What kind of printer do you need? - Part 1
Ever wonder about the differences between ink jet and laser printing? Maybe you leave that to your office manager or assistant and never give it a second thought. But when document production and distribution is estimated to cost a company 15% of its annual revenue, you would do well to take a lesson in printing technology.

An ink jet printer/copier has one print head for each ink color. There are little chambers in the print head that have heating elements. When electricity hits these, some of the ink vaporizes and makes a bubble that causes ink droplets to be blasted at the paper.

Laser printers/copiers work like the classic dry copier and are based on the principle of static electricity. How Stuff Works.com explains that a metal drum gets a positive charge; a bright light hits the original, reflecting off the white parts to draw an “image” on the drum. The reflected light strikes the drum and demagnetizes the parts it hits. Then toner powder attaches to the magnetized parts of the drum, which are the dark areas on the original. The powder is transferred from the drum, melting onto blank paper to form the copied image. In the case of laser printers, the laser prints the image directly on the magnetized drum and transfers it to the paper.

A third technology is called solid ink. A solid block of ink heats up, melts and flows through holes in a print head onto a heated drum, which presses it onto paper. The resulting image looks smoother than a laser printer with colors that are more vivid.

While ink jet printers are quite a bit cheaper than other types, the ink cartridges get used up very fast and are expensive to replace. Manufacturers of ink jet printers actually make their profit off of the sale of cartridges, and in the long run, if you print in large numbers, ink jet can be more expensive than laser printing.

An additional consideration is whether your company needs the capability of creating prints and copies in color. A 2003 survey by International Communications Research found that 81 percent of businesses surveyed felt using color gives them a competitive edge and 90 percent reported that color can be an advantage in attracting new customers.

Color undoubtedly adds impact to your presentations, and with the price of color laser copiers/printers coming down, even small businesses can afford this advantage. An HPS Office Systems document imaging consultant can perform a business solutions review to provide you an image management system that can save you money per image and/or month.