Printing becomes fine art

By Andy Walker

Printer companies don’t make buying printers simple. They use lots of terms and buzzwords: PPM. DPI. Monochrome. Color. Piezoelectric. Thermal. To me, they sound like English tea kettle technologies.

And if you have ever walked down the printer aisle of a big box superstore with rows of printers featuring superlative marketing claims (Super fast! Gorgeous color! Makes coffee too!), you know it all can be quite mystifying. So what follows is a to-the-point buyer’s guide to printers for your small or home office.

Inkjet printers

What is it?

This printer technology uses liquid ink. and sprays it in tiny droplets onto a page by moving a print head back and forth across a page. The droplets are super-heated and forced through a nozzle so they spray precise-colored dots on the page. Inkjets require a black liquid ink. cartridge and then at least one color cartridge and usually more individually color ink cartridges.

What is it used for?

When it comes to beautiful color prints, inkjet printers are the choice of many business owners who need to give their staff photo-printing capability. They are ideal for one or two-person operations that do occasional photo printing, but the consumables can be pricey. Use your inkjet printer for occasional color documents and photos. Leave the hard work to a laser printer.

Straight talk

Inkjet. is the best technology for printing photomat quality images for hanging on the wall or as proposal covers. Go for the mutli-color ink cartridges so you can swap out individual inks as they run low. Buy one with photo card slots and an LCD screen to print straight from your camera. I use an HP Photosmart 8250 Printer for high quality photo printing. I don’t rely on it for big volume of business documents because that would break the bank on ink consumables.

Monochrome laser printers

What is it?

Laser printers use an electrostatically charged drum to roll powdered toner, which looks like fine soot, onto a sheet of paper and then bakes it on. Monochrome laser printers print black only and have one toner cartridge.

What is it used for?

These printers are the workhorses of the office world. They are fast, affordable and their cost-per-page rivals any other printing technology on the market. Like my accountant, I have come to rely on my networked monochrome laser printer (Lexmark e210), but they aren’t sparkly and fun. My accountant tells good jokes, though.

Straight talk

These printers are affordable to operate, low cost to buy and are zippy fast when it comes to cranking out high volumes of text and pages with minimal graphics. Every small office should have one.

Color laser printers

What is it?

Like their monochrome brethren, color laser printers use an electrostatically charged drum to roll powdered toner on the page, but they use three or four toner cartridges of different colors that layer on color to produce a final document.

What is it used for?

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