There are steps you can take with the Sharp MFP to make it run faster – with the added bonus of benefiting your business.
There are steps you can take with the Sharp MFP to make it run faster – with the added bonus of benefitting your business.
Have you ever wished the printer in your office was a bit quicker? From that last-minute report, to the hard copy you need mid-meeting, to the urgent letter that needs to be at the post office before it shuts, there are times when you want your printer to work as fast as it can.
You could opt for one of our fast and reliable network-enabled MFPs, such as the new compact Sharp MX-2630N, which has been designed for busy workgroups, or the Sharp MX-M905, designed to handle the rigors of high volume environments.
However, there are some simple universal steps you can take with the Sharp MFP (Multi-Functional Printer) in your office to make it run faster – with the added bonus of benefitting your business.
These include changes that can be made to the device itself, the network and even the terminal you use to create the document in the first place.
The impact of File Size
It’s worth being aware that the speed of any printer is often limited by the ‘file size’ of the job you’re trying to print. This will be influenced by how complicated the document is, from how many pages it is made up of, to the number of images stored within it.
So, when it comes to speeding up your print job, look at what it is you’re printing. For example, if it’s a colour document you can set it to print as Black & White or even grey-scale. You can also look at the settings and choose to print at a lower resolution.
One fact that may not be apparent is that the printer driver on Sharp printers by default are set to Sharp Quality, which is very high compared with most other printer manufacturers. So, you get very good quality print but as a side-effect you may well get a slower print speed at times, particularly when documents contain many images.
This needn’t be an issue as there are a lot of quality adjustments you can make in the driver itself so you can still have a very good print quality output but it will come through a lot quicker. For instance, print mode can be set at “normal 600dpi” level rather than the default “high quality 600dpi” and bitmap compression can be set at “medium quality” or “draft quality” instead of the default “very high quality”.
Processing power of your Sharp printer
The processing power of the printing device itself can also have an impact on speed. Typically, the best way to get more from your printer is to increase the memory. That will help to increase the speed and the power to process any jobs in the queue. You can purchase additional memory as an optional upgrade – either at the time of purchase or, if you find your business needs warrant it, later on.
Not all Sharp printers have this option, but the majority of devices will have a second slot where you can add the additional memory. For example, if a standard printer comes with 3GB of memory, you’ll find there is a spare slot that will allow you to add a further 1GB of memory at a later date.
One good reason for buying additional memory is business growth. Rather than looking to buy a new printer, simply opting for more memory in your current Sharp device will more than meet the needs of any growing small business.
Other options to look at
When you’re at your PC, if your MFP has this function, you can set any future print jobs to go to Document Filing, so that they’ll be stored on the Hard Disk and that means in future that same file can be very quickly be pulled up from Document Filing and printed. Because the device itself already holds that job it can very quickly print it in the future.
One final area of printing in a business that is seldom taken into account is the speed of the network in your office. While there is very little that can be done without IT support to speed up that connection, one way to by-pass this is readily available in many Sharp printers: Direct Printing.
It’s a nice feature that allows you to walk up and immediately access your files and print off directly from a USB memory device. You can print many different file formats directly, including JPEG, TIFF, PNG files, and PDF. The new MX colour series provides further flexibility for direct printing by also providing the option to print Microsoft Office Excel, PowerPoint and Words files.
So with just a few simple steps you can easily speed up your Sharp printer. Find out more about the latest range of Sharp printers.
