Can someone please tell me what would be cheaper - printing at home, or taking it to Staples? -

I need to print out a 400 page manuscript for my grandpa. Would it be cheaper to print it on my home printer (where I would have to by ink cartridges and paper), or to take it to Staples, where it would probably be around 10 cents per page? If printing at home, how many ink cartridges do you think it would take? Thanks!

The answer depends on many factors. The type of printer you have and the average amount of documents it can print per cartridge. For instance, my HP L7680 prints an average 2,460 black and white text pages with a $35. high-capacity ink cartridge = 1.4 cents per page. Good paper usually costs no more than .02 cents per page. Which brings the total to 3.4 cents per page. Add to that gas savings from staying home. So, for me it would cost $13.60 to print it at home and save gas - as opposed to $40. That said...before making a decision: 1. see if you can find the average amount of pages per cartridge for your printer. 2. call Staples or Kinko s (et al) and ask if they have: any sale, or a cost match program (often you can get copies at .05 cents each. 3. ask if they use a desk jet or a laser printer. Laser printers often have a nicer appearance, and that might be worth paying a bit more.

for the quantity, go to Staples and have it bound!

I would not only consider prices for paper material and ink. Also consider that the service can get you a nice quality fast and bind it. If you do it at home it could turn out to be a nerve wracking several hour job and you might miss a couple of pages too.

Do it at home. You can go to a place like Walgreens and get the cartridge refilled for about $12. Many places refill cartridges and they work as well as new.

10 cents per page at 400 pages would be around 40$ so if you think about it, if you print at home, unless you get ink online and you find offbrands at 3 or 4 dollars a cartridge, you re going to have to buy a new ink cartridge either before your re done or after, plus you ll have to buy the paper which lets say you find a 5 dollar 500 count stack, and the cartridge is going to cost you about 25 or so, if not more, in the end it would be a close call, but Kinkos would be much easier. Home printers suck for mass printing.

400 pages, I d go to staples or kinkos, ink is pretty expensive for printers and 400 pages is a lot!

Print it at work. If you don t have access to a printer at work ask someone you know to print it at their job for ya. Good Luck!

It depends on how much your printer consumes ink. May I suggest perhaps print in draft mode, proof read your document. And if it s perfect for printing, then take it to Staples. You the price for printing the document will cost the same as the ink cartridge but at least you save wear and tear on your printer.

Girl, you fine! At least if you take it to Staples, you can get it binded into something like a book while you re there.

I d imagine it d be cheaper at home. 400 pages shouldn t take a whole cartridge of ink.

Oh my gosh, for that quantity, go to Staples, Kinkos, etc, it will be quicker, come out better, and with the cost of ink cartridges it will be way cheaper and save your printer from over heating, too.

It depends how expensive the cartridge is for your printer, you probably need one cartridge black for that.

Call local print/copy shops. you should be able to get the per copy price down to 5-6 cents per copy(black and white). maybe see if you can even bring in your own ream of paper to reduce costs even further.