Why this matters
In Ghanaian offices, schools and banks, printers, copiers and scanners are behind many everyday support calls. Some adverts are entirely about printers: maintaining office printer fleets, servicing multifunction copiers, managing toner and ink. Being the person who can calmly fix the printer before a deadline earns you a lot of goodwill.
Kinds of printers
- Inkjet. Sprays liquid ink. Cheap to buy, good for colour, but ink can dry out if unused. Many small businesses use ink tank models that refill from bottles.
- Laser. Uses toner powder fused onto paper with heat. Fast and cheaper per page for lots of black text; common in offices.
- Thermal. Uses heat sensitive paper; used for receipts at shop tills and on point of sale machines.
- Multifunction (MFP). Prints, copies, scans and sometimes faxes. Larger office copiers are usually multifunction devices.
How printers connect
- USB. One computer, one cable. Simple, but only that computer can print unless it shares the printer.
- Network. Through an Ethernet cable or Wi-Fi to the office network, so everyone can print. Give network printers a fixed (reserved) address on the router so computers can always find them.