Archive for the ‘Choosing Your Printer’ Category

The majority of users in the world require standard laser or inkjet printers that are not too large in size but can produce high-grade prints at a rate that will increase productivity.  However, there is a small group of consumers that are in need of wide-format printers.  Many people may not understand why this is, and some may even think these large machines could work for standard printing needs.  Rather, a device of this stature and ability is designed for specific purposes and intended to meet the needs of a select few professions.

Because of the wide and tall frame of large-format printers, consumers must first make sure ample space is available.  When installing, multiple people will be required to move the mammoth printer, as most weigh well over 100 pounds, and some are over 300 pounds.  With the ability to print posters, banners, signage, as well as sketches or drafts for blueprints, the target audience is generally in the architecture, advertising or engineering field.

Instead of sheets of paper that are fed through the unit via trays and rollers, large-format printers have one or two rolls of paper that will feed continuously.  Prints typically range from 17” to 100” wide and once complete are severed from the unused paper with a built-in cutter.  Though all oversized and used for similar purposes, these machines use different printing technologies including laser, inkjet, thermal and electrostatic.  Many different manufacturers attempt every year to perfect the wide-format devices, but the top three remain HP, Canon and Epson.

Offices that do not want to hire outside the company to handle oversized printing jobs will need a large-format printer, as will companies that specialize in wide prints such as advertisers that make signs and banners for others or engineers that need to supply contractors with blueprints and sketches.  Overall, The large-format printers may not be in huge demand, but for the job they were built to do, they are irreplaceable.

Often times, when researching a printer, a duty cycle will be mentioned.  Though it may be self-explanatory to some, others may not understand the importance of this information.  Duty cycles are broken down by monthly usage.  Usually there are a few different numbers- the maximum monthly duty cycle, the lifetime duty cycle and the recommended monthly duty cycle.  Both numbers are crucial facts when determining which device is the most appropriate for your home or office.

A maximum monthly duty cycle is that absolute most prints a machine could be capable of if it is pushed to its absolute limit.  By no means is this a guaranteed number of prints, and users should not be surprised if issues start to arise long before that number of prints have been reached.  The maximum lifetime duty cycle is an estimate of how many documents the printer will be able to produce.  Sometimes it will be listed in estimated years this unit could last if used to its maximum monthly duty cycle.

A recommended monthly duty cycle is the advised amount of prints by the manufacturer.  There are a certain number of pages, especially if in a continuous manner, that can create wear and tear and sometimes overheating that can lead to paper jams and fried moving parts.  Though it is possible to produce more than the recommended monthly duty cycle, the lifespan of the device may be compromised in doing so.

Experts in the printing industry suggest purchasing a unit that has a maximum monthly duty cycle that doubles the standard amount of prints users are estimated to produce.  These duty cycles are not provided to limit productivity, but rather to prevent users from overusing a printer and ultimately destroying a piece of office equipment that would otherwise be durable.  Make sure to pay attention to the monthly and recommended duty cycles when searching for a new unit.

When someone begins the experience of shopping for a printer, it could become overwhelming considering how many options are available.  Especially if that consumer starts the process by looking online, they will find hundreds of thousands of printers that have been released over the years.  As a person who is not well-educated in printer technology, deciding which machine is the best for your needs may be difficult.  Here is a simple list of the types of printers that match various needs.

• A personal printer for light text and photo printing – an inkjet printer will be the best choice, such as a Canon or HP.  These machines will have the best color tones and crisp images that reflect a professional photo lab.
• A personal printer for standard text printing- a low-volume, monochromatic laser printer should be a good fit. This will deliver black-and-white text documents quickly and efficiently while still providing prints with a smooth finish.
• A small or home office- an all-in-one inkjet or laser printer will be fine.  Both have decent output speeds and offer multiple functions which will preserve space and time.
• A large office with high-volume print demands- a large laser printer is going to be the ideal choice in this situation.  It will not only print quality text documents, but graphics documents should be handled well too.  If color is needed for standard printing, opt for a laser printer that holds multiple colored toners rather than just black.
• A business that prints oversized documents- a plotter or a large-format laser or inkjet printer will cover these needs.  A place that makes banners of signs will need to have one of these.  It works with a long roll of wide paper rather than single sheets, and still maintains impressive speeds.  Color and black-and-white are available, depending on the specific needs of the consumer.

It is easy to see why making a choice could be tough considering all of the options.  The machines listed above are only types, there are hundreds of models of each.  Good luck!

As technology advances, there are more and more types of printers hitting the market. A few years ago the big innovation in the printing world was the solid ink printer. Nowadays, though, the LED printer has become the next big thing. While LED printers use printer toner, there is a definite distinction between these machines and the standard laser printer that consumers are used to. These two types also have the commonalities of high speed and high resolutions, but as similar as they are, there are differences too. The most evident distinction between the two probably is number of parts. Laser printers tend to have more moving parts, but they are easier to find than LED printers.

Laser printers are much more readily available than LED printers. Laser printers come within a wider price range, and there are different capabilities and functions with each of these. To produce prints, buyers must use a rotating mirror to produce a laser light source over an imaging unit. Then the image is transferred from this drum to the printed page.

LED printers are a little different. Inside one of these machines there are many tiny small LED lamps. While the paper slides through the feeding mechanism, it will pass over the imaging unit. When this is happening these lights go on and off to heat the toner and create the image on the page.

 When it comes to speed, you won’t notice a difference. These two both will produce projects quickly and efficiently. When it comes to price, you can find laser printers that are cheaper than LED printers, but they are even similar to each other in price too. One difference, though, is that standard laser printers tend to produce higher resolutions than LED models. Although there are subtle differences between the two, essentially these two types of printers will create similar results—the only real difference is the means at which they create them.

Nowadays there are new printers coming out all the time with fancy features that many people would never use. One feature, though, that has been popular since 2003 is the PictBridge port. Now the elite industry standard, the PictBridge port allows direct printing from a digital camera to your printer. When using a PictBridge cord, you don’t even need to be connected to the computer. You just plug your camera in, and watch the printing occur.

The PictBridge devices in your camera and the printer automatically recognize each other when plugged in. How does this work exactly? Well the PictBridge functions on the camera and the computer work together by displaying a menu on to the LCD screen or viewfinder of the camera. Print options will appear on this menu, as well as setting adjustments. Here you can do just about anything with the photos you are printing. You can change the pictures’ layout, date and print size, as well as change the default media type that will be printed on.

When using PictBridge, you can print only a single image at a time. The reason is that you are only able to print the page that is displayed on the camera itself. To print multiple pages, you must either print each page separately or directly from the memory card instead. You can also choose to crop an image with the camera if you only want to print part of the page.

Because PictBridge is a new feature, not all printers come set up with it. To find out if your machine is compatible, look for the logo on your printer’s box. If you no longer have the box, look in your manual or call your manufacturer for more information. If you don’t have a printer yet, though, make sure you find one with this convenient feature.

When searching for a printer, there are obvious things you must consider, but sometimes there are things you forget about that are actually important to productivity. Did you know that depending on the paper path your printer has, though, you can actually know how likely you are to have issues or jams when printing? Before you make the decision to buy, know your paper paths. There are three main types of paper paths—U-shaped paths, L-shaped paths and straight through paths.

The most disappointing of the paper paths for consumers tends to be the U-shaped paper path. If you are looking at a printer, copier or scanner in which there is one tray sticking out the front with a divider in the middle that you both insert and withdraw paper from, you are most likely looking at a U-shaped path. How do these work? Users place the paper in the top half of the divider which feeds the paper into the machine. In the back, it curves after printer and then ejects from the printer’s tray. Not only does a U-shaped paper path cause the most paper jams, but it also makes printing on specialty media a real hassle.

The second type is fairly common—the L-shaped path. How do these printers work? Generally they will have an input tray in the top of the machine and the output tray will be on the side. When the printer feeds the paper from the top, it bends so that it can come straight out of the output tray. L-shaped paths are a lot more useful than U-shaped printers because they result in fewer jams and works well with many specialty media.

The best type of paper path to consider is a straight through paper path. These will have either a front and back tray or just one tray without dividers. Most print from the back to the front straight through, while some will go in on the front and be shot out the same way when the entire image is printer. With straight through paper paths, you will hardly ever find jams.

If you are on the market looking for that perfect scanner to fit into your home or office, you have to know the basics before you take your credit card and start spending!

What do you need to know when buying a scanner though?

First, know how many pages you are looking to scan every month. This is very important because if you scan a lot monthly you will need a more powerful machine than someone who scans twice a month. Make sure if you want color, you get a color scanner.

When it comes to color, you need to know the color depth—or the number of captured bits per pixel. This is also explained as the number of colors possible. The higher your color depth, the better your documents will look. For those who are looking for high quality documents, 48-bit color scanners will have the sharpest color.

One thing you have got to know is if you want a flatbed or sheetfed scanner. Flatbed scanners are the ones with a glass surface where you place the image, while sheetfed look much like printers. You just place the documents in that you need to scan and wait for the magic to happen. For those who only ever scan one document at a time, the flatbed will do just fine. Those who scan and print multiple pages will probably want a sheetfed machine.

Know what optical resolution you want. For offices a resolution like 300×300 dpi or 600 dpi may work just fine. If you are going to be scanning photos, you want something with a higher resolution like 1200×1200 dpi, for instance.

The ability that your scanner has to fill in blank spaces between scans is the interpolated resolution. For those who need to enlarge images, this feature will come in handy. If you buy a machine with a high interpolated resolution, your documents will be more precise.

Some other important things to keep in mind are speed, interfaces and supported media sizes. Also, keep in mind that not all scanners come with printing abilities; however, scanners that print are much more optimal than those that don’t because they have two-in-one capabilities. In general, these are the best way to go. For scanners that print, you will need to choose between inkjet and laser as well. Sometimes you can find these with scanning and printing only; however, there are many all-in-ones that may included faxing and copying as well.

If you are on the market for a fax machine, there are a lot of things you need to look at before purchasing and a lot of decisions you need to make before breaking out your wallet.

First of all, you need to know how often you are planning on using your machine so you know what size monthly duty cycle to buy. For instance, if you plan on faxing 20 documents a day, you are going to want something that has a duty cycle able to handle a minimum of 600 pages. If you may only send one fax a day, a unit with a duty cycle of under 100 pages should be sufficient. If you plan on only faxing every once in a great while, consider buying an all-in-one machine where the fax function is just an add-on feature.

Also, know what type of documents you will be sending. If you need something that offers high resolution prints or secure sending options, you may want to go with a higher-end model, like a Brother fax machine.

Know if you want an inkjet or laser fax. Laser faxes offer excellent quality text result, a low cost per page and very fast modem speeds, while inkjets will offer excellent graphics and photo results at a low upfront price. Laser toner cartridges will cost a little more, but yield longer than inkjet cartridges will. Knowing whether you need a color or monochrome fax is also very important.

You also need to know how fast you need the faxes to send. Generally there are three different modem speeds—9600 bps (takes 15 secs/page), 14.4 Kbps (6-9 secs/page) and 33.6 Kbps (2-3 secs/page). The faster the modem, the more expensive it will be upfront.

Don’t buy a machine without knowing the cost of ownership, the special features you want and the fax security that is offered. If you know all this before going in, you will save yourself a lot of hassle and regret later.

When buying a printer or using the one you may already have, you may find out that there are specs for OCR technology. OCR stands for Optical Character Recognition. But what is it? And why do you want it on your printer?

Optical Character Recognition takes text images and translates them into characters of text. Generally OCR software is needed on a scanner. If you have OCR software, you can reuse or edit any text that would normally be locked inside scanned images.

OCR can be operated in two different ways—manual or automatic. Manual OCR means that you choose the documents in which you would like your OCR software to run, whereas if you have automatic OCR software, every time you scan a document the OCR runs. You can also use an indexing feature which helps users find TIFF or MDI files by simply searching the OCR documents.

Before you scan a document, there are a few preset options you might want to manipulate for your preference. The first is automatic rotate. This setting allows the scanner to identify scanned images that are scanned upside down or sideways and correctly reposition the page, and it also allows for any OCR scanned image to be read no matter how it is positioned.

Automatic straighten is another feature which takes scanned images out of alignment and realigns them. The last setting is OCR language which gives users the ability to have documents scanned and understood in another language than your printer’s default.  

To adjust automatic settings simply click on the file menu, “scan new document” and “preset options”. Then, “create new preset” or “edit selected preset”.

If you need to adjust the settings for manual OCR, go to your tools menu and click “options” and the “OCR” tab. Now, change the options under the “manual OCR settings” tab.

When choosing your right paper type for your Xerox printer, you need to keep a lot in mind. Sure you need something that will make projects look good, but you need to also use a type that will work well with your machine. The first thing you need to keep in mind is what kind of documents you will be printing and what type of technology you think you will use. You may not know this, but the overall quality of the document will be determined in part by the paper you choose as well as the ink or toner, such as Xerox 113R00722 toner. There are many different types, but for Xerox these lie in three categories—laser papers, inkjet papers and multi-purpose papers.

Laser papers are very unique, because they can handle high heat. They also have the ability to create higher brightness than the other types. They also tend to be a little heavier than the other types. One of the great things about laser papers is their price. Laser paper is also said to prevent less jams than other types, generally due to laser printer’s straight paper path.

Inkjet papers were custom made for inkjet printers, such as those that use HP 93 ink. If you are planning on creating full color graphics or photos, inkjet paper will give you the best quality and color all around. The inkjet paper also has great text definition, giving you precise and professional prints every time. One of its best features is its low color mottle, which means there is non-uniformity in image color, and it creates minimal feathering. With inkjet paper, you will receive the highest color brightness possible and will always have a smooth, excellent finish.

Multi-purpose papers are ideal for many different ranges of use. They tend to be much less expensive than specialty papers, and any type of equipment are compatible. They have high inkjet quality and decent toner adhesion, such as Dell 310-5417 toner when using laser printers.