June 7, 2001

12:36 PM

Apparently, the death of free ain't over yet. This site is claiming that Xerox is giving away free color laser printers to qualifying businesses. Is it a hoax meant to find new recipients of spam or is it another great giveaway?
posted by mathowie (8 comments total)

Ah, here's the catch:

What we ask:
- Buy all your ink and maintenance supplies directly through the FreeColorPrinters.com website.
- Maintain the minimum print rate you specify in your program application.

So they make their $3700 back via new customers being forced to buy expensive color inks.

When is Goodyear or Exxon going to start giving away cars as long as you buy all your tires from them and drive the car 100,000 miles per year?
posted by mathowie at 12:39 PM on June 7, 2001

when is AOL going to start giving computers away as long as you buy their premium service and never, ever leave their site?

rcb
posted by rebeccablood at 12:42 PM on June 7, 2001

Dude, all I want to know is will they approve me for one for running my blog? At less than 200 pages of output per month, I doubt it. But hey. Let you know in 2 weeks.
posted by daver at 12:54 PM on June 7, 2001

Tektronix started this program back before Xerox bought them out. The only catch is that you have to buy the color ink sticks and other supplies (maintenance trays, etc.) directly from them in pre-agreed quantities.

If any of you have ever had experience with purchasing the ink sticks for these printers ($$$), you'll understand that they are not going to lose any money on this deal.
posted by daveleck at 1:16 PM on June 7, 2001

this is about how all printers work - you pay very little for the printer and then the company recoups its expenses by selling you ink. the whole consumer inkjet market works that way, or so i've read. and it does make sense. It's just more obvious when it's a really expensive piece of equipment being given away for FREE, and you have to pay a fee if you don't meet the minimum number of prints.
posted by chrisege at 1:21 PM on June 7, 2001

Even if you have to pay the fee every month, it's still cheaper than buying the printer -- and you'd have to buy the supplies anyway, only you'd probably buy them through a reseller to save a few dollars here and there. Buying the supplies from the Website really costs about the same as buying them elsewhere, and the black ink sticks are free.

A friend of mine is on this deal. He likes the printer a lot. (Paid members of Apple's developer program automatically qualify, they don't need to be approved.)
posted by kindall at 1:29 PM on June 7, 2001

I have this printer on this program, but the program is turning out to be not all it's cracked up to be. Despite having submitted "usage reports" in February and March, Xerox charged me a $100 "non-reporting fee" in both months because, as best I can tell, the report came in a 10-day window each month when they don't want to get them. Apparently, and this was never made clear until this week, I have to submit reports between ten days before my "report date" and ten days after the "report date." Xerox seems to ignore reports sent in the other third of the month.

The printer is set up to automatically E-mail usage reports so you don't have to fax them, but once you get the printer, Xerox tells you not to E-mail them because their servers are "unreliable" or down, wanting you to print them out and fax them instead (and on the right date, of course, not just whenever you can). When I had to reset the printer due to power problems, I called Xerox and asked them how to make sure it E-mailed the reports again. They said it would do so automatically -- but it hasn't mailed one automatically since the reset, and I got dinged again. I'm not pleased about a $100 penalty fee for doing what the freecolorprinters.com tech support people told me to do.

The printer itself is quite nice -- brilliant color, PostScript 3, fast. It's big, though (bigger than a 21-inch CRT display), and you shouldn't turn it off because the warm-up cycle consumes so much ink that a set of CMYK ink sticks may last only 50 pages, something Xerox confirms in an FAQ. We've had weather-related power outages here lately that seemed to have burned through a fair amount of the ink. One inkstick costs about $35 and only provides one color (cyan, magenta, yellow, or black), but as kindall notes, the black ones are free.

Given Xerox's bizarre reporting requirements (and bizarre attempts to keep you from meeting them), the cost of the ink, the printer's tendency to use a lot during power-on cycles, and the huge physical size of the printer, it's something you should seriously consider before applying. It's not one of those "hey, free stuff" giveaways; it's a financial commitment.

On the other hand, there's no way I could afford this $4000 printer and do real color proofs without this program. I've asked Xerox for clarification on the reporting requirements so I can evaluate it in the journals I publish, and we'll see how the company responds.
posted by mdeatherage at 1:51 PM on June 7, 2001

As a postscript, my "free" color printer just tried to E-mail its required report to [e-mail], the required reporting address. It bounced. I'm not kidding. If it continues to bounce, Xerox will charge me $100 for "failure to report" unless I print the thing out and fax it, but I can't do that tonight because it's not close enough to my report date. I have to do it next week.
posted by mdeatherage at 9:09 PM on June 8, 2001