Photocopier Guide
A photocopier is often an expensive investment. There are many factors than can help you decide the right photocopier for your business and this guide takes you through some of them:
Recommended copy volumes: Photocopier manufacturers list maximum recommended copy volumes, but don’t take them at face value, as they are often an optimistic estimate.
Speed versus heavy strength: The idea that a faster machine is also stronger or capable of handling a bigger monthly volume is false. Most manufacturers produce the same machines for medium and higher volume ranges.
Do not believe those who tell you that you should upgrade your photocopier just because the volume of pages has increased! You may not be satisfied with the result of the extra expenditure.
It is true that machines that are run more heavily make more copies between service calls or have a higher mean-time-between failures (MTBF). Thus, it is better to go for a mid-volume photocopier and run it at its optimum volume rather than wasting money on faster machine.
Monthly copy volume: Before buying a new photocopier, get an idea of the current monthly copy volume of copies done on your present copier. This can be acquired by checking your copy records for the past year. This figure would help you select the size of the new one!
If your usage is not even, you should consider buying a machine that can adjust its speed accordingly. For example, if you take out 10,000 copies during the beginning of a term, and 25,000 for the annual report month, your machine should cope with the increased volume at a good speed.
Warm-up time: This is another very important feature of a photocopier. Nevertheless, it should not be an all-important factor during comparisons between different makes. Warm-up time is the time taken by the machine that is in a ready state to produce a copy after first turning on the power.
Buy a photocopier that has an energy saving mode.
Tip: The features you should look for in a photocopier are- warm-up time, copy volume, speed and energy saving capacity.
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