I am a huge fan of laser printers for many reasons. They are fast, efficient, easy to network, and the toner cartridges last a very long time before having to replace them. Probably the best reason is their lower cost-per-page compared to inkjet printers. If it was a perfect world, quite honestly, I would abolish inkjet technology altogether. Don’t you find it to be quite silly that you’re paying $50 for a very tiny amount of ink? Gather up a bunch of ballpoint pens and you’ll see that you are getting majorly ripped off in the printer ink business!

So, here’s my brief take on what to look for in a printer:

• Technology: Laser, hands down. Forget the inkjets!
• Connectivity: USB is a given, but networking is a must if you want to share your printer with multiple computers. Wireless is even better.
• Speed: 20ppm or faster is generally the lowest rating to look for. Laser printers usually print in the 30-50ppm range easily.
• Color vs. Black/White: You’ll get the cheapest price tag if you go with a mono/black & white laser printer for sure, but color lasers have come down in price considerably in the last few months.A good, simple mono laser can be had for about $100.
• Brand: Canon makes the best laser printers for business use. Period. For home use, Dell offers great prices on all of their laser printers. HP is #1 in the market, but certainly not in my eyes. Their software and drivers are horrible.

Probably the biggest “downside” to lasers is the fact that they don’t print photos on glossy paper. For this, I just bring my photos to a professional printing shop that can do this for me at pennies per photo. Even then, I rarely print photos since it’s so much cooler showing them off on a 50″ plasma TV than a tiny 4×6 photo paper.

A lot of users buy inkjets because of the all-in-ones that are out there. I think all-in-ones should be abolished too! You’re putting all your eggs in one basket. I had an all-in-one Canon inkjet for about three years before the auto document feeder died. Then shortly after that, the print heads really got messed up. So basically it ended up being a glorified fax machine and flat bed scanner that can’t even print!

So my idea of a perfect office is this:

• Printing. I have a Dell Color Laser 3110CN Printer. It prints color, black and white, envelopes, and just about anything I need printed. I printed a 500 page book in less than 30 minutes and the toner hardly depleted.
• Faxing. I don’t have a fax machine. Instead, I use an Internet faxing service called SmartFax (www.smartfax.com). If I need to fax something, I just choose the Fax “printer” on my computer and it sends out a fax over the Internet. This saves the wasted step of printing things out and then faxing it with a fax machine. The best part about SmartFax is inbound faxes are free and unlimited. Sometimes I get junk faxes so it’s better to just delete the e-mail instead of wasting ink and paper.
• Scanning. I have a dedicated flat bed scanner for photo projects and I have a dedicated sheet-fed scanner called ScanSnap which makes it a cinch to scan in receipts, documents, tax returns, and anything else. It converts them into PDFs on my computer for easy searching and viewing.

By the way, my office 100% paperless, save for the shreds of paper in my shredder. I don’t even have post-it notes (there’s a program I use that puts notes on my computer’s screen)! Contact me to find out how to make your office paperless and how to get rid of wasteful technology. Be Green!