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Printer A Purchasing Checklist

The following is really a summary of all printer features that have been discussed.

1. What are the life-cycle costs? What do you need to print?
2. In-house reports?
3. Letters?
4. Banners?
5. Wide spreadsheets?
6. Forms?
7. Newsletters, brochures, and handouts? Magazines and high-quality
8. output?
9. Do you have to share the printer?
10. In what environment will you use the printer? What type of
11. applications do you use?
12. Spreadsheets?
13. Databases?
14. Educational software?
15. Word processing?
16. Desktop publishing?
17. Accounting?
18. Graphics and drawing programs? Programming, error logging?
19. What hardware features do you need?
20. What type of printer interface and port do you need? What type ofpower supply switching or linear? How easy is the front panel to use?
21. Do the manuals contain all needed information?
22. Are technical reference and repair manuals available? What is the warranty?
23. What is the resolution?
24. How fast is the printer? How fast is necessary? How much nois e does the printer make?
25. Can you attach a keyboard and turn the printer into a typewriter?
26. How heavy is the printer?
27. If the printer is a dot matrix, answer these questions:
28. Does the printer have a strong motor to pull paper?
29. Does the printer have a tractor that has to be adjusted every tenth sheet?
30. Does the printer have a tractor that is good at pulling paper slightly off center?
31. Can you tear off paper without wasting a sheet?
32. Is the paper path straight?
33. Can you park the paper for manual feed?
34. Where is the paper-out switch?
35. Are paper trays available?
36. Does the printer use pulley or screw dot-matrix head movement?
37. What percent can the black head print at top speed?
38. Is the printer good at paper handling?
39. What type and how expensive are the ribbons?
40. What type of fonts are available?
41. If the printer is an Inkjet, answer these questions:
42. What does the ink bladder cost?
43. Does the printer require special paper? How long does the printer take to turn on? Does the printer have a tendency to clog?
44. If the printer is a laser printer, answer these questions:
45. What type of laser: laser, LED, LCS?
46. What is the number of lifetime pages designed to print?
47. What is the duty cycle, pages per hour, per week, per month?
48. Does the printer stack paper face up or face down?
49. How much memory does the printer have?
50. How much do paper trays cost?
51. Does the printer print envelopes?
52. Can you easily feed the printer manually?
53. How expensive and where can you purchase toner cartridges?
54. Does the printer have a hard disk?
55. Does the printer have an object mode?
56. If the printer is a plotter, answer these questions:
57. What pen tips are provided? What paper sizes can you use? What is the step size?
58. What software features do you need? Can the printer print bidirectionally? How thorough is the self-test program(s)? What character sets are supported? What original fonts are supplied? Can you add foner cartridges? ink cartridges?
59. Is there third-party font competition? Are the fonts copy-protected?
60. Does the software work with the PC DOS GRAPHICS command?
    Can you reset the printer?
61. Does the printer come with required Macintosh software?
62. Can the printer print in object mode?
63. Is it easy to switch from object to character mode?
64. In the Next web section

The web section describes how to unpack, install, train, share, and manage printers so that they don't have problems - including installation of inkjet cartridges and toner cartridges.

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In the links below you will find pages that lists other sites offering office computers, printers and scanners | Ink & Toner, Shredders | Ink & Toner, Shredders ( ink toners additional 1) | Ink & Toner, Shredders (additional 2) | Computers | Computers-1 | Computers-2 | Printers, Scanners | Printers, Scanners (additionals) | Printers, Scanners (additionals 2) | More in the Learning Center