Office Laser Printers
January 31, 2008
- Resolution is not an issue for the majority of offices; it should not determine your choice.
- Take monthly duty cycles with a grain of salt. Use them for comparison purposes only, but don’t expect to get the full page count month in and month out.
- The street price of a printer is usually in inverse proportion to the price of toner. The cheaper the machine, the more expensive per page.
- Cost per page is based on an industry standard coverage of 5%. If you use lots of graphics, shaded boxes and/or small type, your costs will be higher.
- List prices are what the dealer starts negotiating with; you should be able to settle for one-third off that price. Even announced street prices may be higher than what you’ll pay, thanks to rebates and discounts form resellers.
- PostScript is a must if you use illustration or page layout programs. For other office uses, PCL or host-based printing is fine.
- Extra memory is a big plus if you use PostScript; it’s good if you run multipage and multicopy jobs (electronic collation); it adds nothing to host-based printing.
- Most users don’t need hard disks on their printers. An exception is for high-security printing, often-used forms, or truly enormous electronically collated jobs.
- It’s great to have thousands of pages of input, but not if you have only a 250-sheet exit tray.
- Toner saver and automatic duplexing can be money savers — but only if you get people to use them.
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