5 Tips to Keep Your Printer Working at its Best

Office IT,
11
Apr 2017

76765098

Although paper usage has fallen in the past decade, printers remain crucial for all businesses, so you have to know how to keep them working at their best.

After all, paper and toner can be very expensive, so you want to make sure you’re not wasting any of these materials. Additionally, there’s nothing more frustrating than a printer which isn’t working, so, instead of chucking it out the window, wouldn’t it be great if you could quickly fix it?

Well, now you can and it’s all thanks to our 5 tips to keep your printer working at its best.

  1. Shake that Toner!shake_toner_cartridge

If you’re running a laser printer then you’ll be familiar with the high costs of toner. However, it’s possible to get more mileage out of your toner and print more pages. Once your printer alerts you that it’s time to change your toner, just take the toner in question out and give it a shake. This will loosen up any solid toner and provide you with a printer which carries on printing.

  1. Inkjets Require Quality Paper

Inkjet printers provide a cheaper option than laser printers and can produce stunning results, but you have to make sure you’re using high quality paper. With low quality paper you’ll find that the ink spreads and bleeds too much, this results in a low quality print which may leave you thinking you need a new printer. However, by upgrading your paper you’ll notice a huge difference in your print quality.

  1. Print Double Sidedaid167187-728px-Print-Double-Sided-Step-4-Version-2

If your printer has a ‘duplex’ option then it means that it’s capable of printing double sided. And the benefit of this is that it means your paper will go a lot further. All you need to do is enter your printer’s settings and select the ‘print duplex/double sided’ option.

  1. Keep the Nozzles Clean

It’s always irritating to pick up your printed documents and find that they’re covered in smeared ink. Not only does this waste your time, but it also wastes your paper and ink. Thankfully, there’s a relatively quick fix for this problem on inkjet printers.

This smearing is caused by the print-head nozzles becoming blocked by dried ink. Therefore, you need to clean these nozzles to get printing again. And all you need to do is install a cleaning cartridge in place of your ink cartridge and it will clean out those blocked nozzles.

  1. Print What You Need

You’d be surprised just how much ink is wasted by printing unnecessary data. Take websites, for example, perhaps there’s only one paragraph you need, but when you hit the print button it churns out six pages of wasted ink. What you should be doing here is taking advantage of the ‘print selection’ option offered up in your print settings. All you have to do is highlight the desired text and then tick ‘print selection’ and it will only print out that specific section.

For more ways to secure and optimize your business technology, contact your local IT professionals.

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What to do when your printer stops working

hardware, Office IT,
28
Jun 2015

The-Humanity-of-Printing

Do you know what to do when your printer stops working? If not, we’ll help you take out some of the guesswork with some basic troubleshooting tips.

Printers may be an understated piece of equipment. It almost becomes part of the office furniture, until it gets used for printing.  But what happens when the office printer stops working, what is one to do before they decide to call for help?  Firstly, remain calm. The good news is that we’ve pieced together a checklist for what to do when a printer stops working.

What to check before first

Just a preliminary note: It may sound obvious; however, most printers can actually display the problem on their LCD displays or give clues as to what the problem is. Make a note of any errors which may flash on this display too.

  • Restart the printer. Simply power off and then switch it back on. Sometimes all that is needed for a printer to work well again is a simple restart. This often does the trick, almost works like magic!
  • Clear the printer’s sprint queue. This is a common problem where one print job within the print queue jams up all other print jobs waiting for their turn to print in the queue. To clear the queue, simply head over to the printer’s setting from your computer’s Control Panel on Windows 7 or 8 by going to

Start > Control Panel > Hardware and Sound> Printers
Double click the printer that has the problem.
A print queue should be available, and from there you can delete and clear the print jobs to tell it to stop printing. Click Cancel to remove the print jobs.

Try to send a new print job to test its working fine.

  • Make sure your printer has enough supplies. By this we mean enough paper to feed through it and plenty of ink to use. Insufficient levels of these can make a printer unhappy, so be sure to not overlook this!

Paper Jams- a common problem

paper-jam

Printers are usually good at telling their users when there’s a paper jam. If there is one, it’s a good idea to check that paper isn’t stuck. Even the smallest piece of paper jammed in the printer’s rollers qualifies as a paper jam.

Sometimes a printer will complain about a phantom paper jam. In this case, it’s a matter of checking there’s enough paper in the paper tray and all trays or doors are closed shut.

Servicing your printer

The inside of a typical laser printer from Zinetic.

Diagram of the inside of a typical laser printer from Zinetic.

Laser jet printers need servicing from time to time, so it’s always a good idea to have it serviced. Once a certain amount of printing threshold has been reached, the printer may request a service to replace one of its components from wear and tear such as a print drum or paper roller, helping to further extend the printer’s life.

Check the warranty

It’s always a good idea to register your printer for its warranty as soon as it arrives in the office. You’ll want the least amount of trouble by having your warranty activated which will cover you for a faulty printer and have the problem fixed promptly by the vendor.

For more ways to troubleshoot your printers and computers, contact your local IT professionals.

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What Are Your 3 Office Printing Options?

Office IT, ,
14
Apr 2015

Printing

It is essential to have a working printer in an office of any size. Here are 3 ways to connect printers as well as their advantages and disadvantages.

Depending on how many staff you have working at your office and the printing requirements needed, you’ll want the most efficient setup available for them. Below are 3 office printing options for you to consider:

1 – Local printer shared over a networkPrinters-HP-OJ-4500-DESKTOP-ALL-IN-ONE-PRINTER-1

Advantages–

  • Local printers are relatively cheap to purchase, prices can vary, however the cheapest you can buy new can range from $35-40 or more.
  • They are very straightforward to set up.
  • They fit easily onto a desktop.
  • Suitable for a small team or office to use.

Disadvantages–

  • In order for the shared printer to work, the computer hosting the device needs to be online over the network so that other users can print to it.
  • Not suitable for large offices, where hundreds of print jobs need to be processed daily.
  • Most cheap desktop printers that are set up as a shared printer tend to print slower, producing less printed pages per minute than, say, a heavy duty laser jet printer.

2 – Network printer connected over Wi-Fi

Dell wireless printer-p713w-1

Advantages-

  • Moderately priced, prices can range from $100 upwards for a cheaper end laser jet printer.
  • As long as the printer is connected and online, everyone can use the printer.
  • Suitable for medium to large offices who need access to a heavy duty printer such as a laser jet.

Disadvantages-

  • A little more complicated to set up, this usually requires an IT administrator to configure.
  • This setup depends heavily on a wireless connection; therefore the quality of Wi-Fi is essential for this to work efficiently.
  • The distance between the printer to the router is also essential. The bigger the distance, the weaker the connection will be. For instance, the router being too far away from the printer could mean lack of Wi-Fi signal for there to even be a connection. You’ll also need to assess anything that may disrupt Wi-Fi signals, such as the use of microwaves in eating areas nearby.

 

3-Hard wired network printer connected with Ethernet26754_00_1000x1000

 

Advantages-

  • Like the Wi-Fi printers, hard wired network ones that are able to connect via Ethernet are also moderately priced.
  • Suitable for medium to large offices that also require a heavy duty printer or even a multi-functional one with scanning capabilities.
  • A more stable connection compared to Wi-Fi, making it the most reliable solution of them all as far as shared network printing goes.
  • Anyone on the network can connect to the printer without having to rely on it being on a single PC.

Disadvantages-

  • The inevitable use of cables, but can be tidied away with a cable tidy accessory.
  • Even Ethernet printers need to be set up by an IT administrator to allow it to reside on the network and make it available for all to use.
  • As this setup will likely use a heavy duty printer, it’ll also need its own space in the office.

As you can see, the best solution for a small office (or even for a home-based office) is to have a local printer shared over the network. On the other hand, if reliable is important for users at all times within a medium to large sized office, a hard-wired network printer is a much better choice.

For more ways to optimize your printer network setup or network infrastructure, contact your local IT professionals.

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