Today people print less and less in offices, at least they try. However the need to get several (or several hundred) high-quality inexpensive printed sheets per day fast is still a vital necessity for every company. IT Support specialists know how to achieve this and they are ready to help you in choosing a printing device.
What do you need to know?
Here are few words about the classification of printers. They are made both single-function (printing only) and multifunctional 3-in-1 devices (printer, copy machine, scanner). For office work, the most economical laser printers of low (5,000 to 10,000 pages per month) and medium price categories (20,000 to 50,000 pages per month) are suitable. High-end printers are simply not needed in the office. In each of the price segments, models of different brands compete in print quality, print volume, amount of consumables spent, and so on. The choice of printer depends to a lesser extent on the brand. However if there are several printing devices in your office, choose them so that the cartridges on them are interchangeable. When choosing a printer, it is also important to check if the printer supports the operating system you are running. In particular, computers running Mac OS are not compatible with every printer. Printers are available with a network or USB connector. This is how the device can be connected to one computer or to the whole network. It’s better to choose an office printer with a network connector, as its operation doesn’t depend on one computer to which it’s connected. The fact is that a USB-connected printer works only if the computer it is connected to is working. A network printer is available to all necessary computers, and, for example, if half of the workstations break down, the rest will be able to print on.
Printer selection criteria
The main criterion when choosing a printer for the office is the price of a print per sheet, that is, the sum of the cost of a cartridge and the cost of paper. If we’re talking about consumables, cartridges in particular, the progress is moving towards the transition to economical single-copy printing. When choosing a printer, it makes sense to follow the same considerations. If you have a little printing amount, about 100 copies per month, choose an inexpensive printer that suits you in size, compatible with your OS, buy cartridges for it and print. If there is a lot of printing to do, the choice is more difficult. The only important thing here is the tasks that your business sets for you. For example, if there are three accountants in the accounting department, you don’t need to install the three cheapest printers for them. The amount of print for each will be higher than if you put 1 powerful printer for all. This is a typical case when the cheapest is the dearest. For a medium or large amount of printing, you should choose a printer with a refillable cartridge (as we already mentioned, the cost of a printer today is determined by the cost of consumables), in a way that the price of a new cartridge is as low as possible. For example, the printer itself may be $100 cheaper but a cartridge will cost twice as much as for more expensive model. Thus, the cost of ownership of a more expensive printer is lower than that of a cheaper one. This approach will significantly save money in the future. An extremely useful feature that you may find useful is duplex, a method of printing on both sides without human intervention. The duplex printing makes the printer itself more expensive by 10%, but cuts paper consumption in half. On average, a good quality device with a duplex and a scanner costs about 150,000 KZT. Such device is a must in an office where a lot of double-sided printing is required. Something about scanners. They are hard to be found as a separate device today, most often the scanner is built into a 3-in-1 MFP. There are also scanners with an auto-feed device. They will save time when there’s a lot of paper to scan: you can put a stack of documents in such a machine at once, and it will process them by itself without human intervention.
Don’t hesitate to ask experts for help
Well, there are many pitfalls in the selection of an office printer. At first glance, they seem small, but solving problems caused by a wrong printer takes a lot of time and effort for a business. IT Support specialists will select a printer for an individual business task, which they will also help to determine. If in doubt, call us and we will tell you how a similar problem was solved in another case. The key point in such a service is a consultation, and then a purchase. It takes a long time to understand the deep nuances, and if it is difficult for you to choose a printer, this is normal. Instead of having to examine the models for a week, buying the wrong device and spending a few days on exchange or return, trust the purchase of equipment to specialists who operate modern technologies and are familiar with latest achievements in the field of printing. These technologies are created specifically for the needs of business and can greatly simplify your life – their functionality can pleasantly surprise you. Sometimes the price increased by 25% yields 10 times better results allowing you to automate the process and reduce its cost. IT Support doesn't just sell you a printer, scanner or cartridge. Our specialists deliver equipment, install it, carry out warranty service, manage service technicians and protect your from unnecessary expenses. If the proposed device did not suit, they will replace it with a more suitable one or refund you. If necessary, the equipment will be replaced with the required models from the exchange fund in order to eliminate downtime.
