Color printing arrived at the Kiewit Computation Center last Tuesday, allowing students to print color graphs, illustrations and other computer images at a small price.
Although the center purchased the printer -- a $10,000 Tektronix Phaser 200i -- about a year ago, Kiewit officials just recently finished the printer's testing phase.
Larry Levine, the College's director of computing, said Kiewit decided to purchase the printer because "there was not a good, central" means of color printing.
He said town businesses charge more than Kiewit charges and their buildings are further away.
Users pay $1 a page for color printouts and $2 a page for transparencies.
According to Malcolm Brown, the director of academic computing, the cost helps to cover the price of "consumables" -- the special paper and ink used for the printer. The cost also deters students from printing endless volumes of color pages.
Brown said Kiewit does not know if it will purchase another color printer and will wait to see if one is needed.
While the printer will help with graphs and other visual images, black-and-white print jobs will still represent the majority of papers at Kiewit, Brown said.
According to Levine, faculty, students and staff will be the main users of the printers.
However, Kiewit administrators said charging money for printouts is not a growing trend and Kiewit will continue to provide free printing for black-and-white jobs.
Unlike black-and-while printouts, to print in color, students need to purchase coupons.
Students can purchase the coupons, sold in denominations of $1, $4 and $10 at Kiewit.
After purchasing the coupons, students can print to the color printer from any computer linked to the College's network.
The printer has three different ink colors -- cyan, magenta and yellow -- that are used to produce other colors by placing dots of the three next to each other to create visual illusions of solid colors.
