Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Extend The Life Of Your Printer

Here are some tips to make your printer last longer through proper printer maintenance.

1.
Keep the insides of your printer clean. A clean printer means a surface clear of dust. It also means its insides are free from dust and paper debris. Make it a habit to wipe the insides of your printer with clean, lint-free cloth at least once a month. This will prevent paper jams as well as remove any residue that will mar the quality of your prints.

2. Handle your printer with care. Do not slam its lid or its trays shut. You may end up with loose threads and with the little parts broken off. Also, keep the manual feed tray closed if you are not using it.

3. Prevent paper jams. Preventing paper jams from happening is an integral part of printer maintenance. Paper jams can lead to damage inside your printer. To keep paper jams from happening, avoid printing on torn or folded paper and use the paper grade that meets the minimum requirements of your printer.

4. Avoid static electricity. Static electricity greatly affects the performance of your printer. You can actually avoid that from happening. One such way of doing so is not to fan the sheats of papers you will load into the printer. People believe it loosens the paper to prevent paper jams, but it actually contributes to static electricity. Storing your paper in a cool and dry place also helps with this as well.

5. Replace worn-out rollers. If your printer uses a roller, part of regular printer maintenance is checking whether it is already worn out. A worn-out printer contributes to paper jams because it has become too slippery to feed the paper into the printer correctly. Once your printer’s roller has come to look glazed, buy a replacement.


Proper printer maintenance is not that hard to do. It is a simple, day-to-day task that just calls you to watch your printer usage whenever you can. If nothing else works call IOT we can help!!



IOT is a Certified HP Business Partner, providing laser printer and copier support, sales and supplies to the Minneapolis, Saint Paul area since 1995. Located in Eagan, MN we proudly serve the Twin Cities metro area. Contact us at 651-605-2500 www.iotsolutions.com or email us at info@iotsolutions.com for more information.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Duty Cycle Is Confusing!

Why Duty Cycle Is Confusing

Duty cycle is a part of every printer specification, and it’s often discussed as one of the main criteria you should use when deciding which printer to buy. Many buyer’s guides will tell you quite plainly that duty cycle reports the workload a printer is designed to handle. However, when you read that the mid-range printer you’ve been considering has a duty cycle of 200,000 pages per month, you might wonder what’s going on. Either you’ve been shopping for more printer power than you really need or that number is fishy.

If you’ve browsed several printer models you’ll know that the stated duty cycle for a given printer is a rather big number, tens or hundreds of thousands of pages per month. The vendors will tell you that a printer's duty cycle represents the amount of use the printer is designed to handle, measured in "maximum" pages printed per month. The cheapest laser models promise 8,000 pages per month and a typical workgroup printer may claim a 250,000-page monthly limit. If you were to match your real estimated monthly print volume to their duty cycle numbers, you’d rarely need anything more than a $250 printer!

Basically, the stated duty cycle, or maximum monthly volume, is a disclaimer figure for the vendor. There is no industry standard for duty cycle, so one vendor’s figures can sufficiently vary from another’s so that it isn't useful to compare across vendor lines. However if you’re comparing models from one company, the duty cycle figures can give you a sense of how much through-put one model can take compared to another.

Duty cycle is a number that’s based on stress testing of the printer. It's an upper-limit print volume that’s generally many, many higher than the amount you will print on that model. The duty cycle doesn’t take into account the practical limitations of a particular machine — the print speed, paper tray capacity, toner or ink capacity, and memory. It only measures the total amount of work the non-replaceable components can withstand.

So when you're evaluating different printers for your business, you should steadfastly ignore the duty cycle figure. Instead, make your best guess as to your office’s monthly print volume, and take that information to the vendors. When the salesperson recommends an $800 model with a 100,000-page monthly print volume, understand that customers typically print 5 percent, perhaps up to 10 percent, of a printer's stated duty cycle.

How can you tell whether you’re being sold more printer than you really need? Instead of puzzling over the stated duty cycle, you can run a few other numbers and follow a couple general rules to determine whether a particular printer is suited to the volume your office will print. Consider how much paper the default paper tray (or trays) hold: assuming that each person in the office prints the standard estimate of 35 pages per day, calculate how frequently people would need to reload paper on a given model.

Thanks to allbusiness.com information used in this article. http://www.allbusiness.com

Sound like something you would like to get more information about? For more information please contact Courtney Carlson at 651-605-2500 or printersales@iotsolutions.com.

IOT is a Certified HP Business Partner, providing laser printer and copier support, sales and supplies to the Minneapolis, Saint Paul area since 1995. Located in Eagan, MN we proudly serve the Twin Cities metro area. Contact us at 651-605-2500 or email us at info@iotsolutions.com for more information.

Thursday, March 5, 2009

How Fresh Is Your Toner?

Toner Cartridge Born On Date - And Why You Should Care.


The dates are important because there are specific components in the cartridge that, if left stationary for too long, can settle and bond with each other - leading to poor print quality and defective cartridges. We recommend using cartridge within 10 to 12 months of the born on date of the toner cartridge. Cartridges are not warrantied past 12 months, so it is very important to pay attention to the dates on the outside of the box, and on the toner cartridge itself.



This picture shows the born on date is indicated on the cartridge, as illustrated at left. The code 03052009 means this toner was manufactured on 03/05/2009.













This picture illustrates the expiration date of 3/05/2010, found on the sticker located on the outside of the cartridge box. Please use cartridge by this date.










Tips
  • If buying in bulk make sure you are using all cartridges before the year is up, or you may want to consider buying less often if you find your stock lasting longer.
  • Practice FIFO in your stock room; Make sure to check dates to use up the older ones first.
  • Try not to mix your empty cartridges with new ones.

For more information about toner cartridge quality and remanufactured toner cartridges from IOT, visit www.iotsolutions.com

IOT is a Certified HP Business Partner, providing laser printer and copier support, sales and supplies to the Minneapolis, Saint Paul area since 1995. Located in Eagan, MN we proudly serve the Twin Cities metro area. Contact us at 651-605-2500 or email us at info@iotsolutions.com for more information.