All-In-One Printer buying guide

All in one printer, also known as multifunction office machines, give you several capabilities in one product, usually including printing, copying, faxing, and scanning. These machines best serve a small office or a home office, where you might not have desk space available for several different products.

Before you purchase a multifunction office machine, you'll want to do some homework. What functions will you use most often and least often? Look for a multifunction office machine that contains better-than-average features for the functions you'll use most often. You can skimp on the features for the functions you'll use least often. Convergence of technologies in one device is happening in the world of printers almost as fast as it is with mobile phones. You can now buy an all-in-one (commonly described as multi-functional devices or MFDs in the US) that will give passable print, copy, scanning and fax results for less than the price of a good quality printer. If colour reproduction and image manipulation matters more then you will need to pay more - but you can still get great results and have the convenience of just one peripheral on your desk.

Key features:-

• A type of printing technology that uses small dots of ink to create images. Printing in color or black and white is available.

• All-in-ones require printer memory to store and process information while printing. Measured in megabytes (MB), the more memory the device has the faster it will print.

• A type of printing technology that uses toner to create images. Printing in black and white is available. (Color laser printing is available, but is prohibitively expensive.)

• There is a reasonably close correlation between the low price of some machines and their high running costs that means that some machines are not the bargains they might at first seem.

• A higher-priced machine with a lower running cost in terms of ink cartridges is likely to pay for itself pretty quickly

• A measure of the pages per minute (ppm) a device can fax, copy, or print. For a single multifunction office machine, each speed measurement could be different.

• Better equipped all-in-ones will be able to print on different sizes and types of including glossy for photos. They will also be able to output overhead transparencies, labels and CDs or DVDs.

The price of replacement ink cartridges will have a significant effect on running costs for an inkjet-based all-in-one. The high prices have seen a small industry spring up in the refill market with 50 per cent savings to be made. However, continual refilling may eventually have an effect on the printer and may cause some conflict with manufacturer's warranties. Avoid colour cartridges that combine three colours - when one runs out you have to throw away what remains in the other two sections.

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