If you want to run a serious home business, you still have to have some sort of fax machine in your office. While most people think that the day of the fax is long gone, all the people who still hold on their machines seem to be business people. In other words, other businesses will eventually expect you to be able to send a fax and lose respect if you don’t have that capability. The appliance and electronics Sharp offers various fax machines, from the outdated UX 1300 printer with thermal roll toner to its modern UX-B800SE model that works on broadband and can send faxes to an email address.

How your machines prints to paper will greatly affect it’s beneficial use to you and how much it will cost you. Many faxes used to use thermal transfer rolls for printing faxes (like Sharp’s UX 1300). These use heat to transfer a scanned image and print it on a piece of paper. These are still around, but the quality of the print may not be to your liking (or it may be weird to install rolls of into a machine instead of a cartridge of ink or toner).

A newer version of fax machine is the type that prints using Inkjet ink. These run just like Inkjet printers people use at home, in fact some of those have fax capabilities now. They also tend to make better quality prints than the thermal rolls, although you shouldn’t assume that all Inkjet printers are the same. Some dedicated Inkjet faxes might not print as well as an Inkjet photo printer. Sharp makes an Inkjet fax, the UX-B20, that uses black Inkjet ink.

Some laser copiers can also function as fax machines. These use the toner and drums of laser copiers, because that what they are. They tend to have good, reliable quality (although many of us have nightmares about jams and messes). These machines are more expensive so you don’t see them in the offices of small business all the time. Color capable laser printers are also much more expensive than any color Inkjet printer. If you get one of these, make sure you will be happy to use it as your copier and computer printer as well.

Another thing to consider is the price of toner. Thermal transfer rolls can print around 510 pages. They can generally be cheaper than laser toner. I was able to find some toner for the UX 1300 machine online for $37. These rolls are also more specialized and may be difficult to find in some stores.

Inkjet printers use a more common technology for cheap printing solutions. While the particular ink cartridge you need for your printer may or not be available anymore, the cartridges are more common in general. You get slightly better quality with an Inkjet printer, and I found a cartridge for Sharp’s UXB20 for the same price as the thermal rolls. The yield in printed pages was only estimated to be 10 less at a max of 500.

Laser printers can be more expensive. These toner cartridges for Sharp laser copiers can cost from 60 to 100s of dollars, but the number of pages you will be able to print will be in the thousands. The toner might be cheaper when you factor that in, but it will still be a more expensive investment, at least from the start.

Check out Sharp UX 1300 printer cartridge. Sharp printer toner is the best Cartridge.

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