e-skills UK Guide

Printing documents

Business document printing

Despite moves towards a paperless office the reality is that every small business needs to print out some form of documentation. Even though fewer letters may be being sent, we still need to print invoices, reports, documents and occasionally emails.

The cost of printing documents, as well as general environmental awareness, has made many businesses consider what, when and how they are using printing facilities.

Types of printers for business use

There are two types of printers in common use for small businesses – laser and inkjet. Both have advantages and disadvantages.

Laser printers are generally more expensive than ink jet technology printers but much less expensive to run if you have to do a lot of printing.

We suggest a target price of £80-100 for a basic printer printing, say, 50-100 pages per day. Higher prices buy you more features such as:

• faster print speeds.
• higher print quality.
• network connectivity.
• more sophisticated paper handling (a dedicated tray for letter-headed stationery for example).

At the £80 price, you might consider it less expensive to buy two printers in which case you have a backup if one should fail.

Expect to have to buy a cable to go with the printer which will cost around £15-20. Most manufacturers provide a ‘starter’ toner cartridge that will need replacing more quickly than standard cartridges.

We describe your buying options under the following headings:

• Running costs.
• Speed.
• Connectivity.
• Quality.
• Candidate suppliers.

Printer running costs

There is no independent standard for determining running costs so you need to take the manufacturers’ figures as guidelines only. Manufacturers normally publish estimates of:

• Number of pages that can be printed from a single toner cartridge.
• Number of pages that can be printed before the drum needs to be replaced.

From these you can get a rough estimate of cost per page.

Note that some printers use combined toner and drum cartridges that will tend to lead to higher running costs.

You should target around 2p per page or less for a low cost laser printer.

The ink in an ink jet cartridge is claimed by some to be the most expensive fluid in the world to buy. If you intend to print any significant amount, you should consider laser technology instead. Ink jet is fine for occasional printing, though.

If you intend to print a lot of one colour (if your logo and material is predominantly blue, for example), you can significantly reduce your running costs by looking for a printer that uses separate ink cartridges for each of the primary colours. Normal printers use one cartridge for black and a second cartridge for the coloured inks; you have to discard the cartridge if any of the colours run out.

Printing speed

Printing speeds vary depending on what you are printing and, again, there is no independent standard for determining print speeds. You can get some indication of the print speed based on manufacturers’ estimates in pages per minute based on ideal conditions.

At the bottom end of the range, expect a quoted print speed of 15-20 pages per minute.

Speed is not normally a big issue for inkjet printers since you buy them for occasional use. Expect around 5 pages per minute.

Printing connectivity

The common connection method is USB. We suggest you avoid any printer that works only with a parallel printer port because these ports are disappearing from laptops and so printers that use parallel ports will not work with these laptops.

You should also consider printers that support a network connection. These printers will allow all your employees to print to them when connected to a network.

Printing quality

In practice, for business purposes, you can expect any laser printer from an established supplier to produce acceptable quality printing for letter and document printing.

Expect a minimum quoted print quality of 600 x 600 dots per inch.

Quality becomes more of an issue if you expect to print colour diagrams, especially if you're printing them for clients or customers. Remember that the quality of the paper you use can have a significant bearing on the quality of the result. If colour print quality is important to you, we suggest you look for independent reviews in one of the business PC magazines.

We suggest you avoid devices that headline their use for printing photographs. These are likely to provide features you do not need in business (unless, of course you print photographs in the course of your business) and by tuning the printing capability to photographs, you might find that you use up your toner and ink cartridges much faster.

Commercial suppliers

We do not recommend specific products or suppliers; instead we provide you with a representative sample which covers the range of suppliers/products available. You may choose to look at these suppliers or products but this is entirely at your discretion.