Buying a Printer
   
 







Buying a Printer
If you are looking to buy a printer,use the questions below to help you to decide what you need and then click on the links to take you to suppliers.
 
 
Like many machines, computer printers are useful but not very exciting when they do what you want and thoroughly frustrating when they go wrong.  Often the printers which frustrate are not “bad printers” but poorly chosen printers.
 
The key to living in peaceful harmony with your printer is to work out exactly what you need your printer to do.  Key questions to ask when buying a printer include:
 
Do you a need a printer or an all in one printer?
 
As far as I am aware, no-one is currently producing a printer/coffee machine but one will probably be on the market soon!  Printers are increasingly being combined with other machines to save cost, space and time.  Commonly found extras to go with your printer include:
 
  • Fax machines
  • Flatbed scanner
  • Photocopier
 
It can, for example, be cheaper to buy a combined printer and fax machine than buy each separately.  If a shortage of space is a problem for you, buying an all in one printer could be really helpful.
 
Make sure, however, that the specification of all parts of your printer meet your requirements.  Many of the photocopiers will only copy from originals individually placed on the scanner.  Not much use if you regularly need to copy 50 page documents and want a photocopier which will feed them through automatically.
 

Printer
How many pages will you print?
 
Generally monochrome laser printers are considered best for high volume printing.  Laser printers use dry ink which their lasers fix to the paper.  Inkjet printers use wet ink.
 
Even though prices have come down, high quality colour laser printers are still relatively expensive and you would need to look very carefully at your costs and volumes before deciding to buy a colour laser printer.  Also check out the print quality carefully.  Some low cost laser printers do not produce crisp colour copies.
 
If you are printing high volumes, the speed of your printer becomes more important.
 
How much will your printer consumables cost?
 
Staying on the subject of inkjet printers versus laser printers, to get a good quality print, you may need to use more expensive paper with an inkjet printer because the ink tends to soak in and blur the text or graphics if you use very cheap paper. 
 
The ink for your printer can be a significant cost.  Some printers allow you to refill cartridges with ink – a potentially messy businesses.  For inkjet printers you buy replacement cartridges.
 
A good point to consider is whether the colour cartridges are combined into one cartridge or are separate.  If your company colour is, for example, blue, you are likely to run out of cyan frequently.  With combined colour cartridges, you may find that you are throwing away lots of yellow and magenta because the cyan has all been used.  Having separate colour cartridges can avoid this wastage.  However the downside of this is that you will have to change cartridges more often as the other colours will run out and keep a wider range of cartridges available.  Also note that quite often the software which comes with ink jet printers warns that a printer cartridge is running out when it still has 25% of its ink left – get a replacement but do not change it until the printer says that the cartridge is empty.
 
Spending a bit of time checking the cost of replacement cartridges can be time well spent if you are planning to do a lot of printing.
 
Another option to consider if you want to save on costs, is getting a paper handler which automatically reverses the paper.  This will let you print out double sided documents with no manual handling, saves on paper and also makes the finished document thinner.

Do you plan to share printers?
 
Networking your printer can make it easy for several people to use one machine. 
 
Before you choose your machine, consider where it will be located.  If lots of people are sharing machine, you should consider the possibility of having separate paper trays for different qualities of paper.  Many offices use more expensive paper for external correspondence than for internal correspondence.  Swapping the paper in the tray depending on what you are printing is no trouble if you have a printer next to your desk but if the printer is the other side of the office or in another room, it can be intensely irritating.
 
With a shared printer, you may also want to choose one with large paper trays to cope with the potentially larger volumes of printing.
 
What print quality do you need?
 
For purely internal use a low or moderate print quality may be acceptable but if you want to print off your own marketing publications or you send a lot of letters to customers, then a higher quality may be desirable.
 
You may also have specialist requirements, for example, printing off high quality photographs or printing right to the edge of the page.
 
For a good range of printers to buy online go to: