You could spend literally thousands of dollars upgrading printers, scanners and other equipment with the newest models. But your existing machines might be handling the workload just fine.

Printers
If your printer churns out acceptable looking pages at an acceptable speed, why upgrade? But if you stand around waiting for print jobs, an upgrade is called for.

For serious business uses—and long-term savings—get a laser printer rather than an ink jet. Laser printers have dropped to the $200 to $500 range with capabilities that not long ago cost $2,000-plus. Text document output quality is superior to ink jets’, and the savings in toner compared to ink jet cartridges is substantial.

An exception is if you need to generate colorful material, such as brochures on demand for customers. Low-cost ink jets, from $50 to $400, such as Epson’s Stylus line, produce eye-popping results. But if you don’t need to pop eyes, stick to workhorse monochrome laser printers.

Monitors
Whether you need a monitor upgrade hinges on subjective analysis. A small, flickering screen that takes too long to refresh can be unproductive, bad for the eyes and worse for morale.

When upgrading, consultants recommend as large a screen as you can afford. Although 17-inch monitors are packaged with most off-the-shelf computer systems, upgrading to a 19- or 21-inch model makes sense. For the nominal difference—$100 to $200—the larger display delivers viewer comfort and ease.

Multifunction Devices
Combination scanner-copier-fax-printer machines have ebbed and flowed in popularity. Generally, they’ve turned out to be less-than-pleasing compromises. They perform no single function particularly well, which means you sacrifice quality for flexibility and a little savings.

Despite e-mail’s emergence as the preferred business communication and fax modems included in nearly every computer, paper fax machines remain an office staple. Photocopiers are no less in demand. If your photocopy needs are minimal, a multi-use machine may be prudent. They’re available for between $150 and $600.

Still, a multifunction device seems difficult to justify. You sacrifice quality in printing. Scanning is a rare need in most offices. Stand-alone fax machines sell for as little as $80. Desktop photocopiers go for as little as $300. And don’t forget the catastrophic consideration that you lose all four functions if the thing breaks down.

Scanners
Scanner prices have dropped to the virtually ridiculousness. For about $50 you can get a capable scanner to digitize documents and photos. But why would you?

Unless you have a need to turn paper into digital images, a scanner is just an inexpensive unnecessary device. But if you need to convert mounds of printed documents to digital text, a scanner is useful when used in conjunction with optical character reading software. The software is much more expensive than the hardware, from under $100 to $500-plus.