Our president, Pierre Gaulin, has been working in printing solutions for 22 years. After 18,000 repairs, he draws on his experience and he knows "the tricks of the trade".
We thought we'd ask him what he recommends in terms of printing equipment.
― To each usage its type of equipment. For each of the two printing systems –laser and inkjet–, an increasing variety of features and characteristics exist, and they are all conceived for specific types of usage.
People tend to buy the printer that's on sale without putting too much thought into their actual needs. What do you print? I like to ask several questions to customers who are looking into purchasing a new printer. It helps me not only determining which features they need, but also to have a clear understanding of their habits.
Printer purchase advises
Here are the main questions that enable Pierre to suggest a model over another one.
1. Do you need colors?
― Maybe you do print works in colors, but how often? Color printers' cost-per-page is higher than that of the monochrome equipment. Knowing that, if you do not need colors too often, it may be that having color works printed by professionals come cheaper than doing it at home or at the office.
2. What type of works do you print?
― If the precision of grey or color tones is important for your prints, then the inkjet system is meant for you. Otherwise, an inkjet printer will involve unnecessary extra expenses, even if its initial price is lower than that of a laser printer. The inkjet system's cost-per-page is higher than that of laser.
If you would like to know more about costs-per-page, the topic was discussed in further details here.
3. How many pages per month do you print?
― Generally speaking, the smaller the printer, the smaller its cartridges, and the lowest capacity they have. I invite you verify the type of cartridge models take when comparing them, and to assess the amount of prints per month you will do, as well as their coverage (5%). This will give you an idea as to how often you will need to purchase cartridges. Some equipment is designed for large volumes and some others for smaller volumes.
