From: Lee Sent: 6/11/2002 9:40 PM
Still puzzling over this problem and wish I had one in the demo room to test. Here is something else I found. In the Product Support Guide, the explanation of the meter is as follows. With SP5-930-1 set to ON, B&W pages after a color page have been printed are counted as B&W. This document goes even further with an example of Page 1=B&W, Page 2=Color, Page3=B&W, Page 4=B&W, Page 5=Color. With Meter charge Mode ON, the counts for the above job would be represented as follows
SP7-003-007 Prints B&W=3
SP7-003-008 Prints Color=2
With Meter charge Mode OFF, all prints after the 2nd page are counted as Color
Using the same example:
SP7-003-007 Prints B&W=1
SP7-003-008 Prints Color=4
It is also noted that the usage of the various PCU's is not calculated accurately in Meter Charge Mode ON. The yields of the various units are calculated not by the number of prints but by the number of rotations. The expected yield of a color PCU is estimated at 50K Prints OR 295907 rotations, whichever comes first.
Confused yet? Me too! To me, all of this would make it difficult to sell this device on a meter charge basis, since the number of rotations per page depends on the pages printed per job.
For example, the color PCU is expected to yield 50K prints at 5 pages per job. That yield drops to 39.5K if you run only 3 pages per job, but rises to 60K if you run 10 pages per job. I can't really figure out any way to bill it accurately (or fairly) to the customer either way. It looks to me like the logical solution is to sell service at a flat rate, which will cover a hardware failure only. And hope you don't miss out on the supply revenue since you don't really have them locked in to you for the supplies.
Thanks!
Lee