A laser printer is a common type of printer which is most often seen in offices. A laser printer produces a high quality finish and can print many pages quickly. Colour printers normally use xerographic printing processes, just like a photocopier does.

The page to be printed is stored in the laser printer’s memory. An electrostatic charge is applied onto the photoconductor unit in the laser printer. A laser is then aimed at the photoreceptor in the form of the image that needs to be printed. Where the light falls, the charge is reversed on the photoconductor unit. This creates an electrostatic image on the photoreceptor surface.

A colour printer is an electronic device which normally attaches to a computer in order to print out data stored on the computer in electronic formats. Popular things that get printed on a printer are text documents, photos and webpages.

A colour printer, like the name suggests, prints in colour and can produce images of multiple colours.

A photo printer is a special kind of colour printer which mimics the colour rang and resolution of a normal photograph. Many of these can read directly from a memory card therefore do not need to be directly plugged into a printer. Special photographic paper can be bought for these machines so that the finished printed product is almost unidenitfiable to the untrained eye to a normal photograph.

A printer is an electronic device which produce documents, usually on paper, from something stored in electronic format on the computer. Many printers are connected directly to the computer itself, although some printers are connected into networks to allow more than one computer to print to them at a time.

In addition to this, many computers can also now interface with electronic media such as memmory sticks or flash memory cards and print direct from these.

Sometimes, printers are combined with photocopiers and scanners. These sorts of printers are known as ‘all-in-one’ printers.

A telephone system (sometimes known as a phone system) is a communication system that transmits sound between two points.

Many businesses will have their own phone systems which route internal as well as external phone calls. The advantage of having an internal phone system is that many phones can be put on the network and people can call each other easily and quickly without the need to pay. External phone calls can be made or received through the phone system and put through to the relevant extension number.

PDA stands for Personal Digital Assistant. PDAs are small, handheld computers that are sometimes also known as pocket computers or palmtop computers.

PDAs have many uses and many have the same features as desktop PCs such as games, clock, spreadsheets, emails, word processing etc. Many PDAs have colour screens and audio capabilities too. Some PDAs can even connect to the internet via Wi-fi. However, PDAs cannot replace a desktop or laptop PC because they tend to be more expensive and they don’t have the same processing capabilites $ for $.

Popular brands of PDAs include:
Psion
Blackberry
Dell Axim
Fujitsu Siemens
hp
Palm Pilot
Sony Clie

Payroll within a company means the financial records associated with the employee salaries, wages, bonuses and deductions.

Many companies have specialised software to help them with their payroll. This payroll software will help to work out things such as tax and savings and the payroll software should be able to automatically print the pay-slips for each employee as and when required.

Payroll systems are an easy way to manage pay-finances within a company. Payroll systems can normally provide quick and easy ways to view data, such as total deductions for each employee, or the total wage bill for the month. Payroll systems can be a really useful tool in the accountant’s arsenal.

A serviced office is an office or office building which comes fully equipped with desks etc and is managed by a special company. Companies will then rent floors or offices from the company. Services offices are often also know as managed offices, business centres or executive centres.

Serviced offices normally have fairly flexible rental terms and no long term commitment may be required. Serviced offices are popular because they take away the costs of things such as receptions, security and mail support. They are also good if the size of the office changes, or if other space is needed at short notice - it is easy to add a small serviced office component to your contract without too much hassles.