The dream of the ‘paperless office’ may have many benefits including reduced costs and less environmental impact, but the reality is that this is still a long way off – people simply need to print documents, be it because they find paper copies easier to read or simply more convenient.

In order to get your document from the screen to paper you need a printer, and these come in two main forms – inkjet and laser. Inkjet printers are now commonplace and are a consumer item, with a high volume of sales these devices are now relatively cheap to buy, although the cost per printed page is high when compared to a laser printer. Inkjet printers are best suited for applications where they are used for low-volume printing in small offices.

Laser printers are aimed at the commercial sector, and are ideal for medium to high volume print loads, while the initial purchase cost of a laser printer is much higher than it is for an inkjet, this cost will soon be outweighed by the reduced cost per page of these devices.

Multifunction devices combine the functions of a number of pieces of equipment into one package, such as printing, scanning and faxing abilities. The advantages of this approach is the reduced space that you will need and the convenience of having all these functions accessible from a single unit. The main disadvantage is that the performance of each element will generally be less than offered by a single product focussed on that function, and they tend to be more expensive than buying the separate devices.

When deciding on which type of printing device is right for your company’s needs there are a number of factors to consider, such as budget, the number of pages you expect to be printing each month, and the space the device takes up. Besides these you should also look at the DPI (dots per inch) at which the device can print – the higher the number the better the quality of the print, and the CPP (cost per page) – this is very important and should be combined with your estimated monthly usage to determine how much each device would cost you in consumables.