Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Paper-Based Filing's Hidden Costs

The cost of hard drive space nowadays is dropping rapidly and many businesses are taking advantage of this by implementing Electronic Document Management Systems. Searchable databases of scanned information are created by these digital systems which allows better business decisions and a much smoother customer service interaction.

On the other hand, many people tend to shy away from Electronic Document Management Systems due to the initial setup costs that arise. Most businesses see paper documents as free due to the fact that they aren't usually tracked as well as they should be and are generally overshadowed by extensive office supply budgets.

But everybody knows that nothing in this life is free, and that includes paper as well. In fact, paper solutions may actually be costing your company more money than the other digital options that are available today. These hidden costs could fly under your company's radar where they may never be brought to light.

Almost every business has filing cabinets and a simple three-drawer cabinet may seem like a relatively cost-efficient solution. What you may not realize is that this file cabinet may actually be consuming a lot of time and money from the bottom line of your company.

Lets say the average one-time cost of a file cabinet is $400, then you have to add the one-time cost of folders which could equal around $100. Then we can add the average one-time cost of paper prints and copies into the mix at $240. So for the one-time cost of a single file cabinet you are already up to $740.

But what if you compound that annually? Assume the average office holds 30 file cabinets with each one costing you around $2,000 every 5 years. That's $60,000 for a system that generally misfiles or loses documents and a replacement document could cost you an additional $200.

What about the physical labor of a file cabinet? Anybody who has ever had to sift through a cabinet full of files knows how tiring and dull it can be. This demotivation could cause an employee to have sub-par production for the rest of the day further costing you money.

Electronic Document Management Systems provide the tools that allow you to create a secure and searchable archive of all your company's most important documents. A single 100GB disk can store an astounding 2,000,000 pages of information which could easily take the place of hundreds of filing cabinets using a fraction of the space.

Source: Office Product News

Looking for a Copier Rental to help with your next big project? Call 800-736-8772 today and ask about our Office Equipment Rentals.

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

How a Personal Photocopier Works

Personal Photocopier
A photocopier is without a doubt one of the most important pieces of office equipment for any business big or small. Unfortunately, the upkeep and cost of a fully sized multifunctional copier can put them out of reach for many smaller businesses. Luckily, the office-supply market has recently seen the introduction of affordable, personal-sized copiers. One of the best features of these personal copiers is their compact and lightweight frames which gives them the ability to be easily moved from one location to the next. Most personal copiers come equipped with an easy to grab handle so that a business owner or employee can easily move the copier from the office to a meeting or even back to their home. The beauty of these machines is that you can literally take them anywhere you would need to make a copy.

Drum and Toner

The personal copier condenses many of the features of a full-sized copier into a smaller more portable package. Within all copiers are two very important components: the drum and the ink toner. The drum is responsible for creating the image that is being copied while the ink toner is the medium via which the image is transferred to paper. When the copier's intense bright white light hits the paper that is being copied, the light is reflected off the white areas of the page while the rest strikes the drum below the paper. The areas where light hits the drum have their positively charged atoms neutralized while the areas that are blocked by the image on the drum keep their positive atoms. The toner is then attracted to the areas where positive charges are still intact while the areas where the neutralized atoms are present do not attract any toner.

The Printing Process

After the image has been embedded into the drum and the copy is ready to be made, the paper is heated very quickly. The heat applied causes the paper to have a stronger more positive charge than that which exists on the drum. This causes the toner to be attracted to the paper in the exact same pattern that has already been "etched" on the drum thus making a replica of the original image onto the paper. The heat basically causes the toner to fuse and stick to the paper much in the same way your hair is attracted towards a static balloon.

Although personal copiers work in much the same way as a traditional copiers, they are often limited in their printing capabilities. Most personal copiers can only copy about four pages per minute and are limited to only copying documents letter-sized or smaller. Other features like automatic stapling, collating, and dual-sided copies are also common features usually not found in personal copiers.

Monday, July 12, 2010

Pandigital Personal Photo Scanner/Converter

Pandigital Personal Photo Scanner/ConverterAnybody who has tried scanning a photo knows that it isn't as easy as you would assume. The process generally entails taking your photo and putting it on a scanning device, downloading some type of photo scanning software, waiting, and waiting and some more waiting, then cropping the picture and then taking the remaining bits and sticking them into a folder somewhere.

Well the smart minds over at Pandigital have just developed a new photo scanner that will help to cut down on the painful process of photo scanning. The new Personal Photo Scanner/Converter allows you to feed documents up to 8.5 inches by 11 inches in size through the scanner and then have them written straight to a memory card at a 600dpi resolution.

By doing this you can certainly speed up the photo scanning process by letting you run streams of photos without dragging the old family album to your computer. You no longer have to connect via miniUSB and do it the old fashioned way, but you still can if you want to. This thing is completely wireless except for one thing. In the specs there is no mention of a battery which would make this device truly portable.

The Personal Scanner/Converter is definitely a step in the right direction for home photo scanning. With being able to scan photos of up to 8.5 inches by 11 inches directly to an SD card or any other type of memory card via the 5-in-1 card reader and saving them as 600dpi jpeg images, you can make home photo scanning much easier. Full specs are out now on Pandigital's Personal Scanner/Converter and you can pick it up for a retail price of $149.99.

Source: Office Product News

Looking for a Copier Rental to help with your next big project? Call 800-736-8772 today and ask about our Office Equipment Rentals.