After having an ipf8100 for a few months I have noticed my electric bill rise about $30 more than normal. This past month I had left it on most of the time and it would run through its cleaning cycles. That's when I really noticed my electric bill.

For now i will be unplugging the printer untill I need to print.

Anyone else notice this type of power consumption?

First, the $30 sounds a little suspicious. The ipf8100 when operating is rated at 190 watts (or less) , which means it takes about the same amount of power as ceiling light with 3 60 watt bulbs. This computes to about 4.6 kiloWatt-hours per day, or about 136 kW-hrs a month. I don't know how much you pay for your power, but currently my power company (rocky mountain power) charges about 10 cents per kiloWatt hour, which means operating the printer 24 hours a day for a month would cost about $14 dollars. Perhaps your power costs quite a bit more, but unless you are running the printer around the clock (which means you can't turn it off anyway), much of the $30 is probably coming from something else.

As far as turning it off .. mistake. The printer is rated at 6 watts while in standby/asleep. At this same cost of power - about 50 cents per month to leave on. That's about the cost of 1 ml of ink, and turning the printer off and on frequently will consume much more than 1 ml ... yes, Canon's consume more ink than most realize to keep their nozzles clear. In addition this will most likely consume the head at a faster rate which if you end up replacing will probably be more expensive than running the printer for a couple of decades in sleep mode. Unplugging it will cost you more money than the few quarters per month it takes to leave it running.

Good info. Will reconsider keeping the printer on. Just wondering when would you decided to unplug the thing if you were going away for long peroids without printing anything?

Understand that Canon printers do get nozzle clogs ... it's just that you don't really ever see what the printer is doing to keep them clear, or realize when a nozzle is clogged to the point of not working and the printer remaps it to a spare. Nothing wrong with the system - works very well, my only point is the printer does consume ink to stay clear or to clear itself. If you leave it off for several days, it will probably spend about 5 minutes doing a nozzle clean when you turn it on. How much ink? I don't know, I just was pointing out that the ink will cost you more than the electricity to keep it on all of the time.

I didn't turn my ipf6100 off. Ever. Had it for about a 14 months, and there were a couple of times I didn't use it for several weeks. (I didn't like waiting the 5 minutes to clean when I wanted to print something).

Here is a good resource to research this (and all things related to Canon ipf printers)

http://canonipf.wikispaces.com/On+Or+Off%3F

This wiki has a wealth of information for users of ipf printers. Maybe it will help.

Great website! Thanks for all the info!