For every decision you make in your business, it’s essential to ensure that whatever you choose is the right fit for your company. This is true of everything from the new employees you hire and the clients you choose to work with, to the marketing tactics you use and the equipment you buy. Making a purchase or choosing a strategy that doesn’t fit your business well can negatively impact your company’s growth. This is even true when you buy a copier in Fairbanks, AK, for your business. Choosing the wrong one can make this new piece of equipment more of a liability than an asset, so keep reading to get tips on choosing the right one.
Determine What Type of Printing You’ll Be Doing
To determine what type of printer you’ll need, you first need to decide what kind of printing you’ll be doing in your office. More specifically, you need to determine if you’ll mostly need a printer for color printing or black-and-white documents. Most offices need a printer for contracts and similar text-based documents, which would lean heavily on black-and-white printing. However, others may print a lot of colorful graphs or image-based brochures and packets, so color printing would be your priority in this case.
Why does this matter? There are 2 primary types of printers: inkjet and laser printers. Inkjet printers outperform others in the color printing department, creating beautiful, professional-looking images. Laser printers, however, are exceptional at creating black-and-white, text-based documents. They can create crisp, clean lines and won’t smudge right out of the printer like fresh ink. Once you know what kind of printing you’ll be doing the most of, you can determine whether an inkjet or laser printer is the better option for you.
Determine the Primary Functions You Need
Very few office printers these days perform only one function; the vast majority of them are a type of printer known as a multifunction device. Not only are these devices printers, but they’re copiers, scanners, and even fax machines. It’s still up to you to determine which primary functions you need your printer to perform. Think about what you’ll need to get done with your documents in your office, then find a printer that fits those needs.
Determine Additional Features You Want
Now that you’ve found the right type of printer that fulfills the functions you need, it’s time to dig into the little details of the work you’re doing a bit more. For example, you know you need a scanner on your machine, but do you only need it to scan single-page, one-sided documents, or will you be scanning multi-sided, multi-page packets of documents? If it’s the latter, you’ll need to make sure the machine you purchase has the capability of scanning these kinds of jobs.
There’s a list a mile long of potential add-on features for any printer you buy, from document binding for those packets you scan in, to wireless printing from any device in your office. You’ll need to determine which additional features are most important to you and will benefit your office.
Think about How to Improve Security
Most people think of security as a way to protect physical assets in their place of business. However, in today’s business world, most business’s hold their most valuable assets in a digital format. The data you use in your business is worth a great deal to your company, and you need to protect—not just when it’s being transmitted digitally, but when it’s being scanned from a physical format.
When your scanner digitizes the documents it scans, it temporarily stores a copy of that document in its memory; printers may also store a history of print jobs to make it fast and easy to reorder the print job. This makes it vulnerable in the time that it’s stored. For example, someone may be able to log into the printer and repeat a recent print job of a sensitive document.
Today’s modern printers have a lot of optional security features that you can add to your printer. For example, unique login codes for each employee, data encryption, and other features can make accessing the data stored in your printer more difficult. Take some time to think about how concerned you are about your company’s security and what features will help you protect your documents.
Compare Cost of Ownership
Now that you have a good idea of what you need from your printer, you should be able to narrow it down to a few different models. This means it’s time to start looking at prices. Of course, the price tag on the printer is an important consideration. However, you’ll also need to think about the long-term costs of owning a printer. This cost can be a bit harder to calculate since you won’t find that number listed on a tag on the printer. To sort that number out yourself, you’ll need to take a careful look at factors like the expected lifespan of the printer, how often users typically need to conduct repairs and replace parts, how efficient the printer is with ink/toner, and so on.
Once you find a printer make and model that meets all of your needs, and you’ve compared the prices in both the short term and the long term, you should be prepared to make a purchasing decision for your office. However, if you need further guidance and support in buying a printer that fits your company’s needs, call or stop by Arctic Office Products today to see what we have on the floor. If you don’t find what you need in our showroom, we can help you find what you’re looking for. You can find the best office printer and copier in Fairbanks, AK, for your needs right here at Arctic Office Products.
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