Top tips for managing printers
These are some of my top tips for making managing printers that little bit easier. They’re not exclusive, of course.
- Educate your users about all the different functions of a multi-function device – particularly scanning, ’storage print’, where you print to an ‘in-box’ which allows you to print out a large number of documents at once rather than one by one, and ’secure print’ which allows you to require a password before a document prints out.
- Network ALL printers, including personal printers in private offices – it’s the only way you will have any hard data about how much is being printed where.
- Removing or upgrading printers that frequently break down from the environment is an easy way to make both your users AND your desktop support team much happier!
- See every office move as an opportunity to reduce and rationalise the printers in that area. Work with facilities to know when office moves are occurring, do the research to know what the current print environment is like and what the usage stats are, and then make sure that printers are moved (or even removed, if possible) to where you want them.
- Use the print management tools provided by the printer manufacturers. Do regular studies of print-outs per printer, the ratio of colour to black and white etc. Match the information against the manufacturer recommendations to identify printers that are under or over used.
- Put the right printer in the right place – analyse demand using hard stats from your printer management tool. Don’t make the mistake of putting in a B&W A4 printer when the department also needs to print A3 colour.
- Buy models which have separate colour cartridges so that you only replace what you need.
- Set all print defaults to B&W and duplex – it is the cheapest option, even on a colour printer. You would be amazed the number of pages which have a small amount of completely needless colour on them, and changing the default avoids using the colour cartridges unnecessarily.
Does anyone have any more tips they’ve found helpful in the past?
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