Pros and Cons Of All In One Printers
While there are a few things to consider about selecting a piece of office equipment, all in one printers have some unique factors that could be both good and bad, depending on your perspective and individual needs. Here are some pros and cons commonly found in all in one printers.
Typically all in one printers hold their value over time. Most office equipment devalues almost instantly, but all in one printers do a fair job of retaining its value, even after some normal wear and tear.
All in one printers are usually fairly affordable. When comparing the option of buying different pieces of office equipment (fax machine, printer, scanner, telephone, and copy machine) the price of one single machine is usually much, much lower. Also the price of this kind of technology is continuing to drop, making superior quality more and more affordable.
All in one printers take up less space. Instead of having multiple pieces of office equipment occupying space all in one printers allow you to have only a single machine which leaves more usable workspace available for you to use.
While all of these factors are true, the major downside of an all in one printer is that if something goes wrong and needs repair you are without the use of all of these functions until the repairs have been completed. Sometime this can become such an inconvenience that it may be worthwhile to have a spare machine on hand for just such occasions.
While all in one printers may be more affordable initially, they can end up costing much more to maintain, especially if they utilize ink jet cartridges. Laser printers typically cost between one to five cents per page. However ink jet printers typically end up costing ten to twelve center per printed page. Obviously this is more than double the cost.
Depending on your needs it might be wiser to consider purchasing a laser printer instead of an ink jet printer if you are going to print lots of documents. Over the long term laser printers tend to cost less.
The truth is that many manufacturers make most of their profits from ink jet cartridges and not the initial sale of the printer. Many companies break even on the upfront sale, but realize a substantial profit with the repeat purchase of ink jet cartridges.
The sales of the all in one printers are secondary in terms of profitability compared to the profits realized by the company selling the ink for the ink jet cartridges.