buyer’s guide to business printers

Tech Brief

Buyer’s Guide toBusiness Printers

an Internet.com Tech Brief. © 2011, Internet.com, a division of QuinStreet, Inc.

Internet.com Tech Brief. © 2011, Internet.com, a division of QuinStreet, Inc.

Buyer’s Guide to Business Printers

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For years, we’ve heard about the

coming of the “paperless office,” an

almost Utopian world of digitized

data where the clutter and expense of

printed documents will be little more

than memories of a bygone era.

But while the more efficient businesses

may have moved beyond the days of

overflowing file cabinets that hold an

organization’s various documents and

records, we’re still pretty far from the

point where most organizations have

managed to do away with printed

documents altogether.

There are a number of devices that are

helping us bridge the gap between

the office of today and whatever the

“office of tomorrow” ends up looking

like. These tools include multifunction

printers, also called All-In-One (AIO)

printers, laser printers and inkjet printers.

Determining Your Printing Needs

Let’s begin with multifunction printers,

which let you not only print, but also

scan, copy, fax and perhaps even

digitally store and send copies of your

documents. But as with uni-tasking

printers, AIOs come in a variety of

configurations. Depending on your

specific needs, equipping your office

with one can cost you less than $100 or

well into the thousands. It’s important

to figure out just what your needs are,

at least for today and ideally for the

next few tomorrows.

Whichever multifunction printer you

look at, certain features are just bound

to be included. Models meant for

office use — not at those multifunction

photo printers marketed for casual use

in the home — should function as a

printer, document scanner, copier and

fax machine.

How well a particular model performs

these tasks can vary. It’s always a

good idea to read reviews of a

specific model to determine its print

quality and speed, how well the ADF

(Automatic Document Feeder) feeds

pages and how faithfully it reproduces

colors and images. After all, if you

get stuck with an AIO that produces

choppy text at a snail’s pace, grabs

four sheets of paper at a time when

you’re trying to copy or fax and adds

a yellow tint to everything you scan,

all you’ve really bought is a big old

paperweight.

Also important in buying multifunction

printers is acquainting yourself with

what’s out there and figuring out

exactly what you want and need out of

your next AIO printer. Here are a few

questions to consider:

• Are you looking to connect your

AIO to a single desktop or have it

accessible across a local network?

• Will you be printing a few pages

per day, a few hundred, or a few

thousand?

• Will you be printing in color or

exclusively in black and white?

• If in color, are you looking to

occasionally print decent-quality

charts and graphs, or are you look

for glossy images?

These are the basic questions you’ll

need to ask yourself when choosing

multifunction printers.

The Low to High End of Multifunction Printers

You’ll typically find ink-jet multifunction

printers at the lowest end of the price

scale. These might seem attractive



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because of their low price tags, which

can start at less than $100 for a model

that can print a few pages per minute.

But the price can scale up to the $300

to $500 range for a networkable model

that will at least claim to print a great

deal faster.

Multifunction printers at this price level

don’t offer automatic duplexing (double-

sided printing), and they have a low duty

cycle. Most of the models include some

kind of networked printing, whether

wireless or via Ethernet, though a few

connect only via USB.

These multifunction printers might

serve the needs of home office users

and/or small business computing

environments that have minimal

printing needs. But with even

moderate use, the cost of printing

supplies and loss of productivity will

quickly make the initial price savings

meaningless when compared to

higher-end options.

The middle of the pack, predictably

enough, spans a wide range of

available options. For a couple of

hundred dollars, you can expect to

buy a more fully featured inkjet AIO

that starts up a little faster, prints ever-

so-slightly faster, possibly holds more

paper in its available tray(s) and can

automatically duplex your print jobs.

Just about every multifunction printer

at this price point can connect to a

network, though some connect strictly

via Ethernet while others also have

wireless capabilities.

Beyond any speed advantages they

might (or might not) have over their

inkjet cousins, multifunction laser

printers are better suited for higher

volumes of printing. Not only can they

handle hundreds, or even thousands,

of printed pages per month without

self-destructing, they do so at a

considerably lower cost. Toner

cartridges, while not inexpensive,

tend to yield far more printed pages

than those inkjet cartridges that will

eventually bleed you dry.

In this high-priced stratosphere, you’ll

spend thousands of dollars for high-

volume laser black-and-white and

color printers. These are meant for

organizations that print thousands of

pages per month and need a machine

that can handle that kind of volume.

Machines at this end of the market

tend to have multiple paper trays that

accommodate more paper sizes and

more total sheets of paper.

If you’re running a workgroup,

small enterprise or home office and

considering printers for your business,

you might exclude inkjet printers from

your deliberations. That’s because it’s

easy to be blinded by the cult of the

laser printer.

Don’t misunderstand — for heavy-duty

office work, an industrial-strength laser

is an undeniable asset. But certain

types of users — graphics pros and

desktop publishers, for instance —

may find an inkjet printer more useful

than a hulking laser.

In general, if your priority is speed

for large volumes of text documents,

a laser printer is the way to go. But

if price and graphics quality are

important to you, don’t overlook

inkjets. Colors from inkjet printers are

generally brighter and more vibrant

than colors from lasers. And even

though the price of color laser printers



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has been dropping, inkjets

remain the most economical

solution for tasks that beg

for color.

Economical? Aren’t inkjet

printers an infamous

example of razors-and-

blades marketing, with low

purchase prices offset by

the cost of replacement

ink cartridges? Well, to

some extent. That’s why it’s

smart to check the price of

replacement cartridges before you

buy any printer, to avoid unpleasant

surprises.

But don’t confuse under-$40,

disposable consumer inkjets with

today’s office-class products and their

high-capacity cartridges. And don’t

think that lasers don’t play the razors-

and-blades game, too.

Inkjet Cost per Page

The price of any printer before

you take it out of the box is soon

outweighed by the cost per page

once you start operating the unit.

Figuring that should be easy — you

take the price of a cartridge, or

cartridges for a color page, and divide

it by the number of pages produced.

That used to be problematic because

how page yields were measured

varied from manufacturer to

manufacturer. However, yield numbers

have become more comparable since

standards for producing them were

implemented by the International

Organization for Standardization (ISO)

and the International Electrotechnical

Commission (IEC).

Typically, the per-page costs for office

inkjet printers are in the 1.5 to 3.5

cents range for black-and-white pages

and in the 5.5 to 9.5 cents range for

color. The latter is less than you’ll

pay for color pages from an entry-

level color laser — in some cases,

substantially less.

Those numbers, of course, can

vary based on a number of factors,

including the quality of the output you

demand from a printer. Higher quality

means more ink per page, depleting

printer cartridges more quickly.

Inkjet Cartridge Details

Some inkjet printers have all their

colors in a single cartridge, but they’re

found at the low end of the spectrum

and aren’t suitable for office work.

Most have at least four cartridges —

the same quartet of black, yellow, cyan

and magenta seen in color lasers.

Some Canon printers have

a fifth cartridge — photo

black — and Epson’s Stylus

Photo R1900 has eight,

including red and orange.

Extra cartridges are used

primarily to improve the

quality of photos pumped

out by the printer.

Since most printer output in

the office isn’t stuff that will

be cherished by posterity,

the debate over pigment-

versus dye-based inks probably won’t

concern you. However, if there’s an

archival element to your business, you

should be familiar with the issue.

In a nutshell, pigment inks last longer.

They don’t run when wet and their

colors don’t fade over time. They also

dry faster and don’t bleed as much at

the edges of their colors. Dye-based

inks, on the other hand, have higher

brilliance and contrast, offer a wider

color gamut and are less expensive

to produce. And “last longer,” by

the way, is a relative term. Epson, for

example, claims photos printed with

its dye inks won’t fade for 200 years if

placed in dark storage.

Inkjet Speeds and Resolutions

If you produce lots of lengthy

documents, an inkjet printer’s speed

will be a game breaker for you.

Nevertheless, inkjet speeds have

increased in recent times. Although

speeds can vary widely, you can

expect high-speed or draft-mode



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monochrome output to be in the

30 pages per minute ballpark, with

color printing peaking at around 20

ppm. Many vendors now advertise, in

addition to these maximum speeds,

more credible high-quality or laser-

quality speeds (usually about half of

the draft page count).

The rule of thumb used to be that

text from an inkjet printer was

clearly inferior to a laser’s. But with

improving technology, the distinction

in text quality between the two types

of printers has blurred. For most

document tasks, inkjets can provide

more than adequate quality and for

photographic tasks, superior quality.

Typically, inkjets deliver higher

resolutions than laser printers.

That’s why inkjets are the darlings of

photographers. A common resolution

found on lasers is 600 x 600 dots per

inch, or 1,200 x 1,200 dpi at most.

Inkjets use those resolutions, too, but

only for black-and-white text; color

graphics are commonly printed at

resolutions like 4,800 x 1,200 dpi, 5,760

x 1,440 dpi or 9,600 x 2,400 dpi.

Another contributor to inkjet quality is

the size of the ink droplets used by the

printer. Those droplets are measured

in picoliters. Just a scant five years

ago, printer makers were boasting

about what wonderful documents they

could create with their 30-picoliter

printheads. Today, printers use

droplets in the two- to four-picoliter

range and can achieve very smooth

results on a page.

Inkjet Paper Handling

Another consideration when mulling

over the purchase of an inkjet is

how it handles paper. In an office

environment, you’ll probably want a

high-capacity paper tray — at least

250 sheets, perhaps with a second tray

to cut down on time spent refilling

or switching paper. You can put

letterhead in one tray, for example,

and plain or photo paper in the other.

Letter- and legal-sized papers are the

bread and butter of today’s inkjets, but

it’s substantially easier to find an inkjet

than a laser printer that can handle

larger media such as 11 x 17-inch

tabloid paper (enough for a two-page

desktop-publishing spread). Check a

candidate’s specs if you need to print

on special media such as card stock,

transparencies, banners, or CDs and

DVDs.

Another paper-handling feature you

may find useful is duplex printing. It

lets you print on both sides of a sheet,

saving time as well as paper.

Who will be using a printer also needs

to be included in your decision matrix.

Even in a two-person office, you’ll want

a way to share the printer. That means

a way to connect it to your network —

either through Ethernet or Wi-Fi.

Inkjet printers are no longer a poor

relative of lasers. While lasers remain

the kings of high speed and high

volume, in every other area, inkjets

have narrowed the gap or surpassed

laser quality. That’s particularly

the case in photographic printing,

although inkjets optimized for

photographic output are less suited

for other office tasks than more

general-purpose models. For business

users with welterweight printing

demands, inkjets remain a solid

alternative to the office laser.

Laser Printers

If you’ve decided to buy a color

laser printer, you’ve probably already

weighed the benefits of one versus its

inkjet or solid-ink counterparts. Inkjets

and solid-ink printers, generally, have

“While lasers remain the kings

of high speed and high volume,

in every other area, inkjets have

narrowed the gap or surpassed

laser quality. “



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brighter colors and better resolution,

but they’re comparatively slow.

For speed, lasers can’t be beat, and

for most business purposes — reports,

flyers and PowerPoint slides rather

than glossy photos — their quality is

more than adequate. Moreover, they

allow you to produce high volumes of

color documents at lower cost than

inkjet printers.

Your initial outlay for a printer is only

the start of your expenses. Once your

business starts using the printer, there

are costs connected to operating the

unit. The primary recurring cost is

toner replacement, so you’ll want to

buy a printer with the best cost-per-

page spec that meets your needs.

High-speed color laser printers, for

instance, have per-page costs in the

range of five to 10 cents for color and

one to 1.5 cents for black and white;

business printers, 5.5 to 12 cents for

color, one to 2.5 cents for black and

white; and small-office units, nine to 13

cents for color and 1.5 to three cents

for black and white. Keep in mind that

lower-end color laser printers usually

have smaller toner cartridges, so they

must be changed more often. That will

be obvious in the per-page cost for

the printer.

What’s not so obvious is that desktop

printers’ cartridges typically contain

the toner, imaging component and

toner waste receptacle in the same

unit. That makes them more expensive

to buy but easier to replace. In some

high-end printers, those components

are separated. That reduces the cost

of toner cartridges, as well as the

total cost of ownership for the unit,

but requires some technical skill to

maintain.

Once you decide how much you want

to spend for your printer, you need

to assess how much you’ll be using it.

Then you need to evaluate the duty

cycle of the printer. The duty cycle

is the number of sheets that can be

printed in a month without doing

harm to the printer, according to the

manufacturer. As with many numbers

emanating from manufacturers,

the duty cycle for a printer is often

overstated.

A rule of thumb when determining

if a duty cycle fits your needs is to

take the highest number offered and

divide it by two (or, for color sheets

from four-pass lasers, four). If the

results exceed your expectations for

a month, then the printer is a good

candidate for purchase. For example,

if a printer’s duty cycle is 50,000 pages

a month and you anticipate printing

fewer than 25,000 pages a month,

then it should fit into your business

nicely. (If it’s a four-pass printer, you’re

OK if you anticipate fewer than 25,000

monochrome or 12,500 color pages

per month.)

Time Between Laser Cartridge Refills

You’ll also need to assess how you’ll

be using your printer. If your print jobs

are typically small, then printers with

slower speeds — 20 pages per minute

or less — may meet your needs. You’ll

also want to check out a printer’s first-

page-out time — how long it’ll make

you wait for the start of a job, or for

a one-page letter. And yes, though

they’re not as infamously exaggerated

as inkjet printers’ advertised best-

case downhill draft speeds, laser

manufacturers’ print speed specs

often reflect ideal conditions. Take

them with a grain of salt.

If you’re performing small jobs,

chances are you won’t need large



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paper capacities, so trays with a

standard capacity of 250 sheets may

do. If your printing requirements are

more robust, you’ll want a unit capable

of handling longer and more complex

print jobs — something with speeds

in the 40-ppm range and larger paper

capacities, with standard or optional

trays that can hold 2,000 sheets or

more. (Remember, too, that stuffing a

tray to capacity is more likely to jam

the printer than loading paper with a

little breathing room.)

Of course, you can get more mileage

out of the paper in your trays by

printing on both sides of each sheet.

Some color lasers have duplexers built

in; others offer them as an add-on.

Having duplex capability is a big plus

in a printer. Not only does it save paper

on most jobs, but it saves labor costs.

Without one, the only way to do a

duplex job is to print the odd pages of

the document first, then flip and reload

the stack and print the even pages.

That’s a labor-intensive process at best.

For many business users, sticking with

A4-, letter-, and legal-sized sheets will

suffice, but if your line of work entails

oddball sizes you need to take that

into account, too, and be prepared to

pay for it. Printers such as the Konica-

Minolta Magicolor 8650dn and Xerox

Phaser 7760DN that do tabloid pages

— 11 by 17 inches — carry a premium

price tag, as do those that allow you

to produce banners. In addition, if

you intend to print envelopes — a

color logo in the return address space

will spice up your mailings and save

on commercial printing bills — you’ll

want to check on how a potential

printer handles that kind of input,

with a special slot or tray for feeding

envelopes or single sheets such as

transparencies.

Another consideration relating to

paper is weight. Any printer can handle

20-pound stock without a wheeze,

but if you’ll be printing covers to your

documents on 80-pound stock, you

need to make sure your new printer can

handle that without choking.

Document finishing is another feature

offered by the largest and costliest

printers. Usually sold as optional

hardware, these devices can perform

functions such as stapling or folding

documents as they’re finished by the

printer.

Laser Bells and Whistles

After you know how much paper you

expect to push through the printer,

you’ll need to know what kind of

quality you want on it. The typical

color laser printer has a true optical

resolution of 600 x 600 dots per

inch. True optical resolution means

that the resolution isn’t manipulated

via algorithm to get to 600 x 600.

Some lasers do that to punch up the

resolution to 1,200 x 1,200, but if you

need the extra dpi — most business

jobs look fine with the lower resolution

— then the best idea is to get a printer

with true 1,200 x 1,200. Needless to

say, higher resolution pages take

longer to print than lower ones.

Front-panel LCD displays are handy on

any printer, but they can be particularly

useful on color lasers. You’ll want to

check what information and settings

can be viewed on the display. Items

like the toner level for each color,

paper tray control and network

settings are among the things you’ll

want to see on the printer’s screen.

What’s on the screen is also easier to

see if the LCD is in color.

A popular front-panel function is

secure printing, which stores a print

job inside the printer — often on an

internal hard drive — until you arrive

and enter a code at the control panel.

This means that sensitive documents

won’t be sitting in the output tray,

readable by passers-by, before you

come to claim them.

“Front-panel LCD displays are

handy on any printer, but they

can be particularly useful on

color lasers. “



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A pretty display on your new printer is

less important if you have a network

wrangler keeping tabs on the unit’s

usage. Then you’re going to want

the printer to include decent network

management tools. These tools,

preferably available through a Web

interface, should allow a network

administrator to check the printer’s

toner levels, receive e-mail alerts when

toner levels get low, monitor printer

usage and control which users can

access the printer’s color features.

Laser Interface Issues

As with most printers these days, color

lasers have a USB port for making a

local connection to a single computer,

but you’re more likely to use the

Ethernet port — found on all but the

lowest-end personal lasers — to plug

the iron into your network. Before you

buy a printer, make sure you know how

many people you expect to be using

it and that your printer candidates

support the size of that workgroup.

There are also printers with built-in or

plug-in Wi-Fi support for notebook

users.

Processor speed and onboard memory

are important elements in determining

workgroup support. For example, a

laser with a 333MHz processor and

128MB of RAM may be adequate

for a seven-person workgroup in

some environments, while one with a

400MHz processor and 256MB of RAM

can do the same for 15 members.

It’s also wise to know what network

protocols are supported by a printer

candidate. Support for technologies

like IPP, IPXSPX, AppleTalk and SMB

may require an additional card be

added to the printer.

If the machines that will be using the

printer run more than one operating

system, you’ll need to ensure that a

color laser candidate supports them.

Windows and Mac OS X support are

common; Linux, Unix and Netware

less so. Some host-based printers are

Windows-only.

With so many features confronting

a potential color laser printer

buyer, choosing one can seem a bit

challenging. Nevertheless, with a

good assessment of needs and a

firm grasp of budgetary constraints,

choosing the right printer for your

organization is a lot easier than you

think.

buyer’s guide to business printers

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