Inkjet vs. Laser – Battle of The Printers

Things to Consider When Choosing a New Printer

It used to be so easy – laser printers were ‘business’ machines and inkjet printers were domestic machines.

These days, it’s more confusing with new innovations in technology making the decision a whole lot harder than was once the case.

In simple terms, the difference in the basic technology is still easy to understand:

·       Inkjet printers use liquid ink which is sprayed through microscopic nozzles on to the paper.

·       Laser printers use a toner cartridge (which is filled with a very fine powder) and a heated fuser.

So, with the technology being so obviously differentiated, making a choice between the two types of printer ought to be straightforward:

·       Laser printers have always tended to be more expensive than inkjet, but they have typically been faster (once they have warmed up), and have a higher output per cartridge. If you needed something fast that could handle heavy office workloads, you bought a laser. Hence, they have traditionally been the choice of business.

·       Meanwhile, if you wanted high-quality, affordable colour printing for the home or professional quality photo prints, you went for down the inkjet route.

So far, so simple.

But things have changed:

Colour laser printers have now started to retail at prices tempting to home users, while business inkjets have been taking strides forward in development so that they are becoming more of a credible business choice.

The last couple of years have seen the evolution of a new breed of inkjets that are faster than their ancestors, and more ecologically friendly than their toner-consuming laser cousins.

So, what’s the real story?

Both Inkjet and Laser printers still have advantages and disadvantages, although it is fair to say that improvements to the core technology are helping both types of printer to push past their limitations. There are five main things you need to consider when you are looking at choosing your next printer:

1.       Speed

2.       Quality

3.       Durability

4.       Costs

5.       Networking and security

1.       The Fast and the Furious. Time is money; speed is important.

It has traditionally been the case that laser printers were the fastest kids on the block, but inkjets are the new boy-racers.

Not so long ago, inkjet printers topped out at around 30ppm (pages per minute) in black-and-white and only 10ppm in colour. Yep – the printer equivalent of a Granny in a Honda doing 50mph in the slow lane. Meanwhile, laser printers were routinely hitting speeds of up to 40ppm, irrespective of whether it was printing in black and white or colour. Ferrari territory.

Now, though, laser printers are hitting speeds of 60, and even 70ppm. You might think that this would be like the lasers simply upgrading from sports car to supercar; widening the performance gap between the two types of machine and leaving the inkjets in the dust.

Nope.

The new generation of inkjet printers now have print heads that span the entire width of an A4 page, and they can spew out pages at a ridiculous speed; up to 75ppm, which matches and even beats some of the fastest laser printers, and turning preconceptions on their heads. Granny just overtook Vin Diesel doing 120mph in the outside lane.

2.       Quality is king

In many cases a good quality laser printer will still have the edge when it comes to clean, crisp black text and colour graphics for most business documents.

However, whilst not quite stealing a march on the lasers just yet, inkjets have improved dramatically. Inkjet text reproduction is now easily good enough for all internal documents and even most external use.

Add to that, inkjets almost universally produce the best results when printing photos, and you can see that the newer generation of inkjet printers are very much a contender when it comes to selecting a credible business machine. 

3.       Durability – your business needs a workhorse

This is where laser printers have always smashed it out of the park. They are built to handle enormous workloads of anywhere between 2000 and 20000 pages.

Even with the new generation of inkjets, they still wimp out after a monthly workload exceeding the range of 1500 to 5000 pages (depending on model).

But, you know what? 1500 – 5000 pages is a lot.

In fact, it’s probably going to be perfectly adequate for most smaller SMEs (where an average print job is around four pages) or small departments in large businesses. So, even on the durability front, don’t count out the inkjet just yet.

4.       Money, money, money. How much does it cost?

In printer lore passed down from days of yore, we know that lasers are expensive to buy but cheap to run, while inkjets are cheap upfront but cost you more in the consumables, with a laser toner cartridge churning out thousands of prints, and an inkjet cartridge running out every five minutes.

But, as with so much else in this brave new world of printing devices, this conventional wisdom is no longer reliable.

On the one hand, lasers are getting cheaper to buy up front. Budget models are coming with smaller starter cartridges that run out fairly quickly, though the standard or super-sized cartridges will still have impressive lifespans. In toner alone, expect the cost per page to come in at around 2p for a black-and-white page and 5p to 10p for a colour page.

On the other hand, business inkjets are getting their own costs per page right down, to the extent that some models can now produce prints for around 1p per page for black-and-white to 5p per page for colour. Meanwhile, extra-large cartridges have hit the market and so too have clever innovations like Epson’s Ecotank range. This means a lot of newer inkjets are able to print over 9000 pages (black) or 6500 pages (colour).

It’s only fair to note that there are other costs to consider.

Laser printers still deliver excellent results even on plain paper (although smoother paper will always produce even better results), so there’s no need to splash out on dearer paper.  

Having said that, inkjet paper is no longer so much more expensive, and inkjets usually consume less power than lasers, so they are cheaper (and more ecologically friendly) to run in terms of power consumption.

Combine that with a lower purchase cost, and there’s definite scope to save your business money.

5.       Networking and Security – plug in, baby

It is still true that the top-end enterprise level laser printers offer more management tools, plus support for more high-end networking (e.g. Gigabit Ethernet and IPSec).

But even in this area, inkjets are coming into their own. An increasing number of office inkjet printers have the same or similar embedded management features that laser printers have, plus document security features that you normally only get with MPS (managed print services solutions), such as secure pull-printing, where jobs are held in a queue until released at the printer with a PIN code.

Not only that, but also the new generation of inkjets come with wireless and cloud-printing features that enable the printer to work with a wider range of devices or take print jobs from remote locations.

So, a laser might offer more management and security features at the top end of the market but a business inkjet can still give you all the tools most businesses need.

What’s the bottom line?

It’s no longer a straightforward decision of ‘laser for business’ and ‘inkjet for home’. But that’s a good thing.

As technology has evolved, the range of functions and applications available across a wide range of different machines means that your business can now take advantage of the features it needs at a price that is competitive. Combine a smart printer choice with a MPS solution, and you will be optimising your efficiency in terms of your business expenditure and your operational effectiveness. 

Thanks for reading, and if you think that this information will be of use to someone else you know, please don’t hesitate to share it.

Shredders and Shredding - a Brief Guide

This video is a quick and easy to follow animation taking you through:

1. Different types of shredders;
2. Some additional things to consider when buying a shredder;
3. Auto Feed;
4. Maintenance;
5. How to Clear a Paper Jam

Managing Your Office Supplies Spend - a Simple Check List

There Are a Lot of Office Necessities, But Are You Wasting Money on Your Office Supplies?

Whether it’s stationery, furniture, office machines, paper, accessories or just the tea and coffee in your office kitchen, it can be hard to keep track of all the supplies you need to keep your office going.

This stuff is as basic to your office as lighting, heating and having air to breathe, so it can be hard to keep an eye what your business is spending.

Why does this matter? It’s only a few pens and pencils, right?

Not necessarily – like a lot of businesses, you could be spending far more than you need to. Precisely because many businesses don’t see office supplies a significant overhead, they don’t regulate their spending particularly closely. Office supplies can easily become a big hidden cost in your business.

If employees want to order in a few extra toner cartridges, so be it. An extra tin of coffee or two for the kitchen? Where’s the harm in that? If the warehouse manager wants to keep a stock of health & safety notices ‘just in case’ they are needed, what’s the problem?

Well, the problem is, it soon mounts up.

What’s the real story?

Tracking and managing office supplies might seem to be a challenge, but only because it’s one of those things that tends to get forgotten about in a lot of businesses. The good news is, it is reasonably easy to get a grip of the expenditure. Like a lot of things in life, it’s a matter of applying common sense.

Just run through the checklist of ten simple questions below:

1.       What items do I need to keep in stock at all times? (What are the basic requirements that I need to have to ‘keep the trains running on time’?)

2.       How much of each item should we keep in stock?

3.       Which department or person is requesting this item, and how much do they need?

4.       What is the purpose for the request? (Think about the example above of the warehouse manager ordering H&S signs ‘just in case’).

5.       What is the urgency?

6.       How reliable is the supplier?

7.       Have we benchmarked the costs?

8.       Can I get this on a next day delivery if it becomes urgent?

9.       Have I received it and, if so, when?

10.   Was it out of stock, do I need to reorder it, is there a reasonable substitute that will do the job, or can I go without?

The bottom line:

Getting started on the questions above might seem difficult. How do you even answer question one?

After all, as we said earlier, ‘Office Supplies’ is a broad church covering almost everything you use on a daily basis in your business. From wastebaskets and filing cabinets, through kitchen and janitorial supplies, to paper, pens and pencils; almost all of the stuff you need to keep your business running comes under the heading of ‘Office Supplies’.

But if you compile a simple office supply checklist (and keep reading, because we have got something FREE that can help get you started), you can track what your business is buying, and start to see trends of how often items are being ordered.

When you have done that, you can start to drill into the information and use it to manage your capital spend and your stockholding more effectively.

·       Are you seeing waste?

·       Could you even have a theft problem?

·       Are you stocking the right amounts? You may have too much of some items and not enough of others.

You can track whether you are receiving all the items you order. You can identify if you are having a problem with your supplier, including seeing how long it takes for an order to arrive. Then you can start to buy smarter – for example, if your supplier can get stock to you quickly and efficiently, do you need to keep as much in stock? You may want to reduce your stock holding on some items, unless there is a cost advantage to ordering in bulk.

Here’s the deal:

To get you started Office Prime Supplies have produced a FREE officesupply checklist in a simple adaptable template. The link takes you to the document which you can download in Excel; a nice, clear, easily adjustable, and printable format. It’s ready populated with 440 commonly-ordered products.

Okay, it’s not rocket science, but it helps to get you going. The Excel document is only an example. It’s intended to be a useful base that you can build upon so adapt it or come up with your own. Just download it and edit it for your business’ specific needs.

Other things to consider:

You may want a manager’s signature for approval and date line at the top or the bottom of the final form if management approval is part of your process (and if it isn’t, maybe it should be?)

Of course, if you open an account with Office Prime Supplies we can help you with this.

Our simple, secure online account ordering structure allows you to set user access privileges for your employees. You can give some people in your organisation the ability to create an order, but not the authority to place that order. Very simply, the order will go to you or to a user you appoint (like a buyer or someone in your finance team) to be authorised before it is submitted to us as your supplier.

Thanks for reading, and if you think that this information will be of use to someone else you know, please don’t hesitate to share it.