DePauw Students can print to public access printers using iPrint and PCounter. These tools are used for printing computer documents only and are not used for photo copying. You must be logged into Novel Client (Windows) or Network Alias Icon for Pcounter (Mac).
mono laser if cost per page is the prime concern, and good quality text prints at high speeds are needed or
• a dot matrix printer if per page costs are crucial, and high speeds or quality are not so important, then dot matrix printer is good enough or
• An inkjet for all other purposes
A. Job-specific printing
For home printing needs like taking prints of a school project, greeting cards, letters and resumes and family photos, we can go for a color inkjet that costs about Rs 6,000 or less. Remember that this is not for heavy-duty printing. They aren’t fast, but give good quality text and color prints.
For taking prints of high quality digital pictures, or the sales report that shows the region-wise breakup, or for graphics design which needs to be shown to clients frequently, a color inkjet between Rs 8,000 and Rs 10,000 can do the job. Some of these are sold as photo-quality printers—but we need to use photo paper to take full advantage of the prints. A lot of them also print well on plain paper.
ii: Availability of components: Check the cost of other components that need replacing and maintenance and their availability.
iii. Ink-saving methods:Most inkjets come with techniques that let us gauge how much of ink is left in the cartridges—so we can buy a replacement in time. Some come with translucent covers to let us judge how much ink is left. Others let us find it out from the printer software that we’ll load on our PC to run the printer.
iv. Printer drivers and cables: We need to check that a printer has drivers for the environment that we’re working on, like Mac or Windows 2000. Also ensure that it comes with a cable and with USB support. Most printers today have this, making them extremely easy to setup.
v. Refills: Cartridges cost a lot. Prices have come down nowadays with all the major printer firms trying to fight the refills and gray market cartridges. Refills may not be preferable as some problems are experienced and all printer manufacturers warn of nullifying the warranty in the event of use of any refill.
vi. Speed and print quality: The two most important things to look for in a printer are how fast it can print and how good it can print. The speed tests are done at the lowest supported resolution of the printer, whereas the quality tests are do
vii. Price per page The price of the printer isn’t the sole guiding factor for buying a printer. Running cost is also very important. Check price per every page. Find out the price of the ink cartridges and the number of pages each cartridge can print. For example, if a color cartridge costs Rs 2000 and it can print 200 pages then the price per page would be Rs 10, which means each printout is Rs 10. Do remember to check the coverage taken by the printer manufacturer for this. A cartridge would be rated to give 500 pages with a coverage of 5% of the paper area. Now if we print more than that, the number of pages we’ll get using that cartridge would be much less. The number of pages we get also depends on the mode we print in—for instance printing in the Super economy mode would give more pages, while Best mode won’t give as many. Also the print speeds for color are lower than printing black text.
viii. Jam free feature: While no printer guarantees total jam-free printing, they make dealing with jams a little easier. Keep the paper aligned accurately and see that papers aren’t stuck to each other in a stack. It’s when the paper going in doesn’t go in the direction it should, or when the printer picks up more than one paper at a time that there’s a possibility of a jam.
Finally, make sure the printer has the right warranty, the right cables and the right software to go with it.
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