Choosing and buying a printer is like looking for a suitable car model in the sense that you are not buying it to decorate the interior, but you will need to “drive” it. It is quite difficult for an ordinary person to choose the right model; you must first study the technical characteristics of printers that suppliers offer today. And the choice of printing devices is so great and varied! In this material, we will help answer the question of how to choose a printer? How to choose the right printer and highlight the technical specifications based on which you will make your choice.
First you need to make a list of tasks that you plan to solve with the help of a new acquisition. Analyze your office needs based on the characteristics of various printers: productivity, the price of consumables, the price of the device itself. After that, you will have a more visual idea of which printer to choose for the home and which one for the office.
type of instalation
By type of installation, all printers can be divided into three types:
floor arrangement
desktop arrangement
portable
Placements on the floor require particularly large devices that process a significant number of documents. Most often, these are multifunctional devices with significant dimensions and weight, which are installed in offices or printing houses and are loaded with a large amount of work. Desktop printers are used in small offices or at home for stationary work. Portables are mostly used for photo printing on business trips, they are light and small in size.
In terms of capabilities, printers also differ sharply. From ordinary printers with a print function, cheap and practical for solving small and simple tasks of a home mini-office, to multifunctional devices that combine several different features of individual printer, scanner, copier, fax devices at once. If you need equipment for a printing house, please contact Ural-Minolta!
Multifunction devices
Naturally, the price of such smart devices is much higher than that of simple home printers.
Multifunction devices (MFPs) easily fit into any computer network and the most complex workflow system.
And how many pluses multifunctionality has - one device uses space more economically than five or six printers. And the price of the "multi-handed device" is lower than the full set of fax-printer-scanner-copier. MFPs are easier to install and configure - you can get by with one driver and one interface cable instead of many different ones.
Printer life and performance
A very important parameter. Modest devices for home offices are capable of processing up to 10,000 pages per month. These include inkjet and laser printers. The most popular are small office printers with print capacities ranging from 10,000 to 50,000 copies per month. The MFP of medium offices is capable of processing up to 100 thousand pages, and even for the largest offices, printing devices generally compete with printers.
In terms of performance, choose a device based on the workload of your office. For a home printer, this indicator is not so important, but for an average printer it is already necessary to be able to get up to 30 pages per minute of processed material, the requirements for high-performance devices are even high up to 40 pages per minute.
Print technologies
We will understand the printing technology of modern printers. You can get very high quality prints on an MFP or printer with laser technology. The quality is provided by electrographic printing, but the cost of such a device is high. However, it is compensated in the process by the low cost of printing.
Inkjet printers are much more attractively priced and extremely popular. They use piezoelectric or thermal inkjet printing. In terms of print quality, documents are not inferior to laser ones if they are made on photographic paper. At the time of purchasing such a printer, please note that the cost of printing a single document in this case is high. The reason for this is the high cost of inkjet cartridges and the peculiarity of this device, which requires constant continuous operation to avoid drying out of the ink. In addition, the duration of printing on an inkjet printer is higher and this property makes them more likely to be used at home. Consider these tips when choosing an inkjet printer.
How the printer works
What is the principle of operation of each type of device? In laser-type printers, the beam forms an image on a drum that has photosensitivity. And then this image is transferred to a sheet of paper using powder paint. The roller heats up and melts the powder particles, forming a text or pattern. The paint can be of various colors, and the number of cartridges increases accordingly. The cartridge is designed for one toner. The principle of operation of LED printers is very similar to the above, but the LED line is less expensive to manufacture than a laser, which is reflected in the price of the printer.
In inkjet printers, the print head matrix supplies ink to the paper. The diaphragm of the piezocrystal forms a drop of ink. When electricity is applied, the piezocrystal bends and presses on the diaphragm, pushing the drop out of the nozzle. This technology has glorified the world-famous printer manufacturer Epson. The devices of this company are famous for their amazing durability.
In sublimation printers, the ink is heated by a thermoelement and, evaporating, falls onto a sheet of paper. The long print times of these printers are due to the fact that each color is processed in turn and only after that a protective coating is applied.
In solid ink printers, the ink is first melted in a container and then fed to the print head, and then to a sheet of paper.
Different printer models have different ink cartridges. It’s bad when there is only one cartridge for both black and white and color prints, one of the colors ends and the entire cartridge needs to be changed.
To avoid setting up printing using a computer, choose a printer with a touch keyboard on the chassis and an LCD panel or display for on-the-go information.
How and how much paper is fed into the printer? Low-cost home printers are equipped with one paper input tray with a capacity of up to 150 sheets. Devices for medium offices are able to accept up to 500 sheets, for large offices 1000 or more. Modular multifunction printers are usually equipped with several trays and the possibilities are expanded to 8700 sheets. Such serious devices are often equipped with an automatic feeder for originals during the scanning process. You only need to place a stack of sheets, and the device itself will copy first one and then the second side of the sheet, turning it over on its own.
Consider the property of printers to make noise during operation. The more powerful the printer, the more noise it makes.
Your goal is to print photos on a printer? Buy a printer with the ability to print on photo paper, only in this way you will achieve high-quality printing. As for the weight of paper for printers, its maximum value is 1190.0 g/m.
How are printers connected?
At large enterprises and institutions, specialists connect the MFP to several computers at the same time, thus organizing free access for employees to the device for printing documents. For this purpose, the HTTP protocol is used. From a regular Internet browser, a standard setup procedure occurs.
And photo printers no longer need to be configured using a computer. They are able to make prints paired only with a camera. To edit pictures and view photos, these printers are equipped with a color screen.
The question of choosing computer operating systems for the normal operation of the printer-computer tandem is not relevant in our time. The computer can be equipped with any OS, and to select a printer, write down the data on the amount of RAM and the type of your processor on a piece of paper, it can come in handy. Printers have their own RAM. It stores image processing data, and at high resolutions, the amount of this memory is very significant.
When the printer is busy, the frequency of its processor is important, with higher frequency rates, the print queue runs faster.
Accessories and consumables
Printer owners should remember Exupery's saying that we are responsible for those we have tamed. To paraphrase this, we can say that if you bought a printer, then you will have to take care of it constantly. And this concern will consist in maintaining it in working condition by replacing components and buying consumables.
A vivid example is a photo drum as a part that needs to be replaced after its resource is exhausted. This device transfers an image onto a sheet of paper. And in laser, as well as LED printers, it exhausts its resource with fairly fast printing. If the photo drum is placed inside the cartridge, as is done in MFPs and simple printers, then its service life increases.
The resource of magnetic powder in a laser printer also has its limits - the developer, that is, this powder, can last up to about 600,000 pages. The toner resource is even less - it is only enough for five thousand pages in personal printers, up to thirty thousand copies in productive large devices. The resources of color toner cartridges are slightly higher - up to fifty thousand, and black and white toner cartridges - up to one hundred thousand pages. Pay attention to the fact that with a significant price level of inkjet printers, the resource of their ink cartridges is very modest. It is equal to three hundred pages.
What interface to use?
With the help of which interface to connect your new printer with a computer, decide not after purchase, but before that happy moment when the new device decorates your office. Let's try to understand the abundance of human inventions in the field of data transfer from a processor to a peripheral device. Interfaces are wired and wireless. The latter, of course, are more convenient in every respect, and humanity is moving in its inventions, moving away from the need to cling to the wires underfoot. Again, we emphasize that everything is determined by the price, and you decide which interface to choose:
Ethernet is a wired interface, the RJ-45 connector connects the cable to a printer or MFP. The inconvenience lies in the wires under your feet and the need to re-crimp the cable into a new connector, provided that someone still fell, clinging to it. Stock up on connectors and purchase a crimping device.
LPT is a very popular earlier, but now disappearing, parallel interface for transferring data from a computer to a printer. It is characterized by low speed and quietly living out its days.
USB - since this is the most popular and widespread interface today - we recommend stopping at it. Every modern computer has several USB ports. Therefore, there should be no problems with switching your purchase.
FireWire - this interface is serial, and not only in this way it differs from LPT. The speed of this connection is much higher and is about 400 Mbps.
Bluetooth is an extremely convenient wireless interface. Agree, it is a pleasure to switch the printer without wires lying on the floor.
Wi-Fi is a modern version of wireless communication. It is used in large firms and organizations to build wireless networks. Convenient and safe, allows you to forget about the wires.
IRDA - infrared port. It has a low data transfer rate, but is used to switch almost any device equipped with a similar infrared radiation interface.
Fax Features
Manufacturers of multifunctional devices have worked hard to expand the capabilities of the latest devices, and we have the opportunity to use this wide range. Copy, scan, send and receive fax messages and still talk on the phone without a handset - like a fairy tale? But these opportunities have long been available to everyone!
In a number of features, the MFP has all the advantages of a full-fledged phone, moreover, some of these smart machines are equipped with a cordless handset. So you can, following the example of Julius Caesar, cope with several tasks at the same time - answer the phone, copy images and drink coffee. If the speakerphone is included with your MFP, then talking on the speakerphone is not a problem for you. The answering machine will take over the functions of dealing with customer calls if you are not at the workplace.
If you programmatically set up your computer to use the fax built into the MFP, you will get significant savings in paper costs.
MFP scanning capabilities
These magical multifunctional devices are also able to turn into a color scanner. Built-in scanners in MFPs are divided into two types - flatbed and broaching. The first are designed to scan individual documents. By placing the sheet on the scanner glass, you qualitatively read the information from your document. You can do this operation with the book, if you try. But the pull-through scanner will not allow you to work with a book page if you have not torn it out first. This type of scanner is designed to perform very different tasks. If your picture or poster is large, a large-format MFP with a pull-through scanner is exactly what you need. It is capable of digitizing large-format posters and calendars, signs, photographs, and announcements. When choosing an MFP, pay attention to this.
MFP manufacturers would not be leaders in sales if they did not introduce to the market MFPs with built-in scanners that combine both the capabilities of a flatbed and a broaching device! Yes, there are such combined devices.
It should be emphasized that the cost of the built-in scanner, and hence the cost of the entire MFP, depends significantly on the type of sensor used by manufacturers. In most cases, you may encounter the presence of a contact CIS sensor in the scanner. This option is more democratic in price and is designed for consumers in the home-office sector.
But if your professional needs are related to graphics processing, high quality digitization of images and photos, then a CCD scanner is at your service. Naturally, the cost of such a device will be higher.
The capabilities of modern MFPs allow you not to resort to the services of carrier pigeons, but to immediately send a read image by e-mail, moreover, without going into your browser on your computer, but using the touch panel of the device itself and the address book. And tell me after that that our century cannot be called a period of new human possibilities!
MFP Copy Capabilities
Some MFP models provide copying capabilities without computer control. The quality and speed of the process is not inferior to typical analogues.
The monochrome copy speed for A4 paper is from 3 to 140 pages/min, and the color copy speed is from 1 to 130 pages/min.
Service Support Guarantees
When purchasing expensive equipment, any buyer finds out for himself possible service options, because complex devices tend to present unpleasant surprises to the owner at a certain time. As a rule, this happens at the most inopportune moment at the height of the working day with maximum loads and time limits for its repair.
In such situations, very quickly unscrupulous “specialists” from one-day firms appear in the office very quickly on a call, who, with high requests in the amount of payment for their services, still manage to replace your high-quality parts with less efficient ones.
To avoid such situations, try to purchase equipment from a dealer in advance, which will give you a guarantee for a high-quality replacement of a part that has failed in a short time. You will be insured against the replacement of components of your expensive device.
Menu Russification
Modern MFPs are very difficult devices to understand their operation with a huge number of various functions. Therefore, it will be easier for you to learn information about its capabilities and work with it if the menu is in your native Russian language.
Conclusion
Achievements in the field of IT technologies are certainly impressive, but the hour is far away when we will completely forget about the paper version of documents and switch to electronic ones. Many people even think that this idea is not feasible.
From life experience, everyone knows how bitter it is to lose an important document in an urgently needed situation due to a computer breakdown. But the advantage of the paper version of the document is its permanent preservation, not counting the fires.
The development of the production of copiers does not lag behind the general trends in computer technology, manufacturers sensitively keep abreast of the needs of employees of large firms and companies. Thanks to this, we can always take advantage of a rich selection of high-quality technology. We hope these tips for choosing a printer will help you!
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April 20, 2024 08:08:54 +0300 GMT
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