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Why Do-It-Yourself Photo Printing Doesn't Add Up
Ant writes "CNET News.com and The New Yorks Times (no registration required) report that even though the prices of printers have dropped up to 30 percent in the last few months thanks to a savage price war, buyers are going to pay at least 28 cents a print. This is if you believe the manufacturers' math. It could be closer to 50 cents a print if you trust the testing of product reviewers at Consumer Reports.
In the meantime, the price of printing a 4-by-6-inch snapshot at a retailer's photo lab, like those inside a Sam's Club, is as low as 13 cents. Snapfish.com, an online mail-order service, offers prints for a dime each if you prepay. At those prices, why bother printing at home?
Consumers seem to be saying just that. For the 12 months ended in July, home printing accounted for just 48 percent of the 7.7 billion digital prints made, down sharply from 64 percent in the previous 12 months, according to the Photo Marketing Association International, a trade group for retailers and camera makers. The number of photos spewing out of home printers is up quite handsomely, however, because of the overall growth of digital photo printing--up about 68 percent from the year-earlier period - but retail labs clearly have the advantage..."
The problem is the whole idea is misleading. This does not factor in the countless prints that I have from when my kids grab the camera and take pictures of TV shows and really close-up, blurry pictures of the family pets doing exciting things like sleeping. If you factor in accidental pictures and just plain bad pictures that you wish you didn't take, the price per print can shift quite dramatically in some cases. I would dare say when the kids don't touch the camera and only me or my wife take the pictures there is still around 4 prints on a 24 exposure roll that end up just getting thrown out. Add in the ones that my wife sends to her crappy grandpa that won't acknowledge she exists (you can bet we don't send good ones there), We can easily waste 25% of a roll of film. If the kids get the thing, all bets are off.
Heroscape, it's like legos combined with anachronistic wargames.
God, I love geek humor.
The most rabid believers in American Exceptionalism are the exact same people whose policies are destroying it.
I agree with the AC
You don't know what you're getting into here...
Write boring code, not shiny code!