Posted by Cindy Dwyer, HP Small and Medium Business Marketing 

In these tough economic times, it’s even more important to watch what you spend.  HP has a little known tool to help small businesses evaluate and optimize printing costs.  HP Print View Software is designed specifically to estimate print costs for printing  marketing materials like brochures and presentations.  It enables you to compare the cost of printing in your office with an HP printer vs. sending the print job out to a copy shop.  You can also compare costs on various HP printers, so you could even choose which printer is the most cost-effective for a given project. 

HP has sponsored some research that shows for smaller quantities of brochures, printing in your office on an HP printer can offer savings of more than 50% vs. copy shops.* 

HP Print View can estimate cost for any document from any application. You can change the set-up in Print View and see the impact to the cost -- such as printing on both sides of the paper (duplex) or changing the quantity of finished documents.   

HP Print View works like any other printer software (also known as a printer driver) and can be selected from within the printer drop down menu.  Once you install Print View, all you have to do is hit “file” and ”print” from the menu.  The Print View screen will let you estimate the print cost on selected HP printers, then choose which office printer you want to send the document to, and just hit the print button, and your print job will start.  

In addition to print cost estimation, you can see how your project will print in 3D – this is important for projects like brochures that will be folded so you can see exactly where the fold lines should be.  It can also help you avoid waste by printing it right the first time.  This becomes even more important when you’re using special media types like glossy papers that are usually more expensive than plain paper.  

HP Print View supports print cost estimation on:   HP Color LaserJet 3800, CP3505, CP4005,  4700, 5550, 9500, 9500 MFP, CP6015, CM6040 MFP, CM6030 MFP, CP151x series, CM1312 MFP, CP2025, CM2320 MFP, CP3525, CM3530 MFP printers, and Officejet Pro K8600 – Print Cost Estimation (PCE) support only.

 * Based on average retail pricing for quantities up to 500 pages.  Source:  Infotrends U.S. cost of Print Study 2008.  Click here for more details.