What Printer?

[freddy 0]

Some advice needed please. I need to get a good injet printer for a small office of 10 computers that need to share the printer. They wont be doing much colour printing, only colour documents not photo printing. The printer must be fast, and quick to initialize....the time between sending a job and it coming off the printer should be quick.

 

I got a networkable colour laser printer, but this was just too slow the time between sending a print job and it coming of the printer, and the time between print jobs was too long. The print jobs are not large batches of printing, just many small jobs, hence the need for speed between jobs.

 

Can anyone recomend a good, fast, reliable injet printer?

 

Thanks.

 

FREDDY

[jmmijo 1]

I realize that you're looking for quick but perhaps the issue here is that this office, as small as it is, really needs two or more printers

 

Here's something to try, since it's shared you either have it on a print server or as a shared object on a networked machine.

 

1) Make sure you have the print spooler set to start printing right away, I do believe this is on by default.

 

2) Open the printer properties while the printer is being used and look at the print jobs and the size of each, you may be surprised by just how large these so-called small print jobs are.

 

3) Check the laser printer specs, it may come with a small amount of ram which most are able to be upgraded to more, this usually helps for machines that are being utilized like this.

 

An inkjet printer is not going to be any faster, perhaps there are some faster PPM type inkjets but also you have to look at the final output as well.

 

So what kind of Color Laser did you get, make and model please ?!?

[thatsteveguy 0]

I would try to see if you could find a quicker laser printer as the cost of running an ink jet printer over a year in a business is just astronomical.

What kind of laser printer do you have now and I might be able to come up with some stuff at work for you tomorrow on alternatives.

S

[freddy 0]

The printer is an Epson Colour Laser C900N. Cost £560.

 

Before we had one networked Epson injet, shared as an object on one computer on the network. Anyone printing to the printer could send a job and it would start to print almost immediately, so printing a couple of pages would be printed by the time they got up from their desk and got to the printer.

 

With the laser it takes so long to warm up etc, that by the time they get to the printer it hasnt even started printing.

 

We would prefer, like you suggested, having two or maybe three injet printers that dont take so long to warm up and initialize.

 

The laser is set to start printing right away, and it has 16MB of memory installed. This should be enough, the print outs are only a couple of pages of text and a small logo.

 

There may be faster lasers on the market but not within the £560 budget. The company would much rather have 2 or perhaps 3 inkjet printers.

 

Thanks.

 

FREDDY

[jmmijo 1]

But as was mentioned with the cost of inkjet cartridges, it maybe more expensive to run and maintain then a couple of Laser Printers.

 

So the thing that's interesting is the warm up, I have an older HP black and white laser and can't recall any significant delay in printing. Perhaps a color laser is a little different in this regard.

 

Also, is color output always a neccessity ?!? Perhaps a black and white laser would be good as a second printer.

[freddy 0]

The colour output is a neccessity as the company logo on the letters is in colour and part of the company image.

 

The amount of printing isnt significant enough to have much bearing on the cost of inkjet cartridges.

 

I've seen many black and white laser printers and they did not appear to have such a delay in printing, think it must be a colour printer thing.

 

I think inkjets are more suitable for the requirments...a laser just would have been nice to have, but doesnt seem to work well in this scenario.

 

Got any suggestions on suitable inkjets?

[jmmijo 1]

In this case I'd recommend either the HP 970 or 990 series or their replacements. I have the 990cxi and it does double-sided printing which comes in handy. Very nice output and pretty fast too. There are probably faster printers out there now, you'll have to look at the various models to see the final output quality and speed.