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If your office space is small, you may find that keyboard and mouse wires get in the way, making them harder to use. If this is the case then cordless equipment may be the solution. A base unit plugs into the PC, and the mouse and/or keyboard can be moved anywhere within the range of the base unit. The
cordless system requires batteries to run, but they tend to last for
a long time. A cordless mouse and/or keyboard will cost a fair bit more
than the corded models, and there is a risk that they can be stolen
easily. However, they are much easier to use in a small or cluttered
desk space. PC Safety It is vital to protect your PC and data against viruses and malicious intrusions. A recent wave of viruses has been estimated to cost billions of pounds in disruption and lost data for businesses around the world. A virus killer scans your PC and emails for viruses, allowing you to fix or delete files that are infected. A firewall acts as a block against people trying to get into your computer over the internet, this is particularly important if you are on broadband, as the always on connection will make attacking your PC easier. You can protect your business computers against damage by purchasing virus killer and firewall software. These are available from as little as £20-30 each, and there are even some basic free versions available. It is also essential to make a backup copy of your important data on disk or writeable CD, and then if a virus damages your computer, you can at least get back most of your data. Printers There are two main types of printer, ink (inkjet/deskjet) or laser. Ink printers make dots on the paper to form your text or pictures. Better quality inkjet printers are often known as “photo” or “photo-inkjet” as they have a special set-up for images. Laser printers work in a similar way to photocopiers, using a toner powder. Ink printers are slower, but are noticeably cheaper. The ink cartridges are normally expensive, but colour printing is standard, and the quality of printing is usually high. Reasonable quality ink printers are available for well under £80, although you should be careful of expensive ink cartridges on some very cheap models. Laser printers are quick, and generally provide an excellent quality print; they can however be more expensive. Colour is not standard on laser printers, and will take the cost into a minimum of several hundred pounds. The toner cartridges are also expensive, but they last for a very long time, and work out cheaper per page than most ink cartridges. Laser printers are now available for as little as £90, although the running costs are often much higher than more expensive models. One disadvantage of laser printers is that many models require the ‘drum’ unit to occasionally be replaced (normally after an average of 3-6 toner cartridges). This can be very expensive, costing up to £200+ depending on the make and model of printer. Some models have a combined drum and toner unit, which makes each toner cartridge more expensive, but without the need to buy additional drum units. Example 1: A current £170 laser printer requires £50 toner cartridges that each print up to 7000 pages, the drum needs replacing after around 20,000 pages at a cost of £100. Although this may seem like a huge amount of printing, an active business can go through hundreds of pages a day. Example 2: A current £90 laser printer requires £50 combined toner/drum cartridges that each print up to 2500 pages. This means that buying two cartridges (i.e.: 5000 printed pages) costs the same as a new printer. If the cost of replacing the drum is high, it may be worth looking at buying a new printer; with the examples above, you could buy a whole new laser printer for just £20 or £40 more than a replacement cartridge and drum. This would give you a new unit, as well as a new guarantee to cover the item in case of a fault. Not only that, but you could probably make some money back by selling the old unit. When looking at the printing quality, one of the key factors is the resolution, or DPI (dots per inch); this specifies the detail of the printing, and generally increases with quality and price. The minimum you should look for is 600dpi, which is suitable for all general office printing and letter printing needs. Resolutions above this are very common, and will provide a better quality print; although they are not essential unless you are printing colour images or very formal letters. In a busy office, the speed of printing can also become important. This is commonly measured in PPM (Pages per minute). Every new printer will have a PPM for black, and one for colour; but this is only a guideline, and will vary depending on the detail of the page printed and the quality setting (E.g.: Normal, Draft, etc). If you are looking to print in colour, then a good quality ink printer is usually the most cost-effective option. If you are looking to print just in black (I.e.: For letters and invoices) then a laser printer will usually provide better long term savings, as well as a faster, high quality print. Ink / Toner Printer ink/toner is probably the most expensive consumable item in the majority of offices. However there are ways to make sure the cost is as low as possible. When buying an ink printer, be careful of cheap models with a single ink cartridge (Black, Red, Blue, and Yellow in one block cartridge). These may look good value, but as soon as one colour runs out you have to replace the whole cartridge, wasting all the ink remaining in the other colours. Be careful also of colour printers with just a colour cartridge (no black), as when these models print black they have to use all 3 colours. This gives a poor quality black colour, and will drain your cartridge very quickly, making it extremely inefficient and costly (especially as black ink is cheaper than colour ink). You should look for a printer with either 2 cartridges (one black, one with three colours), or preferably a printer with 4 individual cartridges (black, red, blue, yellow), as these will work out the cheapest to operate in the long run, as there is no wastage of any colour. With a laser printer, check the average lifespan of the toner and drum unit before buying, as it can often be worth paying more for the printer in order to save money on the long term printing costs. Many makes of ink cartridge (and a small number of laser toner cartridges) have the capacity to be refilled up to four or five times. This is done using special third-party refill packs. They allow you to make huge savings on the cost of new cartridges. However, refilling cartridges is not recommended by most manufacturers, who claim that printing quality is lower. Non-branded cartridges (both ink and laser toner) offer a cheaper alternative to the official printer cartridges. They can save you up to 50% or more on the cost of each cartridge. Printer manufacturers claim that the cheaper cartridges do not print as well as official cartridges; although in most cases they are comparable with the official ones. Non-branded cartridges are not as cost effective as refills, but are generally more reliable, and a lot less complicated. Scanners (compatible with PC's) If the need for scanning images (perhaps onto your website, documents, etc) is a frequent activity, then this will be essential to you. Scanners can be found at all prices, depending on quality. Most new scanners can read very high detail, and even the most basic scanner is likely to be suitable for the majority of businesses needs. A basic scanner will generally cost from £30 upwards. The resolution of a scanner (i.e.: The detail it can read) is measured in DPI (dots per inch). The standard resolution is about 600x600dpi which is suitable for the majority of purposes. More expensive scanners go up to over 3200dpi, but this is only really of use to professional graphic or image workers. You can set the resolution on each scan, and most of the time you will probably not need any more than 3-600dpi. The
colour depth of a scanner is measured in bits (e.g.: 24 / 32 / 48 bit),
this means how many colours it can pick up whilst scanning. 48 bit is
standard on most new scanners, but 24bit still means millions of
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