As you may or may not know Cisco recently acquired Meraki. While many people have heard of Cisco, not everyone has heard of Meraki. At Liberty Technology we have been selling and using Meraki for several years and love it. As Cisco Premiere Partners, we were extremely excited to see Cisco taking interest in a product we already knew and loved.
So what exactly does Meraki do? Quite a bit actually, but the unifying aspect across all their product lines is Cloud Management. As we have probably mentioned in other post the “Cloud” means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. For Meraki, it means managing all your Meraki hardware, and possibly even your all your mobile devices, phones, iPads, and laptops from a single website that you can access from anywhere you have internet access. Sounds pretty cool, right!?
On the tech side of things it makes life so much easier. From a single website I can monitor and manage all the Meraki networks that I am responsible for. I don’t have to log into each individual network and then log into individual piece of equipment to make a change or series of changes. I don’t have to worry if I’m at the client’s office, my office, at home or on the road. As long as I have Internet access I can monitor and manage those networks.
I’m going to focus this post mainly on Meraki’s wireless offerings, as that is what I have the most experience with, but stay tuned for posts about their routers, switches, and mobile device management.
Meraki has a decent range of indoor and outdoor access points, with some pretty impressive amounts of bandwidth. The MR24 has almost 1Gbps (900Mbps) of radio rate. The all support PoE (Power over Ethernet), which is really nice. If you don’t know, PoE lets you supply power and network connectivity over the same wire. This allows you to put your access point anywhere you can get a network drop without worrying about if there is a power outlet near by. They all support the 802.11n wireless standard and are pretty sleek looking. Of course, lots of alternative access points have that sort of thing. What really sets Meraki’s APs apart is their rich feature set and the ease of setup up and maintaining them.
So what does a Meraki access point do?
I’ve already touched on it once, but I will bring up again: Cloud Management is awesome. It doesn’t matter if it is 1 access point or 20 access points; you manage them all from the same pane of glass. The website that you log into is your one spot for everything related to your Meraki network, from setup to reconfiguring to management. While we are talking about setup, let me go through a brief story of how easy the setup of your Meraki APs.
I had a client order around 6 indoor units to be setup in a mesh network (more on mesh wireless in a bit). The Meraki box arrives, so I head over and set up their account with Meraki. During the setup I’m asked to plug in the serial numbers of the individual units or the order number. I plugged in the order number and it automatically filled in the serial numbers. While this was going on and waiting on a couple loading pages, I unboxed and hooked up the new APs to the network. Like magic they start to check in. I then went through he wizard to setup the wireless networks, yes...networks. These days you are almost required to have a guest network. I hit apply and a few minutes later I can see my 2 new networks on my iPad!
The client wanted to physically install the APs on their own so I let them know they were ready. They plugged them in to their network and everything just worked. A few days later I get a call that they want a splash page to open when people use the guest network. With Meraki this is possible and very easy. I got a little more on what they wanted the splash page to look like and then logged into the management website. While the client was on the phone I was able to get things setup and had them test the page, all in about 15 minutes, from my desk at work.
So what is this meshed networking I mentioned? Mesh networking let your Meraki APs talk to each other, so that they can all broadcast the same network. This means that when you pull out your laptop you only see 1 network for all your Meraki, rather than 1 for each access point. Where this gets even better is that the APs don’t ever have to be connected to the network to talk to each other, they only need power. This means that you can place AP’s in those hard to reach places and as long as they are in range of another AP they it broadcast the wireless network so you can connect to it. The other neat thing with this setup is that they APs will learn the best route in order to optimize traffic across all the AP’s in mesh. When you combine all this together you enough with wireless networks that can self heal if an AP goes down and supports mesh connection up to 12 miles away, with directional antennae.
Getting back to guest networks...I’m sure you want to be able to get people to ability to use your internet connection, but are worried about security. Well, Meraki makes that easy too. You have several different options for setting up guest networks, all of which securely isolate your guest away from your private network. I mentioned before you can setup a spiffy splash page to welcome guests. There are also settings to support bandwidth restrictions so that your guests can’t hog all the traffic. You can even go so far as setting up paid wifi access with various tiers. Once again, this is all from the simple to use Meraki management webpage or dashboard.
These next bits are a bit more technical but there are also sort of reports that you can run on your Meraki network. Track down who is using up the most bandwidth or what programs and applications are sending out the most traffic. When you find that person watching a few two many Youtube video you can actually setup rules to throttle either that user’s traffic or traffic for specific apps or websites so that your business can keep on humming along with someone or something using up all the bandwidth.
Meraki has also included some Bring Your Own Device, BYOD, tools so that you can encourage folks to bring their laptops and tablets from home, without worrying about them bringing down your network. You can limit access to certain tablet or phone features, even require computers connecting to the network to have antivirus software install! Even if something does manage to get through all that built-in security, features help to limit and contain issues that are detected.
All in all Meraki really has an amazing feature set. Even better is this all transfers over to the their switches and routers too. This means that all these powerful tools and features can be used on your private network plus more exciting features, all of which can be managed from that single webpage.
If you don’t believe me or want a try it out for yourself send a message to questions@libertytech.net for how you can get a FREE Meraki Access point. You read that correctly a FREE Meraki access point, but only if you email us with your contact info. You can also leave a comment here on the blog!
Just want to say thanks again to Cisco for acquiring an awesome product!
Feel free to share this post on 
!
--Charles
At the workbench at Liberty we have magnets stuck to everything. We use them to keep our tools at hand and to keep the menagerie of screws we go through in place. All these curiously strong magnets came from one source, dead hard drives. It’s a fact of life that a hard drive will fail; sometimes with no rhyme or reason whatsoever. Sometimes they die after a decade of hard service and sometimes they die after a year of light use. But eventually they will all go.
A hard drive is, at its most basic, a container that has magnetic disks that spin (quite quickly) with a head that reads and writes the information. They’re not all that unlike a record player in fact. Unfortunately this combination of moving parts working very close together with surfaces that are very sensitive creates a device that is just asking for eventual failure.
Sometimes the motor that spins the drive gives out, sometimes the head that reads the disks fails, and sometimes it’s nothing more than good old fashioned physical damage. The tolerances inside a HDD are very close. So it doesn’t take much for the read/write head to accidentally make contact with the disk and scratch it, much like a CD can scratch. This is why dropping your computer, even small distances, can sometimes have catastrophic effects.
Hard drives save information by writing it on the disk which is a magnetic medium. Because of this you never want to expose a HDD to a strong magnetic field. So even though you enjoy massive bass coming out of your trunk it’s probably not a good idea to put your laptop back there next to the powerful speaker magnets.
Finally there’s the HDDs that seem to just fail without reason. You take care of your computer, you don’t drop it, you don’t put it too close to the powerful magnets at the LHC, and you otherwise keep it nice and cool. Then one day you notice it takes more and more time to open files until finally you can’t start your computer at all. There’s a better than good chance your HDD has failed and will have to be replaced. First is the good news: this isn’t an overly costly repair and is usually well short of the price of a new PC. Then there’s the bad news: this could mean every single thing on that drive is gone, kaput, vanished, no longer in a state of being, etc. Remember those magnets? Well, each one of those little magnets used to be part of a HDD that once contained important financial documents, or family photos, or music libraries. All data that is now gone forever.
Unless you backup your information.
Making backups is probably the most ignored aspect of modern computing. People think that because their machine is working well that there’s no need to mess with anything. Or, more often, they simply put it off. Several times a week we hear “I’m planning to get an external drive to make backups I just haven’t gotten around to it.” That’s a great plan, but what are you going to do about that homework or those baby pictures if it fails tonight? Data recovery can be an option but will likely cost thousands when an external HDD will cost less than a hundred dollars. These days all the major operating systems have some sort of built in backup system that makes the process quick and painless.
One more thing... as solid state HDDs become more common HDD durability will eventually become less of an issue. Because these drives have no moving parts there is less to fail. But that doesn’t mean you can throw those old backup drives in the trash and take your computer on your next skydive-into-the-ocean trip. These new drives still have their limits, quite literally. On a solid state drive the information is stored in flash memory, exactly the same as a USB thumb drive or RAM. This is excellent because the information is retrieved much quicker. However flash memory has a limited number of times it can be written to before the media gives out. So once again, backup your data!
Thanks for reading, and please share this post on
--Drew
We are officially the first Cisco partner in the US to achieve the Express Collaboration Specialization!
"Congratulations to Liberty Technology for meeting all criteria to achieve Express Collaboration Specialization. Liberty Technology has met the resource requirements for Express Collaboration Specialization. Your company has demonstrated that it is qualified to support customers with Express Collaboration Specialization in USA."
What does that mean for our clients?
We are now qualified to provide solutions such as Cisco Telepresence and the Unified Communications System BE 6000. Learn more about those here:
Liberty Technology CEO Ben Johnson says, "Liberty continues to show leadership in our industry by being the first Cisco partner Globally to achieve this recognition. Through this specialization, we are able to offer Voice, Video, and Data in a single solution that enables you to communicate and collaborate on any device, anywhere, anytime, with anyone."
We are very proud of this achievement, and look foward to working with our new and existing clients to incorporate these ground-breaking technologies into your business plan.
Contact a member of the Liberty staff by calling 770-229-9424, or email help@libertytech.net.
Help us celebrate by sharing this post on
There are many important aspects of computers and they can be very daunting. Have you ever been shopping for a new machine only to be blindsided by gigahertz and jigawatts, not to mention the googolplexes or random access memories and teraflops? Well, not to worry, because while all the numbers associated with computer are important in their own way, there are only a few that you actually need to pay attention to: the processor (or CPU), the memory (also called RAM) and the hard drive. We’re not going to get technical with these definitions; these are merely to help you understand what you’re looking at when shopping for computers.
First, let’s start with the hard drive since it’s the simplest. If we imagine your computer as an office, then the hard drive is your bookcase. The bookcase defines how much data can be stored in the office. You can buy additional bookcases for more storage or replace a bookcase all together. It’s important to that while many things can go wrong with a computer; the most important of them is often the hard drive. That is where all of your files are actually located. Even if everything else in a computer died, your files will still be intact. Also important to know is that if your hard drive goes bad it could mean the loss of all of your data. So just as you should keep important files in a fireproof box or safe, always backup your most important files.
Now if we continue to with the office analogy we can best describe the memory as the desk. Just as you don’t read books or fill out paperwork while it is still on your bookshelf, your computer doesn’t work on files that are still on the hard drive. Instead it copies them to the memory. So, the bigger the desk an office has, the more that can be laid out at one time. It is the same with memory, the more you have, the more your computer can think about at one time. A computer with little memory is slow because it is continually moving sets of files back and forth between the bookcase and desk. And just like a hard drive, you can always replace or add to your desk space for better performance.
But memory isn’t the only thing that makes a computer fast or slow, the processor can also be at fault. If your hard drive is like a bookcase and you memory is like a desk, then your processor is like the employee in the office. He’s the one that actually works on the files that are on the desk. He processes them. So when a computer is slow it is generally because your employee is old and crotchety or he’s working with too little desk space or both. And while desks and bookcases are largely interchangeable, employee are less so. Especially the older they get. If you’re employee is slow, it’s generally time for a whole new office.
That’s it; those are the most important parts of the computer. See, it’s not that scary. Come down to Liberty Technology and we’ll help you decide what kind of bookcase, desk and employee is right for you.
Thanks for reading, and share this post on !
--Jonathan
In the late 90’s we saw a surge of new companies coming into the market as Application Service Providers or also coined “the ASP model”. This Internet boom was quite spectacular watching new websites and companies form out of thin air offering the best-of-the-best software. The need for ASPs grew tremendously as software, hardware, and bandwidth requirements were simply to expensive for the small to medium enterprise. The complexity of maintaining the systems and distributing the software to end-users was challenging.
Was this Internet boom also the birth of “Cloud” computing? Some would argue yes but in reality the “cloud” we had in the late 90’s is nothing like what we have today. The early challenges for an ASP centered on multi-tenancy. If the ASP wanted to bring on a new customer they sometimes had to spin up a whole new set of servers and the “keep-the-lights-on” costs sky-rocketed.
Multi-tenancy was a pipe dream and utilizing existing hardware, software, databases, and bandwidth was a complex undertaking. The ASP model wasn’t truly software-as-a-service since it looked more like colocation.
First off we’ve relabeled the service as “cloud computing” since the ASP business model left everyone with a bad taste. I sometimes like to refer to it as the “fog” simply because cloud could mean colocation, SaaS, IaaS, or whatever “aaS” acronym you want to insert here.
Cloud computing will work this time around because we have the ability to get the most out of our hardware, software, and bandwidth. A single physical server can host multiple customer applications while maintaining the required security and networking requirements. It’s no longer necessary to spin up additional hardware and complexity to bring on another customer. In my view this is one of the primary differences between the ASP model of the 90’s and cloud computing today.
You can slice and dice processing, memory, disk, bandwidth, redundancies any way you like and know the individual costs of each decision. Data centers are being built as multi-tenant facilities even internal to corporations due to the ever changing business of mergers and acquisitions.
The term “Cloud” computing is ever evolving and it is taking on new meanings each and every day. Trying to navigate this fog can be quite challenging and it’s always best to discuss your challenges with a company that lives in this cloud. Maybe you want to move only a single application to the cloud and your options include colocation, SaaS or IaaS. Start working with a solution provider today to get the most benefit from these new and evolving Cloud services.
Thanks for reading, and please share this post on
Solutions Architect
jwarcop@libertytech.net
Posted by
Ben Gibson on Thu, Apr 25, 2013 @ 12:17 PM
A lot of business and home users debate on on-site vs. off-site backups. Both keep your data safe in case of software or hardware issues, but what do you need to know to decide which is right for you and your business?
Things to think about when doing backups:
--What is being backed up and how much?
--How quickly do you need the data restored after a crash.
--Do you need to access the backed up data from other locations?
These three questions will help you determine the best path when choosing your solution. Let’s address each question.
What is being backed up and how much?
If you are backing up your entire system be it a Workstation or Server we would recommend an On-Site fire / water proof device. The reason is because it is a lot of data, and down time is a lot less when compared to Off-Site.
If you are only backing up certain files, an Off-Site solution would be fine if it is not a large amount of data.
Not much data to transfer, and can easily be uploaded and downloaded.
How quickly do you need the data restored after a crash?
If you are backing up your entire system, be it a Workstation or Server, an Off-Site backup would take longer to restore due to you have to download the data back to your location then restore. (Varied results based on software)
An On-site backup will allow you recovery as soon as the system is able to be powered on. (Varied results based on software)
If you are only backing up certain files, an Off-Site solution would be fine if it is not a large amount of data.
Not much data to transfer and can easily be uploaded and downloaded.
Do you need to access the backed up data from other locations?
If you need to access your data from other locations then Off-site would be ideal. Most Off-Site backup solutions offer access to your data from anywhere. (Check with service provider.)
You can setup an On-Site backup to be available from other locations, but it does not work out of the box like an Off-Site would.
You would need to get your IT department involved or instructions from the manufacturer of the device to setup.
J
ust as a side note: if your data is too important to lose, you can combine both of these backup solutions and have both on-site and off-site backups. This way no matter what happens, your data is safe.
So in closing you just need to choose the solution that will best suit your needs. Please contact us if you have any questions, or would like help in coming up with a strategy for your business' needs.
Feel free to share this post on
Thanks for reading,
--Ben Gibson (Gibs)
Downloading torrents, or torrenting is simply a different way to download files. During most downloads there is someone uploading the file and you are downloading from them. For instance, if you go to Apple’s website and download iTunes, Apple is uploading the file and you’re downloading it. It’s quite simple and the way all things were downloaded for some time.
However, most individuals don’t have great upload speeds at home. Anyone who has ever tried to send a large file via email knows how long it can take. Torrenting gets around this problem by having multiple people uploading the same file so you can download from many at once. Meanwhile, you’re uploading the parts of the file you’ve already downloaded to others. This (sometimes quite large) group of people, all uploading and downloading, is called the “swarm.” Because you could potentially be downloading from hundreds of people at once you could see very high download rates and large files can be conquered in minutes.
So why isn’t all downloading done this way? Well, first off, everyone has to have the same file. It would be great if you could torrent your vacation photos to your grandma but it’s not very likely hundreds of people will have them and upload them. Second is that people don’t upload forever. When a torrent is new and popular there are many people in the swarm and speeds are great. As time wears on and more people finish downloading and stop uploading the speed drops. This is the idea behind torrent health. A seed is a person who has the complete file and is uploading, a peer is a person who has part of the file. If a torrent only has peers, then the entire file is not available and the download can’t finish until a seed starts uploading. So if a torrent has 100 peers but only 1 seed the peers will essentially be restricted to the one seed’s upload speed. This makes torrenting a bad choice for files that need permanence.
Is torrenting illegal? No. Downloading copyrighted material is illegal, torrenting is not. In fact there are many legitimate uses for torrents. There are certain distributions of linux that are torrented frequently because they are a larger size and it saves one person from having to pay for all that upload bandwidth. However torrenting’s great ability to distribute large files makes it perfect for things like movies, tv shows, music, and programs. This is why it has become the go-to method for people pirating copyrighted material. Don't do that.
So why hasn’t torrenting been shut down? Other than it not being illegal, it’s very hard to prosecute someone for torrenting. You see because people are downloading off many other people it’s hard to pinpoint one person to charge. There are the sites like the Pirate Bay where people find torrents but these sites are not actually hosting any copyrighted material. They are simply giving directions to the way to acquire it. This has been giving organizations like the RIAA and MPAA headaches for years. They obviously want to put a stop to piracy but the organizations that offer the torrents exist in a very gray area.
Is torrenting safe? Torrenting is downloading files, which is only as safe as the person doing the downloading. Of course, viruses and malware can be distributed via torrents and people can name them whatever they want to trick the user. But that doesn’t mean there is no way of knowing what you’re going to get. Most modern torrent clients allow you to see exactly what is being downloaded. If you’re downloading a video and an .exe file is showing up, you can be pretty sure it’s not what you want. Most torrent searching sites also allow comments on torrents which the community will use to inform others if something isn’t as advertised.
How do I torrent? First you need a torrent client. This is a program that makes the connections in the swarm and saves the file. Most also allow things like bandwidth limiting, and subscribing to RSS feeds. There are plenty of clients out there and almost all of them are free but it’s best to read some reviews before you select one to make sure that it’s both legitimate and offers the features you want.
Does this mean I get all the free tv, music, and movies I want? Absolutely not. ISPs are able to determine when a user is using torrents and can also determine what they are downloading. More than one online pirate has received a letter in the mail from their ISP warning them that if they don’t stop they will lose their internet service, and the providers are well within their rights to do so. The simple fact is that if you download illegally for long enough you will be caught.
Anything else I should know? Yes, when you are done downloading a torrent you become a seed. Seeds are the backbone of the entire community and not seeding is the cardinal sin of torrenting. So remember that others seeded for your enjoyment and you should do the same in return.
Thanks for reading, and feel free to share this post on
--Randle
Spring is here, and with the flowers come the storms. This time every year we get an influx of computers that come into our shop with fried parts from power surges because of the increase in thunderstorms.
Here are some common questions I get about what to do to protect your computer from power surges:
What is the best way to protect my computer from power surges?
In order to best protect your computer from power surges you should purchase a proper surge protector. There are a range of products that will do the trick, it’s just a matter of deciding which product best suits your needs. At Liberty, we suggest that all electronics always be plugged into some kind of surge protector.
For computers, or other electronics that can be damaged by shutting them off incorrectly, use a Battery-Backup. The difference between a Battery-Backup and a surge protector is that a Battery-Backup will generate power for a few moments so that you can shut down your computer gracefully. This is particularly important if you are susceptible to frequent power outages so that your computer won’t just turn off every time the power flickers.
Should I turn off my home computer when I am not using it? Does that protect it from lightning?
Contrary to popular belief, turning your computer off does NOT protect it from power surges!
However, in general, turning off your computer now and again is a good thing! Besides saving power when you turn your computer off, you do extend the life of some of the moving parts by preventing possible overheating, overtaxing, and just general wear and tear when you are not using them.
There are some situations when leaving the computer on is necessary and good. For example, if your computer at work is on a network and needs to stay online for backups and updates, your network administrator may ask that you leave your computer on at night.
If my computer is on a surge protector, can it still get fried?
Sadly, yes. If a surge is powerful enough it can still potentially zap your computer. However, the chances are much better that your computer will live to see another day if you do keep it on a surge protector.
Another thing to keep in mind is that electricity can travel through any kind of wire. This includes phone lines and internet cabling. If you do not have a surge protector which insulates phone and Ethernet cables, your computer could be still be damaged through a surge.
What should I do to protect my computer if I do not have a surge protector?
If you can’t get ahold of a surge protector for your computer, you should unplug it from the wall, and unplug it from the internet as well. Basically, any wire that hooks into your phone or electrical grid needs to be unhooked. This should keep your computer safe from outside
electrical surges.
Take these precautions, especially this time of year, to keep your equipment and information safe from the sizzle!
Thanks for reading, and please share this post on
--Andrea
There can be a lot of confusion when it comes to setting up email. The three popular ways of setting up email are POP, IMAP, and Exchange. Although all three options will get you to your email, there are some differences that are extremely important. And also not all email providers support all three methods for emailing. It’s worth looking into which methods your service provides.
POP
This is the old classic. It has been around for a very long time. Setting up your email client with POP will allow sending and receiving of email but that’s about it. There aren’t really any outstanding features of POP and should be considered the most basic protocol between the three. However the most important characteristic of POP is how the client, such as Outlook or Windows Mail, interacts with the server. The default action for POP is to pull all available email off the server. This can be an issue should your computer be stolen or if the hard drive should die. There are usually advanced settings when configuring POP to allow messages to stay on the server. POP can also be configured to only delete email off the server after a couple days. Although if a second computer should be setup as for the same email account and both are using POP, it usually causes a plethora of headaches. If POP is set up on one computer not to leave email on the server, then the emails will only be shown on that computer if it is the first client to check in with the server. There is a solution to this problem and IMAP and Exchange both take care of it.
IMAP
IMAP takes the gold medal in noncommercial email accounts. When I’m looking to setup a new email account the first option I look for is IMAP capability. IMAP by default leaves all email on the server and only keeps a cache of the email on the client computer. This is great because it eliminates the problems with setting up the email account with more than one device. Since no one computer is deleting email off the server all clients are able to see and retrieve all email. So all email will be the same. In addition to this feature IMAP also preserves folder structures. I separate all of my email into folders and IMAP will make sure that if I make a folder and move email into that folder on my phone, my computer will almost immediately make the same changes. The only drawback to IMAP is that all changes are made directly on the server. So if an important email is deleted from one device it is deleted off all devices. And I know it doesn’t seem logical but I’ve seen more than one person use their trash as a temp storage location instead of just creating a new folder. When that trash is emptied there is no getting that email back. The only other option I’ve seen that's better than IMAP is Exchange.
Exchange
Exchange is the very best email option. It will transfer to multiple devices simultaneously. And in addition to keeping email and folders straight, it will also sync up your calendar and contacts. This is the only way to go in a company setting. There are two different options with Exchange, a dedicated server or through a hosted Exchange option. With a dedicated server, you know that your email is safe and that only a few people can access it. However you’ll have to make sure that your internet connection supplies enough bandwidth to support such a server. Also, if anything goes wrong, you are the person that has to fix it. With a hosted option your vendor will own the server. But they are responsible for keeping it online and should be able to handle any issues that arise. I would personally recommend a hosted server solution to most small and medium sized businesses since they will not have to worry about the technical sides of it.
All in all the three different solutions have fits in their own way. Most vendors for email are phasing out POP in favor for IMAP. So that should say something in itself. But in a business environment I would always go with Exchange. Not having to keep track of where contacts are stored, or being able to make a calendar event on my phone and have it show up on my work computer or iPad is crucial. Well, at least for me.
Thanks for reading, and share this post on !
--Nick
If you are considering buying a new printer, you have many more choices now than in years past.
Do you buy an inkjet, a Laser printer, Solid Ink printer, or a Multifunction?
To understand the differences, we need to look at the ink each uses. Inkjet printers use liquid ink sprayed through microscopic nozzles onto the paper. The paper absorbs the ink and can cause bleeding and blurring of text. Laser printers use a toner cartridge filled with fine powder and a heated fuser. There is no bleeding with a Laser printer because it uses high heat to fuse powdered ink to the paper. Laser prints are smudge-proof and need no drying time. Solid ink printers use a solid ink stick that is melted and laid down on the paper producing bright vivid colors.
Next you will need to consider your printing needs. If you plan on printing a lot you will probably want to choose a Laser printer. Inkjet printers are not designed for volume. When they were first introduced Laser printers were too expensive for home and small business use. Since that time Laser printers have gotten much more affordable. Now you can pick up a laser printer for a little bit more than an inkjet printer. Laser printers are faster and produce much cleaner text.
Inkjet printers are a little less expensive, if you print very little or if printing photos on photo paper is your primary reason for buying a printer then you may want to stick with an inkjet printer. Because of the high heat used in fusing laser toner, the toner will not bond with photo paper.
If you print Color hand outs, you may want to look at a solid ink printer. The color print output is impressive with its bright vibrant colors. There are some draw backs to the solid ink, the waxy ink tends to scratch off more easily than fused toner. Solid Ink Printers are eco-friendly since you don’t have a toner cartridge or fuser to dispose of. Solid Ink printers tend to be less expensive and smaller in size than a Color Laser Printer.
Multifunction printers are a great option that will give you the ability in one unit to be able to print, copy, and scan. The price on the Multifunction printers have come down considerably and worth looking at even if you don’t scan or fax a lot, it is nice to have that option when you need it.
One of the best services I have seen in relation to printers is a program from Xerox called Econcierge. It is free and comes with no obligation. I know I use it here for the printer in my office. You simply install the Supply Assistant on your computer. You can check the printer status at any time with the Supply Assistant and it will alert you when you need to order more toner. But the absolute best part is, once you order the second toner and continue to order toner; your printer is covered under warranty. Most printers come with a one year warranty. When the one year manufacturers warranty has run out you are still covered. It’s like getting an extended warranty for free. No one else in the industry offers anything like this that I am aware of. Please feel free to talk to anyone here at Liberty about Econcierge. It’s a great service and one of the few things that offers great benefits with no obligation.
Happy printing!
Click here to share this post on
--Denise
