Suggested Printers
Before purchasing a printer, pay particular attention to the volume of printing you need to accomplish, if the printer needs to be shared with multiple people, and if you need color or just black and white printing. Feel free to contact the Help Desk before buying a printer and we’ll be happy to help you pick one out.
What We Recommend
As a rule, the Help Desk will work to support you and any hardware you have; your printers don’t have to be on this list to be on the print server, or for us to help you use them. That said, we want to provide recommendations to you that can help you make an informed decision about your purchase. If what you see here doesn’t meet your needs, give us a call, and we’ll help you find the best printer for your office. We’re constantly working to keep this page up-to-date, and to widen the array of recommendations to fit the needs of the entire campus, so keep checking back!
Dell B2360dn
This black and white printer is a great unit for the most basic printing needs. It includes a duplex-er so that you can easily print double-sided if you want. The warranty gives 3 Year, Next-Business Day onsite response, so you can be sure than any problems with the printer will be addressed quickly and effectively. The quote includes a 2,500 page toner cartridge, which will need to be returned when it comes time to replace it; this use-and-return cycle helps ensure that you get the discounted price on the toner.
Average Monthly Volume: 2,500 to 5,000 pages (historically, most offices send less than 3000 prints per month to their network printers)
To purchase a Dell B2360dn use
Dell E-Quote#1007036591638 Price: $329.99 expires on Wednesday, June 12, 2013.
To purchase a Dell B2360dn with an additional 550 paper tray use
Dell E-Quote# 1012283642712 Price: $471.54 
expires on Wednesday, June 12, 2013.
Additional Toner: 8,500-Page High Yield Black Toner Cartridge for Dell 2350dn
Cost per page: About $0.019
Price: $161.49 (Use and Return via Dell’s Ink, Toner, & Printer Supplies)
Dell 2150cdn
This color printer is a good basic color printer for an office and can serve under hefty print loads. It includes a duplex-er, and can be setup as a network printer on our servers. The printer comes with starter cartridges that will print about 1200 pages, depending on your use of the color. You can also order additional toner cartridges for use when the starter cartridges run out. If you need a custom E-Quote to purchase one toner cartridge of a particular color, please contact the Help Desk. You can also purchase toner cartridges for your printer from third party office supply stores.
Average Monthly Volume: 40,000 pages
Price per page: About $0.139 (note that cost per page varies widely based on how much toner of each color you use)
To purchase the Dell 2150cdn use
Dell E-Quote# 1014905885232 Price: $517.49 expires on Wednesday, June 12, 2013.
To purchase the Dell 2150cdn with an additional 250 sheet paper tray use
Dell E-Quote# 1012218808693 Price: $659.98 expires on Wednesday, June 12, 2013.
Additional toner cost varies depending on what you need. See Dell’s Ink, Toner, and Print Supplies page for the Dell 2150cdn for more details.
Warranty
To help protect the investment you’re making, our pre-generated E-quotes come with an extended warranty, which will cover the printer for 3-4 years, depending on the model. The warranty won’t cover the consumable parts (i.e. the printer’s toner cartridges), but they will cover repairs to the printer during the warranty period.
To ensure compatibility with our printer servers and your computer, the Help Desk has done testing on the printer hardware that we recommend. If you’re not sure which to purchase, or don’t see a printer here that fits your needs, give us a call at (417) 836-5891, or shoot us an email at helpdesk@missouristate.edu, and we can discuss your needs in detail and help determine the best fit for your office.
Let us know when you’ve purchased a printer; if you’d like to talk in advance of purchasing it, we welcome such inquiries. Once it arrives and you have an active network jack for it, we will get it setup on our print servers (Tiger, Eagle, Rhino, or Hippo) and help you and others in your office connect to and use it.
Networking the Printer
To help keep down printing costs, the Help Desk recommends that most offices utilize a network printer capable of handling the needs of all of its staff. The biggest part of the cost of owning a printer comes from the consumable parts of it that have to be replaced- that is, the toner. Printers designed to handle large print volumes (network printers) make the most efficient use of these consumables, and so drive down the cost per page. Also, we recommend that you purchase a printer with a duplex-er, which allows you to easily print double-sided, significantly reducing paper waste. In terms of the total cost of ownership over the life of a printer, the most expensive devices you can get are desktop inkjets, which are the cheapest to buy up front. Conversely, the printers with the lowest cost-per-page & total cost of ownership will also be the most expensive up front.
To use a printer as a device shared on the network, you will need an Ethernet jack, just like you’d need for your networked computer. Telecommunication Services can turn on an existing network jack, for which the department is assessed a monthly fee. Information on installing a network jack or turning an existing jack on can be found on their page for requesting data communication services.