human eye and contains color to the computer's eye.

The most famous instance of this is Acrobat 4. Acrobat4?!?!? you say? No one uses Acrobat4! But that's not true. For compatibility's sake, many scanners with a direct to PDF option (even Ricoh/Canon) make Acrobat4 documents. Some of those contain a bug that makes the document a "color" document regardless of whether it contains any color or not. All the pixels are black (not process black) but the document type is set as color.

Regarding the initial question; yes, we definitely do the right thing by our customers and default the drivers to B&W. You don't want your business model to be based on tricking your customers into paying for things they aren't receiving.

WOW, bug in adobe4, who woulda thunk that! I'm prettry sure that bug caused me to lose and account.

It certainly caused a rather heated conversation between me and one of my customers before we found out about it.

In that case, it was really hard to say whose fault the problem was. The MFP was just clicking as it was instructed from the application, but the application was just doing what the file told it to and the file had been made by the MFP.

We just agreed to a credit (since they hadn't used color toner in making the print) and changed their drivers back to defaulting to black.

Guys,

I have seen this happen on a MS Publisher document where they placed what appeared to be a grayscale image but it was saved in an RGB colorspace. And it DID click the color meter for that page. Just because something appears to be black doesn't mean it does not have color data. If the MFD sees color data it clicks the color meter no matter how it "looks" to the end user.

Vince