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A large part of the printer market is known in the computer trade as SOHO - Small Office / Home Office. The businesses might be in a home, or it might be in an office-block. The activity might be a discrete small business but could also bea semi-autonomous part of something larger. SOHO offices are like "workgroups", but probably less able to share network facilities.
Centralisation was once the only way businesses could operate, everyone gathered in one building to share files, office machinery, computer terminals and printers. Until the 1980s things like photocopiers, faxes, answering machines and computers just weren't usually available to smaller businesses.
Typical businesses range across builders and insurance agents working from home to graduate students doing some consultancy work. A lot of IT businesses themselves fit into this model - programers and analysts don't eally need offices and if they have one there might be just two or three people working there - the alternative tends to be a cubicle farm. All these little businesses want the ability to print, and they want the result to look good. Most printing is likely to be
| text in black - business forms such as quotations, invoices and delivery notes. |
| downloaded pricelists, reports and manuals that are too tedious to read on the screen. |
| reports, pricelists and other material for customers who prefer paper - colour letterheads, photos and suchlike might be included. |
Small offices usually have larger purchase budgets than people merely buying a home printer - there is a professional need for good looking print, but people understand other costs as well.
| Cost per page is likely to be an issue, which may give a preference for laser printers because they see inkjets as expensive to run. Some recent inkjets with larger cartridges are intended to compete. |
| Paper trays need to be larger. Where the home user is happy to stand by reeady to load more paper the office user wants to get on with something else. |
| Duplex is likely to be popular . Getting reports onto one side of a page may be an ideal, but add a photograph and a logo and text remoreslessly fills two page. Duplexed documents look more professional. |
| Network connection is likely to be useful. There are likely to be several computers (notebook, desktop, server) and perhaps several users. Sharing printers attached to a PC is no problem in small offices - but if the PC is a notebook and it is in use elesewhere the printer is down. Even if the printer is on a static PC it's performance may be slugged when the printer is in use. Network connections on a printer get round this. |
Low running costs, multiple trays, duplex and network connection features appear on SOHO / workgroup printers.
Low purchase cost colour lasers look perfect for this kind of job.
The cost of cartridges may well be an issue. Small colour laser printers tend to have very small cartridges mounted in a carousel and naturally these don't last long.
Most laser printers don't deal with A3. To many people this might not look like a problem, until they want a map, diagram. poster or a fairly complicated spreadsheet printing. A3 is a good size for publicity materail because it folds into an A4 pamphlet.
Large Format
Offices sometimes need the odd bit of printing on larger paper- things like complex spreasheets or circuit diagrams. Inkjet design is far more flexible than that of laser printers. Giving a laser printer A3 capability ather than A4 means increasing the with of the scan-head, drum, developer and fuser from 8 inches to 11 inches. Several things like the developer and drum get significantly more difficult to make as a result of the width change. Making an inkjet doesn't get much more difficult; the basic change is longer metal bars for the carriage to run on. The office and commercial market is generally a bit sceptical about inkjets, recognising that manufacturers cash in on the cartridges - but most offices have some use for A3 and for picture printing so an A3 printer may be an attractive idea.
There are a few fairly low cost A3 laser printers - from OKI for instance.
One option is to buy a mono laser for day to day work and a colour A3 inkjet for exceptional printing.
Small offices are quite likely to have some specific needs.
Portability - surveyors, electricians, builder, and landscape gardeners might want to want to produce a report on site.
CD printing
Shops are one of the most common small operations. Shops have traditionally bought cash registers or point of sale terminals. Cash registers are related to printing calculators and POS terminals tend to be disguised network PCs.
Plotters
Architects, planners and engineers really do want big pages - A1 or even A0. Back in the mists of time they had dyeline copiers to do the job, then pen plotters and thermal plotters. Inkjet plotters are now the tool of choice. Pen plotters were too slow and unreliable. Thermal plotters are low resolution mono on horrible paper. There are precious few 24 inch laserprinters so the inkjet is the only choice. The plotter is simply a very long carriage inkjet with the memory and processor to match. A few years ago there were a lot of designs but Hewlett Packard reputedly have 90% of the market now. There are still some specialists around like the Roland thermal plotter with it's vinyl cutter.