new boost to productivity calls for careful look at the right specs.
by rick telberg
for hewlett packard
for accounting and finance professionals, wireless printers may be one of the most significant mobile technologies redefining today’s business processes.
public practitioners produce an estimated 30,000 pages of documentation a year. financial managers, depending on the size and nature of their operations, know only too well their own paper deluge. so there are thousands of ways that mobile printing can cut costs, add efficiencies, reduce the chance for error and miscommunication, and just generally make life easier.
wireless printers, at the very least, are fundamental cogs in strategies to eliminate or reduce the use of wiring in offices. tech-savvy accountants appreciate how properly-configured printers allow them to print directly from the personal digital assistants eliminating the need to first download to pcs. the truly forward-thinking accountants and financial managers are sure to find any number of ways that the ability to print on the spot could enhance their efficiency and service at remote or client sites — particularly when several people, such as audit teams, want to share information. working from a printed page can reduce the errors inherent when viewing on a much smaller pda. and, still, who doesn’t appreciate hard copy as a nice back-up when reviewing completed work?
mobile printers’ relatively lightweight and compactness make them as portable as laptops. they are fast becoming a required arrow in the quivers of true road warriors.
financial managers are benefiting from wireless printers used in new warehouse management processes, which tag merchandise with bar codes printed on the spot by workers with pdas or similar devices. wireless printers are also an integral part in a new wave of route accounting in which sales or service representatives electronically bill and print invoices and receipts on customer/client premises. likewise, nonprofits and government organizations are using wireless printers in all sorts of projects that use bar-coded labels.
wireless printers can also accommodate clients, who no doubt are already tuned in to this technology. cpa technology advisor magazine, for example, has reported that after installing a wireless printer in a client waiting area, the managers of an atlanta firm were dumbfounded by the number of clients who pulled out their pdas and laptops to print while writing.
what to look for
you need not sacrifice a great deal of speed or clarity when you print wirelessly. the new breed of machines print up to 17 pages per minute in black and 16 in color at resolutions of up 1,200 dots per inch, and should also reproduce 4-by-6-inch photos in under a minute.
one of the biggest things to look for is the type of wireless protocols for which the printer has built-in support. wifi or 802.11 protocols accommodate transmissions in local area networks that can span entire buildings and in public area hot spots. bluetooth, which, unlike wifi, operates at an unlicensed frequency, is the protocol for pdas, digital cameras and other handheld devices.
look for printers that have built-in support for both protocols. while adapters can be added to provide support of either, that is not as seamless as the inherent capability and kind of defeats the whole idea of being wireless.
look, too, for printers with at least 32 megabytes memory and for added bells and whistles, like the ability to print on both sides of a page.