Editorials

By Lyndsey Gilpin March 6, 2014

Think about how many times you've started printing a document and realized there was a mistake. You try to cancel it, but pages are already spewing out the printer. Or another common situation: you don't want all those excess pages with photos, ads, and hyperlinks. You leave it in the printer bed. On a good day, someone puts the paper in the recycling bin. The majority of the time, however, the pages are tossed in the trash, only to pile up in a landfill unnecessarily. 
One in six pages of printed paper is never picked up, and in the entire lifetime of a printer, up to 80 percent of the machine's carbon impact comes from the amount of pages printed.

Several years ago, Lexmark saw this enormous discrepancy in the printing industry, and decided to act on it. Customers were getting a lot more conscious about how much they were printing, while Lexmark and other printer companies focused all their marketing around helping businesses print more.

Companies of all sized face this decision all the time. Large companies may differ from small companies budget wise but both will have to make the decision. What will cost more up front? What will cost more in the long run? What will fit your company and your budget? Can I write this off on my taxes? These are all good questions; here are some things to keep in mind when you need to make large office purchases even if you are just updating your office machines:

• How much do you print? How much do you print per month? When it comes to copiers, scanners, printers and multifunctioning machines you will need to have a very good idea on the number of pages your company prints per month. Keeping an eye on your printing not only helps you see any misuse of office supplies but also helps you see if you print enough to buy. There is no hard number to say if you print enough for a purchase but a good rule to follow is if you print less then 700 pages a month it may be affordable to just use a medium size desk top machine. If you plan on doing more then 700 a month it would be best for you to lease a machine.

By Marlene Orr, Senior Analyst, Printers/A4 MFPs, February 18, 2014

The office is not static; business environments continually evolve and so do the workers in them. While mobile devices as part of daily workflow is a trend in the office that is here to stay, mobile printing has not historically been easy, presenting challenges for users and IT departments alike. To further meet the needs of business users looking for simplified mobile printing, Hewlett-Packard (HP) today announced the first Mopria-certified print device, the Color LaserJet Pro M476, targeted to SMB customers needing an affordable color MFP with enterprise-level mobile print capabilities.

HP Announces the Industry’s First Mopria-Certified Print Device

What is Mopria? The Mopria Alliance is non-profit membership organization of leading global technology companies with the shared goal of aligning the mobile, software and print industries with a common set of standards that make printing universally compatible from any mobile device to any printer anywhere. (For more news on Mopria, check out the article on Solutions Center.) As the industry’s first Mopria-certified printer, the Color LaserJet Pro M476 series meets the established global standards for delivering simple wireless printing from smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices, regardless of brand. As such, the series begins shipping to customers in April 2014 with embedded print support for Android-based devices (a Mopria print plug-in Google KitKat/Android 4.4 OS will be available March 2014).

You could have the best printer on the market, but if you don’t understand printing resolution you could become very frustrated with your print job. Here is some printing advice and knowledge that will make that next print job a little less stressful.

The size of your digital file is measured in pixels and DPI or Dots Per Inch. Sometimes this measurement is referred to as PPI, or Pixels Per Inch.

A pixel is a small dot inside of a transparent. Think of it as when someone talks to you about the type of display your computer or T.V. screen has. DPI refers to the number of dots (pixels) per inch. Resolution is how much detail an image holds. Higher DPI means great resolution, but this does also means higher image size.