Multifunction Inkjet Printers and Your Home Business - Part 1

Multifunction Inkjet Printers and Your Home Business - Part 1
Multifunction inkjet printers can be a great home business solution. Not only do they perform a variety of important tasks, like both black and white and color printing, scanning, faxing, and copying, they take the least amount of space possible. In most home business offices, space is at a premium. That's what makes these printers as utilitarian as the Swiss Army Knife in the home office.

Like my whiteboard, a multifunction inkjet printer is a tool I wouldn't want to do without. In addition to their versatility, the cost of multifunction inkjet printers has dropped to the point where they're no longer a major investment. This means you get maximum value for your hard earned home business dollar. In fact, you'll quickly spend more on replacing print cartridges than on the printer itself. And, depending on what you need to output, you can use just about any type of paper and get decent results. That means you can use cheaper paper for most purposes.

If you don't already own a multifunction inkjet printer, you'll certainly want to consider buying one. This article will explain common features of these handy tools for home business, and help you decide if this is the right kind of printer for your business or for working at home.

The Little Printer that Could

Printing in Black and White - Even the least expensive multifunction inkjet printers will give you a fairly good black and white printed page in just a few seconds. While you can use just about any type of paper, your results will vary with your paper selection. For general office use, I find a recycled multi-use 20 pound bond paper with a brightness level of 84 to be just fine. If I'm sending correspondence to a client, I like to beef up the paper to a better quality 22 pound bond with a 94 brightness rating. The increased brightness makes the print look sharper and the slightly heaver weight makes your correspondence seem just a touch more substantial.You can get slightly better text results using special inkjet paper, but for black and white I've never felt it was necessary.
Printing Color Text and Graphics - I get very good results from my multifunction inkjet printer when printing in color or grayscale. Grayscale is a variation of black and white, but instead of just two colors, various shades of gray are reproduced. The result can be increased sharpness. Saving files in grayscale also saves a lot of memory and printing will be faster because the files are typically smaller than color.

Here you will notice a difference with inkjet paper over multipurpose paper. Still, if I'm sending a report with text and graphics, like charts and graphs, the 94 brightness, 22 pound paper works just fine. 30lb. paper stock is also available.

How long it takes to print a color page will depend on your printer and the resolution (dpi - dots per inch) you select. Except for photographs, I rarely print anything in color at less than 150 dpi nor more than 300 dpi. The higher the dpi you select, the sharper your output will be, but the file size of your document will also be larger and take longer to print.

Printing Photographs - Except for a quick printing test before my final output, I print photographs only on premium picture paper. You can print a half decent color photo on most multifunction inkjet printers using 30 lb. inkjet paper, but when you consider that photo paper is usually 51 - 71 lb weight, you can imagine what the difference will be even before you print.

Photo papers are available in Matte, Soft Gloss, Satin, and High Gloss finish. You can even buy photo paper that is printable on both sides, so if you make a mistake you can just reverse the sheet in your printer wihout using up another piece of this expensive paper.


Multifunction Inkjet Printers and Your Home Business - Part 1