Businesses rarely expend much effort when buying a printer, but
there are savings and efficiencies to be made if you weigh up the
options. Neil Fawcett reports
The average end-user's experience of printing can be easily
summarised as one of two states: "it works, therefore I love it,"
or "I clicked print and nothing happened so I hate it."
Printing remains a complex issue and it is an overhead that must be
carefully managed. Plenty of time is spent planning and designing
server installations, storage architectures and online offerings,
but printing tends to be something of an afterthought. Considering
the effort put in by the likes of Lexmark, Epson, and
Hewlett-Packard to improve printing management within the
enterprise, this is certainly a missed opportunity.
"It is amazing how many people just expect the printers to keep
running and running and running, often without giving them any
thought, while they upgrade all the other kit around them," says
Graham Warren, marketing manager at CPG International, which
supplies the Genicom and Compuprint branded printers.
The printer options for normal corporate use are: inkjet, laser,
colour laser, thermal and solid-ink. The printing technology and
the engines that drive these types of printers have undergone
several iterations of development and, as a result, price and
performance have been fairly well "tuned". Monochrome laser
printers, for instance, now offer an excellent price/performance
proposition, and companies have no excuse for not delivering
high-speed monochrome printing to users.
Colour printing is still a significantly more expensive option in
the business world. Nevertheless, colour is coming, and having
access to colour output devices within a business network is now
commonplace.
These days any printer maker worth its salt has built in the
ability to "expose" information pertaining to such things as toner
status, paper use and jams to a management tool of some
description. Most business printers, especially laser printers,
ship with a tool that will use the Simple Network Management
Protocol (SNMP) to help map an installation of printers over an
IP-based network.
Generally, these tools are relatively simple - SNMP is great at
exposing basic information - but some have the ability to scale
into a more framework-centric management tool, along the lines of
HP's Openview software, that allows complete control over computer
assets.
Andrew Semple, manager for business printers at Epson, advises
companies looking at buying a printer to look not only at the
various "consumable" information that is available from a printer -
toner levels, paper usage, etc - but network utilisation. Adding
colour output technology to a network will cause a spike in the
amount of data being passed from a user's computer to a printer -
data traffic that the network administrator may not be happy
about.
In terms of speed and output capability, today's printers are
top-notch. With the price battles that take place among the leading
manufacturers, you can now get hold of a speedy product for a snip.
The running costs of printers is often what tips the
price/performance balance, but if sufficient effort is put into
researching this aspect of the buying decision then the motto
"forewarned is forearmed" applies most strongly. If you want
trouble-free printing, put more effort into owning the
problem.
Buying a printer
- Base your buying choice on the kind of output you plan to
print. Text, graphics and photos each put different demands on a
printer
- Judge a printer by the speed necessary for the quality level
you want to use. An inkjet's claimed speed usually refers to the
printer's fastest mode, not the higher-quality modes
- The preferred choice for shared printers is to connect them
directly to the network. Make sure the printer offers the right
kind of network connection and has software that will work with
your network
- Check the memory. Not all printers allow memory upgrades. Some
models need little or no memory because they use the PC to process
print jobs
- The less often you have to add or change consumables, the
better. Choose a solution that runs for long periods with little
interaction. If you print 25 pages a day, and your printer holds 25
sheets, you will have to load paper every day - a model that holds
250 sheets would be better
- If the number of pages you print in a month is a concern, pick
a printer with a monthly duty cycle that is about four times the
number of pages you expect to print
- Look closely at the management tool options with any given
printer. The more control you have the better the experience will
be for the end-user
Corporate printing options
Inkjet printers
Four-colour. This is the standard for inkjet printing. Typically, a
four-colour inkjet printer holds two ink cartridges - one with
black ink and one with coloured inks (cyan, yellow and
magenta).
Three-colour. This is a low-end model of inkjet that is rapidly
disappearing as prices for four-colour inkjets drop. The main
difference from four-colour inkjets is that three-colour printers
cannot hold a black ink cartridge and a colour cartridge at the
same time. Not good for the business world.
Photo. While many four-colour inkjets can print photos at almost
true photographic quality, they are hampered by the range of
colours (also called gamuts) they can produce. Photo inkjet
printers expand their gamuts by adding additional ink colours,
usually light cyan and light magenta.
Laser printers
Laser printers use a photosensitive drum
or belt that picks up an electrostatic charge wherever the laser
beam hits it. The charged areas then pick up toner and transfer the
toner to the paper.
Monochrome. The most common type of laser printer and the area
where you will get excellent price/performance. Monochrome laser
printers offer a sharpness that inkjet printers cannot match
without slowing to a crawl.
Colour. Colour laser printers are making inroads into the business
world, and their quality is improving all the time. Fortunately,
prices are falling as well. Quality wise they are excellent, but do
not expect a colour laser printer to produce the high-quality
photographs that you get from an inkjet.
Colour LED printers
LED printers are similar to colour
laser printers but with one big exception. Because the LED light
source is much more compact than a laser, it is relatively simple
to fit four LED print elements next to each other. This allows LED
printers to lay down all four colours in one pass. Therefore, they
can print in colour nearly as quickly as they print in monochrome.
But there is a catch. Such printers may deliver the speed you want,
but not the quality of image. This is a category worth spending
time evaluating.
Solid-ink printers
Solid-ink printers start with a
block of ink - usually wax or resin - which they either spray
directly onto a page as an inkjet printer would or spray onto a
drum that rolls against a piece of paper like an offset printing
press. Solid-ink printers that use the drum approach tend to be
more successful because they offer speed with output quality
similar to colour laser printers. The advantage solid-ink printers
have over colour laser printers and LED printers is that they
produce more consistent colour. A disadvantage is that the ink does
not slide well over glass, which may cause paper jams in office
copiers.