Getting a Small Office Printer

Nearly all the printer manufacturers design special machines for small office use. These printers slightly from personal or home printers and large office printers from of their features and specifications. There are multiple specifications identifird a printer meant for small office use. In order to select an appropriate color laser printer for your small office, you must always keep these points in mind.

Firstly, a small office printer should have reasonable printing speed. The typical printing speed for office printers is 22 ppm. In general, it can vary from 20 ppm to 35 ppm. Machines with lesser speeds are meant for personal use and not for offices. Secondly, it should possess a sufficiently large media capacity. It is better to have more than one trays to ensure a media capacity of at least 150 sheets. The paper capacity up to 600 sheets is appropriate. Machines with larger media capacity are employed in large offices.

Thirdly, while choosing a laser printer for a small office, you must make sure that the machine can be shared by a group of users and is not meant for individual use. This is specified by its type in the product description. Only if the printer type is specified as 'workgroup', can it be used in small offices. In general, small office printers can be shared by groups of 7 to 10 users. Fourthly, you should make sure that the machine you select has a sufficiently high duty cycle ranging from 20,000 to 25,000 pages.

The fifth thing that must be kept in mind in order to make a proper choice is that your machine should be able to print onto multiple media types. It should be able to print on plain paper, cards, envelopes, labels and transparencies.

The sixth important feature that your small office printer must possess is small size and less weight. The machine must be compact and should weigh no more than 5 kg. However if it is a multifunction machine, it may weigh as much as 16.5 kg.

The seventh quality you should look for in a machine for your small office is the ability to work without creating noise. Quiet operation is necessary for a small office computer. The eighth point you must remember while selecting a color laser printer is that it should have a high resolution. It must have a printing resolution of 1200 dpi into 600 dpi or 1200 dpi into 1200 dpi. The ninth important quality that makes a machine eligible for use in small offices is that it should be able to print on large size media including the legal size.

Last but not the least, the machine should have sufficiently large cartridges to prevent interruptions during the tasks. This tenth point is of immense importance in rendering a machine suitable for office use. None of these points should be ignored in order to make an ideal purchase. Office machines are costly and should be chosen with ultimate care.