Troubleshooting Problems with a printer network connection

Recently while working on a trial, I had trouble sending jobs to a copier/printer which was set up in a hotel for a trial. Jobs sent from a virtual desktop usually didn't work, and even jobs sent locally from my laptop also often failed. I was able to solve the problem by updating the driver, and also by manually inputting the IP address for the printers. These are the steps that I followed.

1. In Windows, I located the printer (just search for Printers and Scanners, select the printer and click manage) and entered 'Printer Properties'.

2. Under Properties, on the Advanced Tab, I had to reset the driver to that for the Konica Minolta printer. It had been changed to 'Microsoft IPP Class Driver'. Click Apply after selecting the right driver.

3. Next, I went to the Ports tab, and then selected ‘Add Port’. Next I selected ‘Standard TCP/IP Port’ and then clicked ‘New Port’

4. In the wizard that came up, I entered the IP address for the copier/printer.

5. After going through the wizard and finishing, I clicked apply and then went to printing preferences for the printer. It's a good idea to set the preferences for the stapling and hole punching functions I was most likely to use while in the virtual desktop. In the virtual environment, these options were disabled.

Printer duty cycles: How many pages can a printer print in a month?

When a litigation team is preparing for a trial, a litigation support professional will often be asked to select the hardware needed for a remote 'war room' set up in a hotel or leased office space. The printers you acquire for a trial may not only be put to heavy use for your trial, but they may also have been used to print out large amounts of pages for other firms which leased them previously. When you're trying to determine whether or not a printer will handle the amount of printing necessary to prepare dozens of witness binders each day for the duration of a trial, look further than just the listed page per minute rate and the paper tray capacity. In the posted specs for a printer, HP or another manufacturer should list the recommended page volume per month and the monthly duty cycle.

The monthly duty cycle is the absolute maximum number of pages that a printer can print out in a one month period.

The recommended monthly page volume is the highest number of pages the manufacturer recommends that you print within a month.

The difference between the duty cycle and the recommended page volume is similar to the difference between the highest possible speed a car can reach and the speed at which it can be regularly driven without causing mechanical problems. A passenger car might be able to reach a speed of 130 mph, but if the same car is driven frequently at 90 mph it soon becomes unreliable.

The recommended monthly page volume will be usually less than 10 per cent of the duty cycle.

Getting a HP duplexer to work after you've installed it.

Note that on HP printers, even after you have manually installed a duplexer into the rear of a model such as those for the HP 600 series, it will not necessarily work unless you make changes to the printer's properties. Select the printer under Printers & Scanners in Windows 10, click Manage, and then click 'Printer Properties'. On the Device Settings tab, scroll down and find the option in the 'Installable Options' group for 'Duplex Unit (for 2-sided Printing)' and make sure that it's set to 'Installed'.