If a printer has a monthly duty cycle of, say, 20,000 pages, it's built to take a fair amount of punishment. However, just as you wouldn't want to run your car at full bore all the time, you wouldn't want to run that much paper through the printer constantly. The actual volume of printing that you should realistically expect to do should be a small fraction--maybe 10 to 25 percent--of a printer's duty-cycle number. Related:

Print resolution: A printer's true resolution has become less important as vendors have manipulated dot size, shape, and placement to improve image quality without increasing the actual dots per inch beyond the most-common 600 by 600 dpi. Resolution specs with a qualifier such as "optimized," "interpolated," or "up to" are manipulated resolutions. If you come upon a printer with true 1200-by-1200-dpi resolution--such a thing is still something of a rarity--you will notice that it is capable of remarkably smooth, sharp text and images. Related:

Scan resolution: Similar to print resolution, scan resolution can be interpolated. Look for the "optical resolution" as the true measure, and also note that for most scanning purposes, 300 dpi is a sufficient resolution. Going higher will result in a really slow scan time, a much bigger image-file size, and a resulting image that isn't necessarily any sharper. Resolution specs with a qualifier such as "optimized," "interpolated," or "up to" are manipulated resolutions. Related:

Automatic duplexing: A printer that can duplex (print on both sides of the page) automatically saves paper. That's good news for both trees and your budget. Manual duplexing--usually with on-screen prompts to walk you through turning over the paper--is better than nothing, but it's probably too much of a hassle for most people. Related: