Coming Soon...Print to HP LaserJet Printers From Your BlackBerry!
HP and Research In Motion (RIM) have announced a strategic alliance to deliver a range of solutions for business mobility on the BlackBerry® platform. The solutions, which include support for BlackBerry® Enterprise Server 5.0, are focused on increasing service levels, reducing operations costs and improving productivity for customers.
HP and RIM plan to design and launch offerings to increase the productivity levels of the growing number of global mobile employees, enabling businesses to extend the return on their investments in mobility.
HP CloudPrint for BlackBerry Smartphones
HP CloudPrint for BlackBerry smartphones is a web services based solution that allows users to print emails, documents, photos and web pages using a BlackBerry smartphone, wherever they are – in the office, at home or on the road.
The CloudPrint service enables mobile users to easily print to the nearest printer. The service is printer-agnostic and driverless and requires simple Internet access. HP and RIM plan to make CloudPrint available to BlackBerry Internet Service subscribers as well as BlackBerry Enterprise Server customers.
The CloudPrint technology was invented by HP Labs, the company’s central research arm.
We can't wait to try this out!
You can find the official press release here - HP and RIM Announce Strategic Partnership
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.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
We joined Twitter!
We have made the leap and joined one of the lastest and greatest social networks out there, Twitter. We would like you to come follow us, username: IOTsupport. Catch up on all our latest promotions, printer & toner tips and anything else you would like to know about IOT. Hope to see you on there.
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 www.iotsolutions.com, 651-605-2500 or email us at info@iotsolutions.com for more information.
Monday, April 13, 2009
The Benefits of Laser Printers for Business
For a workgroup — two or more networked computers in an office — a basic monochrome laser will serve well as your standard printer for day-to-day needs. In comparison to inkjet printers, lasers tend to be better suited to high-volume office printing, and most types of business will benefit from the speedy output of the laser printer. This type of printer is well suited to such standard office printing jobs as letters, cover sheets, meeting notes, and handouts.
The cost of printers is frequently given on a per-page basis to reflect the expense of such replacement supplies as ink. Thus the cost-per-page for most laser printers is lower than that of inkjets. Lasers cost more than inkjets to start with, but supplies are cheaper. Inkjet printers, on the other hand, are cheaper out-of-pocket but make up for that with ink that is much more expensive.
In addition to being fast and inexpensive to operate, laser printers are durable — their so-called "duty cycles," or the capacity to steadily turn out large numbers of pages, are generally higher than those of inkjets. Lasers are built to handle volume; they’re optimized to print faster and to print steadily without breaking down.
Recommended Configuration
If yours is a typical office, printing a typical number of pages per month, you will be well served by the following configuration, which represents a middle-of-the-price/feature range for mid-sized workgroups, and will cost between $500 and $1000 depending on the vendor.
Printer type: monochrome laser
Pages per minute: 30-50
Number of paper trays: 2 (so it can hold more paper without refilling)
Paper tray capacity: 650-1,000 pages (total)
Duty cycle: Never mind!
Pick a model in the middle of a particular vendor’s duty cycle range (this could be between 60,000 and 200,000 pages per month. Yes, the number is vastly larger than the amount your office would really print.) Read more about this occult part of printer spec in "How to Ignore the Duty Cycle." You may not need the paper capacity and high printing speed today, but this is a basic configuration that should allow you to add several users to the printer network and rely on the printer over two or three years.
How Many Printers Does Your Office Need?
Do you need more than one printer? How many people can share a printer? Vendors and salesmen generally won’t give you a standard ratio of users to printers because it’s the overall volume of work, not the sheer number of users, that will limit the printer’s ability to get everyone’s job done. This is why vendors ask you to estimate the number of pages you’ll print each month – the monthly print volume figure takes into account the number of people who will rely on the printer as well as the type of print jobs those people will send to the printer.
You can choose to divide your monthly print load across multiple printers, and this may be convenient for people spread out across a big office. On the other hand, since the cost per page generally goes down with the bigger (and faster) models, you might get better cost savings connecting a large group to one robust printer.
Here are some factors to consider in deciding how many printers your office needs:
Degree of Use:
Certain groups, such as sales or engineering, might tend to use the printers more heavily than other groups, or need their printouts on shorter deadlines. They might need their own printer just to handle their projects (and to keep them out of everybody else's hair).
Proximity:
Distribute printers so that no one has to walk far to retrieve their printouts, even if that means buying an extra printer.
Executives:
It can sometimes be handy, not to mention politic, to provide personal inkjet printers on the desks of key executives. HR might want its own printer to maintain privacy and control over employee records.
Networking, Paper Size and Other Printer-Selection Criteria:
After you make decisions about the color option and the optimum workload, a few other considerations will help you refine your printer search.
Are you sharing the printer? If more than one person will use this printer, you’ll want to be able to network it. Look for "networking" as a feature on the printer you want to buy. Such printers can be plugged directly into your network as if they were PCs. If you have a Macintosh network, just make sure the box includes the right type of connector and software "drivers" for Macintosh; most do.
Most networked printers connect directly to the network using an Ethernet connector. There are also wireless networked printers, good for locations that are hard to connect by wire to the rest of the network. There are also ways to connect a printer to a PC and install software or hardware to turn the computer into a "printer server;" but details are beyond the scope of this guide. For an example, read about how you can use Red Hat Linux to set up a print server to allow multiple computers to access a non-networked printer.
The more sophisticated network printers come with both the hardware and software to automate the network set-up process, so you don’t have to know about IP addresses or creating a port on your network operating system in order to get it up, running, and shared. Look for terms like “network-ready” or “built-in print server,” indicating that plugging the printer to your network will be automated (or close to it).
For easy administration of your network printer – changing the printer’s setting or checking error messages when something goes wrong – look for a network printer that offers the admin functions on a Web page. This remote administration function saves you having to fiddle with the LCD panel on the printer itself.
A network printer sold as a “departmental” or “large workgroup” solution can also provide fancier features for printer admin, such as access controls and reporting capabilities. You can also get this admin. capability with a separate “print server” device. For example, HP’s Web Jetadmin lets you turn off color printing capabilities for specific users on the network; it also tracks consumables usage (i.e. how much toner the printer uses) and gives predictions on cost and timing for replacing your consumables; it can run reports to identify the users who print the most, or who prints the most color jobs.
Many of the bigger business printers will have these reporting features – the color lasers or solid ink printers for businesses are made to allow administrators to control the cost of printing. An extra feature that might come in handy with networked printing is private printing. It’s a way of making sure that no one else picks up a sensitive document that you send to the shared printer. You can designate a print job to be handled as private printing, and the printer will require a PIN to be entered on the front panel before it prints your document. This function requires extra memory, so printers with this function will have hard drives to store the documents until you’re ready to receive them.
What’s the largest paper you’ll print?
Printing tabloid paper (11x17) or other sizes bigger than legal (8.5x14) often requires a special paper tray. Some printers let you expand to add special paper sizes later by buying the appropriate paper tray.
How many dedicated paper trays would you like?
Most business printers come with two paper trays, in addition to a manual input slot. A second or third input tray can be used to hold other paper types and sizes, such as larger paper or envelopes. You can also just use the extra trays to hold more regular paper, saving you from having to refill the paper trays so often. Want to print on both sides of the paper? Printers that can print duplex (first on one side, then running the page back through and printing on the other side) costs a lot more, but it can save paper, which pays off in the long run if you do a lot of printing. Duplex also lets you create reports that are thinner and more convenient to handle and seem more professional. With some printers, you can add duplexing capability later.
More memory? You can add RAM to higher-end printers, which can be espeically important in networked printers so they can more easily handle multiple print jobs from various PCs, taking the data feed and freeing the PCs to go back to work. Some printers actually use hard disk drives to store print jobs, and also to store additional fonts and forms, and to enable private printing. "Document management" multifunction printers have all kinds of additional features for manipulating and massaging documents, and thus benefit from the storage capacity of hard drives.
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 http://www.iotsolutions.com/, 651-605-2500 or email us at info@iotsolutions.com for more information.
The cost of printers is frequently given on a per-page basis to reflect the expense of such replacement supplies as ink. Thus the cost-per-page for most laser printers is lower than that of inkjets. Lasers cost more than inkjets to start with, but supplies are cheaper. Inkjet printers, on the other hand, are cheaper out-of-pocket but make up for that with ink that is much more expensive.
In addition to being fast and inexpensive to operate, laser printers are durable — their so-called "duty cycles," or the capacity to steadily turn out large numbers of pages, are generally higher than those of inkjets. Lasers are built to handle volume; they’re optimized to print faster and to print steadily without breaking down.
Recommended Configuration
If yours is a typical office, printing a typical number of pages per month, you will be well served by the following configuration, which represents a middle-of-the-price/feature range for mid-sized workgroups, and will cost between $500 and $1000 depending on the vendor.
Printer type: monochrome laser
Pages per minute: 30-50
Number of paper trays: 2 (so it can hold more paper without refilling)
Paper tray capacity: 650-1,000 pages (total)
Duty cycle: Never mind!
Pick a model in the middle of a particular vendor’s duty cycle range (this could be between 60,000 and 200,000 pages per month. Yes, the number is vastly larger than the amount your office would really print.) Read more about this occult part of printer spec in "How to Ignore the Duty Cycle." You may not need the paper capacity and high printing speed today, but this is a basic configuration that should allow you to add several users to the printer network and rely on the printer over two or three years.
How Many Printers Does Your Office Need?
Do you need more than one printer? How many people can share a printer? Vendors and salesmen generally won’t give you a standard ratio of users to printers because it’s the overall volume of work, not the sheer number of users, that will limit the printer’s ability to get everyone’s job done. This is why vendors ask you to estimate the number of pages you’ll print each month – the monthly print volume figure takes into account the number of people who will rely on the printer as well as the type of print jobs those people will send to the printer.
You can choose to divide your monthly print load across multiple printers, and this may be convenient for people spread out across a big office. On the other hand, since the cost per page generally goes down with the bigger (and faster) models, you might get better cost savings connecting a large group to one robust printer.
Here are some factors to consider in deciding how many printers your office needs:
Degree of Use:
Certain groups, such as sales or engineering, might tend to use the printers more heavily than other groups, or need their printouts on shorter deadlines. They might need their own printer just to handle their projects (and to keep them out of everybody else's hair).
Proximity:
Distribute printers so that no one has to walk far to retrieve their printouts, even if that means buying an extra printer.
Executives:
It can sometimes be handy, not to mention politic, to provide personal inkjet printers on the desks of key executives. HR might want its own printer to maintain privacy and control over employee records.
Networking, Paper Size and Other Printer-Selection Criteria:
After you make decisions about the color option and the optimum workload, a few other considerations will help you refine your printer search.
Are you sharing the printer? If more than one person will use this printer, you’ll want to be able to network it. Look for "networking" as a feature on the printer you want to buy. Such printers can be plugged directly into your network as if they were PCs. If you have a Macintosh network, just make sure the box includes the right type of connector and software "drivers" for Macintosh; most do.
Most networked printers connect directly to the network using an Ethernet connector. There are also wireless networked printers, good for locations that are hard to connect by wire to the rest of the network. There are also ways to connect a printer to a PC and install software or hardware to turn the computer into a "printer server;" but details are beyond the scope of this guide. For an example, read about how you can use Red Hat Linux to set up a print server to allow multiple computers to access a non-networked printer.
The more sophisticated network printers come with both the hardware and software to automate the network set-up process, so you don’t have to know about IP addresses or creating a port on your network operating system in order to get it up, running, and shared. Look for terms like “network-ready” or “built-in print server,” indicating that plugging the printer to your network will be automated (or close to it).
For easy administration of your network printer – changing the printer’s setting or checking error messages when something goes wrong – look for a network printer that offers the admin functions on a Web page. This remote administration function saves you having to fiddle with the LCD panel on the printer itself.
A network printer sold as a “departmental” or “large workgroup” solution can also provide fancier features for printer admin, such as access controls and reporting capabilities. You can also get this admin. capability with a separate “print server” device. For example, HP’s Web Jetadmin lets you turn off color printing capabilities for specific users on the network; it also tracks consumables usage (i.e. how much toner the printer uses) and gives predictions on cost and timing for replacing your consumables; it can run reports to identify the users who print the most, or who prints the most color jobs.
Many of the bigger business printers will have these reporting features – the color lasers or solid ink printers for businesses are made to allow administrators to control the cost of printing. An extra feature that might come in handy with networked printing is private printing. It’s a way of making sure that no one else picks up a sensitive document that you send to the shared printer. You can designate a print job to be handled as private printing, and the printer will require a PIN to be entered on the front panel before it prints your document. This function requires extra memory, so printers with this function will have hard drives to store the documents until you’re ready to receive them.
What’s the largest paper you’ll print?
Printing tabloid paper (11x17) or other sizes bigger than legal (8.5x14) often requires a special paper tray. Some printers let you expand to add special paper sizes later by buying the appropriate paper tray.
How many dedicated paper trays would you like?
Most business printers come with two paper trays, in addition to a manual input slot. A second or third input tray can be used to hold other paper types and sizes, such as larger paper or envelopes. You can also just use the extra trays to hold more regular paper, saving you from having to refill the paper trays so often. Want to print on both sides of the paper? Printers that can print duplex (first on one side, then running the page back through and printing on the other side) costs a lot more, but it can save paper, which pays off in the long run if you do a lot of printing. Duplex also lets you create reports that are thinner and more convenient to handle and seem more professional. With some printers, you can add duplexing capability later.
More memory? You can add RAM to higher-end printers, which can be espeically important in networked printers so they can more easily handle multiple print jobs from various PCs, taking the data feed and freeing the PCs to go back to work. Some printers actually use hard disk drives to store print jobs, and also to store additional fonts and forms, and to enable private printing. "Document management" multifunction printers have all kinds of additional features for manipulating and massaging documents, and thus benefit from the storage capacity of hard drives.
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 http://www.iotsolutions.com/, 651-605-2500 or email us at info@iotsolutions.com for more information.
Print Your Own MICR Checks with PEAKTONER
MICR Toner Cartridges - What is MICR?
MICR is an acronym for Magnetic Ink Character Recognition. It is the automation concept used by the banking industry. Every negotiable document, like checks and money orders, has a unique style of numbers and symbols with magnetic properties.
In 1958, because of the explosive growth of check usage, the American Bankers Association selected the E-13B MICR font and the MICR system as the technology for high-speed check processing. Today, check standards are determined by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI).
How Can MICR Toner Cartridges Help Your Business?
By using in-house check printing with PEAKTONER Brand MICR toner cartridges, you can print your own checks for both payroll and expenses. Not only is it good that you pretty much run your payroll internally, you can also make changes and do it all last minute without the hassle!
PEAKTONER MICR = Quality You Can Trust and Results You Can See!
Each and every PEAKTONER Bran MICR Toner Cartridge is quality tested, with MICR test results provided in each box. After we manufacture each cartridge, we print test checks with MICR fonts and process them through a MICR reader just like the bank does. Our reader provides signal strength and MICR density readings, which we then include in the box with the toner cartrige.
Let us know if you are interested in MICR printing for your office!
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 http://www.iotsolutions.com/, 651-605-2500 or email us at info@iotsolutions.com for more information.
MICR is an acronym for Magnetic Ink Character Recognition. It is the automation concept used by the banking industry. Every negotiable document, like checks and money orders, has a unique style of numbers and symbols with magnetic properties.
In 1958, because of the explosive growth of check usage, the American Bankers Association selected the E-13B MICR font and the MICR system as the technology for high-speed check processing. Today, check standards are determined by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI).
How Can MICR Toner Cartridges Help Your Business?
By using in-house check printing with PEAKTONER Brand MICR toner cartridges, you can print your own checks for both payroll and expenses. Not only is it good that you pretty much run your payroll internally, you can also make changes and do it all last minute without the hassle!
PEAKTONER MICR = Quality You Can Trust and Results You Can See!
Each and every PEAKTONER Bran MICR Toner Cartridge is quality tested, with MICR test results provided in each box. After we manufacture each cartridge, we print test checks with MICR fonts and process them through a MICR reader just like the bank does. Our reader provides signal strength and MICR density readings, which we then include in the box with the toner cartrige.
Let us know if you are interested in MICR printing for your office!
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 http://www.iotsolutions.com/, 651-605-2500 or email us at info@iotsolutions.com for more information.
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!!
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.
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
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.
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