Answer: The P7000 cartridge has longer ribbon life resulting in higher yield and delivered to the market at the same price as previous spool ribbon consumables used in the P5000 and P7000. Customers will achieve more printed pages for less money. Cost per page is computed by dividing the list price of the cartridge by yield (number of pages produced). When customers perform this calculation on current P7000 cartridge ribbons relative to spool ribbons, they will experience on average a 20% reduction in cost per page.

Answer: The cartridge delivers four key advantages over spool based printers:

Clean Hands - No need to touch and thread the ribbon fabric through the print mechanism.

Easy To Install - Quick and easy to change without requiring any special training, a cartridge ribbon virtually guides itself into the printer saving time and reducing load errors.

Uniform Print Quality - The new cartridge technology continually flips and rotates the ribbon to distribute wear over the entire surface resulting in more uniform print quality and improving the readability of documents and labels.

Longer Ribbon Life - In addition to print quality enhancements, the continual flipping and rotation of the ribbon allows the user to maximize the amount of ink in the ribbon fabric improving real-life performance over spool ribbons. The result is the longest ribbon life for a Printronix line matrix printer, providing more productivity and less interruptions during long print jobs.

Answer:

The P7000 cartridge ribbon line-up provides customers choice and flexibility to manage consumable costs. Customers can chose from the following options to match their print volume and budget.

Standard Life Cartridge – Single Pack	Lowest cost per purchase for customers with restrictive budget. Available in a single pack. This ribbon cartridge fits all P7000 printer models.
Extended Life Cartridge – Single Pack	For customers seeking a lower operating cost per page. This cartridge ribbon fits all P7000 printers EXCEPT 500 line per minute models.
Extended Life Cartridge – Four Pack	For customers with budget flexibility and seeking the lowest operation cost. This cartridge ribbon fits all P7000 printers EXCEPT 500 line per minute models.

Answer: The Standard Life cartridge page yield is 17,000 pages and the Extended Life cartridge page yield is 30,000 pages.

Answer: The P5000 30M Spool Ribbon page yield is 4,000 pages and the P7000 Ultra Capacity Spool Ribbon page yield is 13,000 pages.

Answer: The P7000H and P7000HD cartridge ribbon line-up provides customers choice and flexibility to manage consumable costs. Customers can chose either Standard or Extended Life cartridges to match their print volume and budget.

The P7000H Cartridge family offers all the standard features and reliability found in the P7000 series. The P7000H printer models are specifically designed for Asian character sets.

The P7000HD Cartridge family offers all the standard features and reliability found in the P7000 series. Additional benefits of the High Definition family are that they support a virtually limitless array of font styles, sizes and graphics. They provide all the necessary print resolution and system capabilities to easily drop into any Windows based laser print environment without any application modifications or special accommodations. 

Answer: The page yield enables us to perform accurate comparisons across our products as well as any competitor products. Our research shows that the most likely competition for our printer is a laser printer. By rating in pages, we make it easier for users to compare and see our substantial cost advantage. Additionally, the page test protocol is a much better indicator of real life consumable yields compared with older character based ratings. The difficulty with character yield comparisons is that manufacturers use different tests, settings, applications and environments to produce a character yield. There are no published comparisons of how one manufacturer derived a character yield versus other manufacturers.

Answer: The embedded microchip provides you precise, integrated control over ribbon life, print quality and most importantly, operating costs. Productivity is improved by preventing interruptions during longer print runs.

Answer: Yes. PrintNet Enterprise™ enables the user to view ribbon life anywhere remotely via a simple web browser. Even better, PrintNet Enterprise™ can be set to issue your web enabled portable device an e-mail once the ribbon life is low and again when it is out.

Answer: Yes. The printer keeps track of the quantity and types of all cartridge ribbons used on the machine. This log can be checked at any time, and viewed remotely via PrintNet Enterprise™, to determine how fast and how many ribbons your operation is consuming.

Answer: Yes. The system provides the customer with control over ribbon life and print quality. The system default is set for high print quality. It recognizes when a new ribbon has been installed, tracks ribbon usage and alerts when the ribbon needs to be replaced. Users can set the ending darkness to meet quality needs or extended life.

Answer: Yes. The system uses a sophisticated algorithm that tracks usage in all the various sections of the ribbon automatically. As print patterns shift, it will use different parts of the ribbon, but this is all tracked and properly accounted for. The net indication then is the life remaining in whatever is the most depleted section of the ribbon.

Answer: Yes. A ribbon can be removed and replaced at any time, and the system will correctly tell you the ribbon life remaining on the currently loaded ribbon.

Answer: The life indication will continue to count down until the remaining life gets low. At this point, the system will warn of a Ribbon Life Low condition. The indicator lamp will flash, the warning message will be displayed, and optionally e-mail alerts will be issued. Printing however will continue without any interruption. Once the remaining two percent is consumed the printer will stop to prevent the print quality from degrading below the set limit. The error lamp will flash, the audible alarm will sound, the display will indicate that the ribbon needs to be replaced, and optionally an e-mail alert will be issued.

Answer: Like the darkness set point, this is fully adjustable. The factory default is to declare Ribbon Low at 2% life remaining.

Answer: Yes. By returning the printer to the on-line state, it will resume printing for approximately two more minutes. If still a bit more printing is needed, the printer can continue to be returned to the on-line state to gain extra minutes of operation. This process can be repeated indefinitely to extend printing as long as desired.

Answer: Yes. Under the Advanced User section of the printer menus, you can select an option to ignore the ribbon end point. The ribbon life indication will continue to work, but no warnings will be issued and the printer will not stop once the life reaches 0%. Responsibility for insuring the proper change interval reverts back to the user.