Selecting the Right Printers for Your Business
The importance of choosing the right printers is often overlooked when businesses are purchasing computers and other IT equipment. But selecting the wrong printers can prove a costly mistake, leading to a reduction in productivity and higher-than-anticipated outlays for repairs and consumables, especially ink and toner cartridges.
Before purchasing a printer, think carefully about the needs of your business. What is the volume of printed materials? Does your firm make color prints and print out photographs? Do you plan to network several printers, or will each PC have its own printer?
Types of Printers
Unless your company has very low printing volumes, avoid lower-end inkjet printers. These printers are often sold at drastically discounted rates because they are designed to print relatively few pages per ink cartridge, forcing users to buy expensive replacement cartridges. In addition, the quality of the prints produced by lower-end inkjet printers is often inadequate for professional purposes.
Designed primarily for home usage, lower-end multifunction printers also tend to be a poor choice for all but the smallest businesses. An "all-in-one" machine that can print both monochrome and color, while also serving as a copy machine, scanner, and fax, often performs none of these functions particularly well. Relying on a single machine to take care of all of these critical tasks can also be risky, making it difficult for your business to operate in case of a breakdown. If you nonetheless opt for a multifunction printer, choose a higher-end model designed specifically for higher volume business users.
For printing larger volumes of monochrome text documents, a laser printer is often the best choice. Although the upfront purchase price of laser printers is usually markedly higher than that of low-end inkjet printers, the per-page cost for laser printers tends to be considerably lower over time. The text quality, printing speed, and reliability of laser printers are also much better than for most inkjet printers. But even among laser printers, there can be differences in the per-page cost, depending upon the size and the pricing of the toner cartridges. There are also big variations in quality, with the cheapest laser printers often being slower, louder, and more prone to breakdown than the more expensive models.
Consider Quality
Purchasing a durable machine with long toner life and a minimum of plastic parts can pay off in the long run. Quality is especially important if the printer is intended to be part of a local area network (LAN). When there are several users hooked up to single printer, volumes are likely to be higher, and speed and reliability will become more important. Depending upon the needs of your office, it may make more sense to invest in fewer, high quality printers that are networked, than to spend less on individual printers for each PC. Before purchasing a printer, check to make sure that it will work within your network setup, and that the printer can handle the volume of printing required without frequent toner cartridge changes or paper reloads. Networked printers must also have enough memory to queue multiple print jobs.
If your company generates large volumes of black and white prints, but relatively few color prints, consider getting a single color printer for a number of users. This will allow you to invest in a higher quality color printer, while still providing employees with the necessary functionality. If the number of color prints the business produces is small, an inkjet color printer may be a more economical choice than a pricier color laser printer. For some types of images, especially photos, inkjet printers also produce higher resolution and better color accuracy than laser printers. For higher volumes of printing, however, color laser printers are a more economical choice than inkjet printers.
Because even the highest quality printers can break down, make sure you have a warranty and have signed up for a service plan, especially if the printer is high end or if it is the only printer your business uses.
