Printing quantity, port availability and internal memory are considerations you ought to consider before buying a printer for a business.
Notebook Review’s Vince Font has tackled the issue that “there are many consumer level home office supplies that could be sufficient for business purposes – like a multifunction printer that performs quadruple duty as a printer, copier, scanner, and fax machines. But are you better off purchasing a business printer?”.
He lists five considerations an individual looking to buy a printer should think through. The first is the “workload it’s [the printer] is capable of taking on”. The average consumer printer can print 5,000 sheets of paper a month, while “higher end enterprise printers can handle far more”, between 20,000 and 100,000, or more.
Font advises: “Do your due diligence and create accurate projections of the quantity of print jobs your business needs.” He also encourages the reader to “look at the size of the printer’s paper tray” as even an efficient duty cycle can be undermined by “having to refill the tray numerous times throughout the day”.
‘Check Your Ports’ is the second piece of advice. While most consumers have USB ports for pairing the printer with a single computer at a time, they can also be used “to plug your printer into a wireless router that numerous computers throughout the office can access”. Nonetheless, in some cases an Ethernet port may be needed, for linking the device with an enterprise printing server.
The third consideration mentioned is internal memory. When “connecting a consumer printer to an enterprise printing server, the chief consideration should be the printer’s ability to store multiple print jobs without experience data bottlenecks”. Nonetheless, you should “check the internal memory specs” on consumer devices to know it’s adequate for “your business technology needs”.
More RAM means a “greater ability to shoulder the burden of numerous print jobs being sent its way”, and some “low end printers” have very limited internal memory that may be insufficient for “a busy office environment”.
The final thing to consider is “speed ratings”, which “estimate the time it takes to print a single sheet”. A maximum speed capability may not always be desirable, as the quality of a print job can be affected by the speed rating. “In other words, you can gain a lot of speed if you set your office printer’s default to draft mode versus super high quality,” Font adds.
Font concludes that “consumer printers can be used to great effect in business environments,” while an enterprise level printer may be more appropriate depending on how often and for what type of jobs the printer will be used. “While it’s not likely that the average value brand home printer can stand up to the fierce demands of enterprise printing, it may be sufficient for a modestly sized office that doesn’t rely on the printer as its central piece of equipment,” he stated.