When purchasing a new printer for your business, the price of equipment and its operational costs are understandably the main focus of most buyers. However, in the bid to find a cost-efficient printer, its useful, technical functions are often overlooked.
One of the most important yet neglected features is printer memory, so here are the questions you should be asking when purchasing your equipment:
What is Printer Memory?
Almost every printer has a built-in memory (RAM) which it uses to store the print jobs that are sent to it. When they are printed, they are cleared from the memory and it’s free to accept new requests.
Why is it important?
When you send documents to a printer, it needs to be able to store all of the information transmitted before beginning to print.
The bigger the memory, the more frequent or complex jobs the printer can process; which is particularly useful for producing high volume documents or those with high resolution images like brochures, presentations and promotional materials.
How much memory does a printer have?
This varies between manufacturers and models. As a rough guide, a compact printer used by a home user or small business could have anything between 32MB and 128MB of RAM.
More robust printers that are suited to the workplace are more likely to have 256MB to 512MB of RAM, while printers specifically designed for graphics could have anything from 1GB upward.
Can I add more memory?
Yes! When buying a printer, one of the most important things to look for is whether the memory can be upgraded.
Having the option to add more memory, means that your printer’s performance can keep up with future business demands and you won’t face the unnecessary expense of replacing your existing machine.
What happens if my printer memory is full?
Have you ever stood by the printer and wondered why it’s taking a long time to produce your work? A full memory is likely to be the cause.
When printer memory reaches capacity, it slows down the whole system which impacts on output quality and causes a backlog of jobs waiting to print. This can be really problematic for networked printers which a lot of people use.
Installing extra memory usually fixes this problem and returns your printer’s high speed and quality to normal.
Another advantage of having extra printer memory is that employees can send documents to a printer and leave them there until they are ready for production, reducing the amount of trips they have to make to collect documents.
It also means that large printing jobs can be scheduled to run overnight so they don’t interfere with daytime operations.
How is extra memory installed?
You can buy or even rent additional printer memory boards. These need to be fitted inside your printer and the method of doing this will vary between manufacturer models.
Check your instruction manual for a step-by-step guide, or call your printer technician or maintenance contractor who can do this for you.
If you want to purchase a new printer or upgrade the memory in an existing one, contact the industry experts at Copy Logic who can offer you great advice and support to find the right memory capabilities for your business, and keep it running smoothly.