Xerox Phaser 8860 tricks

We had a customer who really liked how cheap color printing was on the Xerox Phaser 8860.  They had low coverage, so a cost per print plan didn’t make a lot of sense.  They had an idea on how to make prints cheaper, and I was skeptical until I ran the analytics.  Their solution, print text in blue rather than black.

We all know black and white prints are cheaper than color prints, so the blue text idea seemed weird.  I ran their document, ran it through my color coverage analyzer, and the black page with 2 small pictures cost $.0247 per print.  I changed the text color, that’s all, to dark blue and the cost went down to $.0226 per print.  I then changed it to light blue and it went all the way down to $.0144 per print.  Over a panny a print cheaper. 

How could this happen?  With the Xerox Phaser 8860 you need to remember the color blocks of wax cost 1/3 what the black blocks cost.  Essentially, if you used only cyan for your text, the prints would literally cost 1/3 what the black and white prints cost.  If it doesn’t matter and you own a Xerox Phaser 8860 printer, use cyan!  If you own ANY OTHER color printer on the market, this advice DOES NOT APPLY!!