Label Printers and Label Makers are vital tools for many businesses and individuals. Choosing the right one is key, but so is finding the right price - through searching online for your label printer you’re likely to save up to 60% off high-street prices.

Technology
Modern label printer technology comes in economical and highly efficient machines that simply print labels - they don’t try and be what they’re not. As you would expect, today’s label printers are available in many styles and are designer for specific uses (light, heavy business use etc.).

As with most equipment, to achieve the best possible results, it’s vital that you choose the type of label printer that suits your particular requirement. Do you sell a few things on eBay every week? Or do you sell hundreds of items a day through your e-commerce website? Choosing a printer that sufficiently meets your needs is the best way to get the most for your money.

Save time and money
you may be getting sick of being told to search online because you will save both time and money, but once again it’s true for buying a label printer. Searching online will ensure you get the best deal possible, and save you hours of searching on the high-street.

One thing to remember is to check the reputation and customer reviews of the website you decide to purchase your label printer or label maker accessories from. Are they positive reviews? Does the company offer clear contact details? Knowing the company you purchase from is the key to not being ripped off online.

Business use
Does your business use paper shredders? Every business has private information such as sales lists and customer details. Shredding your documents ensures your most important business documents are not accessible to your competition!

Identity Theft & Fraud
The unfortunate fact about modern day society is that there are many individuals who prey on the private information of other people and businesses. Through stealing vital information they can use it to purchase products on the world wide web (WWW) under a false and name address. Through purchasing a discount paper shredder you can prevent this from happening - whether it’s a thief who breaks in your house or office, or a thief who raids your bins - the outcome is the same.

Saving you Time……a paper shredder can save your business vast amounts of time - how? Any business that finds itself a victim of identity theft will have to spend hundreds of hours correcting the problem, with regular phone calls to the banks and police a possibility. Taking just a few extra seconds to shred each document you decide to throw away can save your business plenty of time in the long run - and remember, time is money!

Money!
Spend a little, save a lot. This old cliché actually rings true when it comes to buying paper shredders. Not only will you save any future problems with criminals attempting to steal your details, you can save money by shopping online for your paper shredders! Discounts are available for quality paper shredders if you know where to look. Buying the first paper shredder(s) you find is like taking the first offer for your car - a definite no! Search online and you’ll be amazed at the discounts available, especially if you’re buying more than one.

The Initial Problem

Necessities such as ink cartridges for your printer may seem cheap, but when you’re purchasing them on a regular basis the costs soon add up! Too many businesses don’t plan ahead or search hard enough for the best quality at the lowest price, even for the smallest things.

Using an online store like www.a2boffice.co.uk to order your products on a regular basis can save you thousands of pounds in the long run. How? The quality merchandise on sale at stores with an excellent reputation like A2B Office are at excellent prices because they deal directly with the manufacturers in negotiating extremely competitive prices, which means the savings can passed on to you - the customer!

Sensible Buying

Knowing what to buy and when is a vital tool in business. Often owners and directors of companies’ don’t have the time to make all the buying decisions, and therefore have to hope a member of staff knows what he/she is doing (often wasting money using poor quality suppliers). Using a regular supplier (like A2B Office) will mean you know the items you are receiving are going to be of high quality, and at great prices. Not only will finding a great store for office equipment save you money, it will save you time in the purchasing process because you know who you’re dealing with straight away.

When deciding what office supplier to purchase from, ensure that they stock any products you feel you might need in the near future. For example, a laminator or cash register might be something you’ve considered, but have decided to stay away from for a while - if the office supplier you buy from has a wide ranging stock that includes these products then you know you won’t need to change suppliers any time soon!

Guarantee

Ensure the company you buy your products from offers a 14 day money back guarantee so you know you’re covered - and be sure to check they have not only an email address, but a phone number, speaking to who you are dealing with enables you to negotiate any concerns, standing orders etc. for the future.

Some of the printed materials we seek to preserve, protect and make sturdier include:

• Photographs
• Posters
• Pictures your child drew
• Pictures you drew
• Work place posters and notices
• Signs
• ID cards
• Menu’s
• Business cards
• Handbooks

An obvious solution is to use picture frames, which can of course work out very expensive not to mention tricky to hang requiring tools and picture hooks etc. Additionally there is the potential damage to walls etc. This is why lamination of pictures and posters is now proving so popular. There are various methods of lamination which ensure that high volume lamination as well as lamination of documents of all sizes can be accomplished quickly and easily within a small office, home or factory setting. Modern laminators are notoriously easy to use compared to laminators of days gone by and even the most technophobic amongst us can operate them.

What is lamination?
Lamination is a process of protecting pictures and posters inside a thin transparent, plastic film which is fairly durable, sturdy, can be wiped clean and is very inexpensive. It is also a light weight material, which means that the majority of laminated pictures and posters can be easily hung using sticky tack which ensures that there is no need for tools, pictures hooks and of course little to no damage to walls.

Different types of lamination

• Hot laminators
• Cold laminators
• Pouch Laminators
• Roll Laminators

Hot lamination (pouch laminators)
Hot laminators generally require a laminating pouch (clear lamination material folded in half, can also be coloured for greater creativity) which is slightly larger than the picture or poster to be laminated and of suitable size for the lamination machine. The picture is inserted into the pouch and then the closed end of the pouch fed gently into the laminator which will have been turned on and allowed to reach the required temperature before operation. When the laminate pouch passes through the laminating machine, the heat from the laminator melts the plastic adhesive on the pouch bonding the laminate to the picture and to itself.

These pouch style laminators can be found in the home and small office setting. They can laminate a multitude of sizes and thickness of documents.

Lamination pouches are available in the following thicknesses: 3mil, 5mil, 7mil and 10mil. Pouch laminators also come in varying sizes i.e.: A2, A3, A4 and ID sized. These laminators are generally portable, warm up within a few minutes and can accept documents up to 250 microns thickness. They are suitable for laminating photographs and paper and are mainly used in the home or office.

Cold lamination
Cold lamination requires no heat as the laminate is already sticky and can
be applied by manually. If you have a picture that might be damaged by the heat caused by a hot laminator, cold lamination is advised.

Roll laminators
Roll laminators are more likely to be used in industrial centers for high volume lamination and for lamination of very large items such as maps, posters etc. Schools may also use roll laminators to laminate posters and banners. Popular roll laminator sizes include: A1, A2, A3 and A0. The most popular sized roll laminator in use is 25 to 27 inches. Roll laminators wider than 65 inches are less common but very useful for laminating maps etc.

Laminator problems

• Paper is too thick to be laminated and edges do not seal properly
• Wrinkles in the laminate spoiling the picture
• The picture and laminate get stuck in the lamination machine
• The picture or poster you want to laminate is too big for the laminator or laminate material.
• Bubbles in the laminate

Many of the problems named above can be resolved by ensuring you plan ahead and buy a laminator that has a variable heat setting, is large enough for the job required and is properly used and maintained. A laminator with a reverse button is very useful for removing jammed objects before they get too caught up in the laminator’s rollers and damage the image or machine and laminators which allow for hot and cold lamination ensure you can protect different types of documents easily.

Whatever laminator you decide to buy, ensure you carefully consider how it will be used and what size documents you will be laminating, because where laminators are concerned, size does matter!

Why fax machines are preferable to Internet faxing

Even in the age of email there are still a lot of people who prefer the simplicity of sending a fax.  Not everyone has a computer, broadband or trusts the Internet and it is reassuring to know your document is printed out in the recipient’s office ready for action within seconds of being sent. 

The sender can print a report proving the transmission was received, with line number, date and time, whereas email reports only that a message was sent.  The email sender has no control over when the email will be received and read, or worse if it will get lost in the ether or junked by a hostile spam filter.

Handwritten or signed documents are much easier to fax than to scan and email.  Several pages of a document can be fed into a fax machine and transmitted in seconds.  Compare that to the tedious process of scanning each page individually then saving to your computer with a filename before attaching to an email.  I’m asleep already!

What you receive from the fax machine is a printed document you can read and process straight away.  Unlike an email attachment which can be opened only by the right software, which you may or may not have, or if you do, you may not have the right version.  By the time you actually get to open your document, the sender, who has since had a three course lunch followed by several rounds of golf, is already chasing your response.   Not too efficient!  You’re probably going to have to print the document too.  How time consuming when you could have simply ripped the pages from a fax machine.

New technology isn’t always best!

Stand alone fax machines – why they remain popular

Stand alone fax machines can still fulfill an important role for those whose time is money and who want a fast efficient and reliable method of transferring documents between two individuals.  The information is transferred almost instantly.  No need to wait for the boss’s secretary to finish her filing before retrieving her emails, reading them all, finding your document, opening it, choosing the settings and printing it out.

How much more satisfying to see the document emerging from the fax machine within seconds of being sent.  Remember all those films where the killer’s face is being printed out by a fax machine line by line just in time for the hero to catch him red-handed?  If the picture was sent by email, he would probably have committed three more murders by the time it was discovered amongst ads for penis enlargement!

Stand alone fax machines are simple to use, cheap to operate and legally compliant.  Having a single function they are reliable, long lasting and cheap to buy.  Quite simply – they do what it says on the tin!

One of the best media examples of just how frustrated we can get with photocopying machines is in the cult film ‘Office Spaces’ where three of the male staff take the malfunctioning photocopier into an outdoor space and smash it to pieces. The photocopier is kicked, beaten with a baseball bat and jumped upon. The only thing they don’t do to the photocopier is set it on fire. That is one very broken photocopier with no hope of experiencing a come back!

Did you see a message at the end of the film that said  “no photocopiers were harmed in the making of this production?” Neither did I.

Most photocopier problems are caused by human error so we really only have ourselves to blame for photocopiers going wrong and not working properly.

Common photocopier problems include:

• Sitting on the photocopier to take pictures of your butt and other private parts.

It’s been reported that 23% of the reasons why photocopiers break down is due to staff sitting on them to photocopy their bottoms. You can therefore massively reduce your photocopier repair costs by not allowing staff to sit on the copier machine. There are some great youtube videos of staff doing just this and falling though the glass of the photocopier and suffering painful consequences not to mention a painful disciplinary meeting with the boss. If however you are the boss, you have only yourself to blame. Shame on you!

Other man made causes for photocopier problems:

• Forgetting to plug in the photocopier.
• Forgetting to turn the photocopier on.
• Spilling drinks on the photocopier.
• Getting food stuck on the photocopier, crumbs etc.
• Wrong sized paper. The error messages read: too thick, too thin, too small, too wide etc.
• Hitting, banging, kicking, dropping the photocopier.
• Wrong toner, empty toner, clogged toner, faulty toner.
• Paper jam.
• Repeatedly pressing buttons.
• Putting paper so it faces the wrong side down and so on.
• Pulling out copies before they’ve finished printing.
• Using poorly re-manufactured toners etc.
• The photocopier isn’t plugged in.
• The hamster (mentioned earlier) ate through the power cable.

Another common form of photocopier abuse is verbal. This takes the form of swearing and name calling. However unpleasant this may be, there is as yet no evidence to suggest that verbal abuse is harmful to the photocopier machine. So if you must abuse your photocopier, do so verbally, all be it quietly so as not to offend colleagues.

To avoid all of the above photocopier problems simply don’t do them.

More ways to avoid photocopying nightmares.

1. Don’t blame the photocopier because your passport photos make you look like the UK’s most wanted.

2. Don’t set the number of copies to 999 and leave the room to have a nice relaxing cup of coffee without first checking that you put the original into the photocopier, right way up.

3. More important, when double side printing, don’t set the number of copies to 999, and forget to turn the paper sheets over so you get 999 copies with both sides of print on one side of paper.

Conclusion: If you want to avoid photocopier room 101 be good to your photocopier and your photocopier will be good to you.

How do members of the public steal from cash registers?
Members of the public can steal cash straight from your shop cash register cash drawer by leaning across (when staff are absent) and pressing the cash drawer release key. The cash drawer opens automatically revealing the cash inside.

Meanwhile it is not unknown for people to steal the entire cash register. The cash registers are rarely secured to the counter top and as some are smaller and more light-weight than others, they can simply be lifted off the counter.

How do staff steal from cash registers?
Cash registers are vulnerable to dishonest staff who steal from cash registers by taking money straight out of the cash drawer and keeping it. Alternatively they may only scan so many items for people who they know, letting them take the rest of the goods without payment.

Every year retail profits are affected adversely by cash register theft and fraud. The good news is that there are ways to prevent it.

Ten tips to preventing cash register fraud and theft

1. CCTV cameras
CCTV cameras can be positioned on the ceiling above the cash register with the view showing the employee and the customer. Signage is very important when using CCTV and in itself can often be a deterrent.

2. Staff log-in and out codes (clerk codes)
All staff should have their own cash register security code which they must use at all times to log on and off the system. Not all cash registers allow for this, but many of the higher priced cash registers do. It is very important to be able to know who is doing what with your shop till. If money has gone missing often the error or theft can be traced back to the exact member of staff but only if they use their clerk codes when operating the cash register.

3. Secure the cash register
Fixing the cash register to the counter top will prevent the cash register from being easily lifted off the counter top by would be thieves.

4.Remove large sums of notes regularly
Regularly remove large sums of notes from the cash drawer and place it in a secure safe. This ensures that the cash registers do not contain large amounts of money at any one time preventing large scale theft. Make it known that the shop cash register never holds large amounts of money via signage.

5. Safety in numbers
If possible always have at least two members of staff working on the tills. They can then observe each other preventing employee theft as well as acting as a deterrent for thieves.

6. Train staff to be alert
Staff should be alert at all times when operating the cash register and always use their own codes for logging in and out of the machine. This is for their benefit as much as it is for yours.

7. Identify when someone approaches an unattended till
You can buy various motion point detectors (such as pressure-switch mats) which can be used to alert you to someone approaching an unattended cash register. Ensure that there are no large racks etc. blocking the view of the cash register.

8. Open only when necessary
Ensure cash register drawers can only be opened for the purpose of taking customer payment and not for any other reason. This includes giving change for customer parking etc.

9. Empty your cash drawer
Always empty your cash drawer and leave it open in full view of the shop window so that would be thieves can see that there is nothing to gain by breaking in and taking the cash register.

10. Label your equipment
Ensure all equipment is marked with an identification number so that if the equipment is stolen and recovered, it can be returned to you.

Don’t let your profits sink with inefficient cash register security. Implement these cost effective measures, keep your money safe!

http://www.a2boffice.co.uk/category/69/cash_registers

The World Of High Rise Office Escape Systems

Of course there are people who take home office setups far more seriously, a few of which we’ll now show you. Just imagine the cable mayhem…

Stefan Didak

Stefan Didak has possibly the most famous setup on the internet. There are a total of 12 monitors in his home office, 6 of which (all 24″) form the central workspace, and just laying and organising all the systems’ cables took him 4 days. Of course, being the geek he is, all the separate systems have names (e.g. Xenon, Nitrous, Hydrogen) and combined provide storage space to the tune of 102TB. Visit his site here for comprehensive details of his incredible setup and more photographs to drool over.

Mitch Haile

Including his laptop and 2 screens currently kept in the closet, Mitch Haile’s home office boasts 11 monitors, 6 of which are lined up together and connected to his MacPro with 3 ATI 2600 video cards. For answers to the most common questions asked of him, visit Mitch’s website here, a page of which is dedicated to the setup. He even discusses the furniture beneath the technology, including a surprisingly modest chair bought from Staples.

Coyote.Land

Flickr user coyote.land posted these pictures of his 9 system setup (Five Macs, three PCs and a Linux box) back in May. He says the home-based setup, when used for web development, is ‘11,600 horizontal pixels of heaven’. See the photo on Flickr.

Honorable mention must also go to the following 3 setups, all found on Realtime Soft’s website. Information about them is scarce but the amount of monitors warranted their inclusion…

#1 Keep Your Eyes Open

Image credit: Sexy Eyes

Be wary of anyone who asks you for personal information such as your name, address, telephone number or bank details. If they are claiming to be someone who you can trust, make sure that they are who they say they are - asking them for some official ID such as a driving license or passport is a good way to do this.

#2 Keep Your Cards Safe

Image credit: Credit Cards

If you think you have lost your credit card make sure that you report it as lost or stolen straight away - do not take any chances, find out how long it will take for your new card to arrive and as soon as you receive a new one make sure that it is signed immediately. Also be wary of cashiers in shops trying to take your number, make sure that you can see the card at all times.

#3 Check Your Bill Payments

Image credit: Bills

If your bank or credit card statements do not arrive on time, make sure that you look into this right away - this could mean someone has taken over your account. Also check all of your statements for unusual activity.

#4 Check Your Credit Report

Image credit: Credit Report

Get a credit report done on a regular basis to make sure that no credit cards or accounts have been illegally set-up in your name. You can get a credit report done through any of your relevant credit reference agencies - it does not cost a lot of money to do this.

#5 Guard Your Documents

Image credit: Documents

Keep all of your important documents which contain personal information in a safe place. Limit the number of important documents you carry around with you at any one time. If you are worried about poeple getting into your home/business premises you might want to think about getting a safe or having a burgular alarm installed.

#6 Shred Your Used Documents

Image credit: Shredder

Shredding your documents ensures that fraudsters cannot get personal information about you by going through your rubbish.

#7 Make Sure Your Post Is Secure

Image credit: Brass Letter Box

Criminals/fraudsters may try to steel your mail by having it redirected to a different address. Contact your postal service right away if you notice that any letters or bills are not arriving.

#8 Secure Your Phone Line

Image credit: Telephone

It is not that difficult for someone to take control of your telephone by placing another phone on your line or by having your calls redirected. Check with your phone service provider straight away if you think this has happened to you.

#9 Keep Your Contact Information Up-To-Date

Image credit: Contact

Whenever you move house or change your telephone number, make sure that you update your contact information with all of the relevant companies/organisations.

#10 Make Sure Your Computer Is Secure

Image credit: Computer Security

Make sure that your computer has anti-virus software and security patches installed. Change your passwords regularly and if you are using a laptop keep it with you at all times when traveling.