Inkjet printers have become the standard for the output of the computer at home. You can turn color photos nearly indistinguishable from lab processed photos, along with banners, stickers, transparencies, T-shirt transfers, and greeting cards. Many excellent products and black-white text. With some very good models go for less than $ 200, sells inkjet account for the vast majority of printers for home use.
Laser printers still have their place in the home office. If you print reamsText documents in black and white, you probably need the cost of quality, speed and low to print on a laser printer.
Printer with a microprocessor and memory of the computer to process data. The latest inkjet and laser printers are so fast, because computers have become more powerful and contain much more memory than before.
What is available
The printer market is dominated by a handful of established brands. Hewlett-Packard is the market leader. Other big brandsbuilt by Brother, Canon, Epson and Lexmark.
The type of computer a printer can serve depends on its ports. A Universal Serial Bus (USB) allows you to connect a printer to your Windows or Macintosh. Some models are equipped with a parallel port, to which the printer can work with Windows computers. All these printers lack a serial port, which means it does not work with old Macs
Inkjet printers. Inkjet printers use ink droplets, letters, photographs and graphics. Some printers have aCartridge, cyan (green-blue) holds, magenta and yellow, and a second black cartridge. Others have individual cartridges for each color. For photos, also many inkjet cartridges additional lighter shades of cyan and magenta contain some have added red, gray, blue or green.
Most of the inkjet printing of 2 1 / 2 to 11 pages per minute (ppm) for black and white text, but are much slower for color photos, with 1 1 / 2 to 21 minutes to a single pressure8x10. The cost of printing a black-and-white page with an inkjet printer is very different from model to model, from 3 to 7.5 cents. The cost of printing a photo 8x10 color can be from 80 cents to $ 1.50.
Price: $ 80 to $ 700.
Laser printer. These work just like plain-paper copier, forming images by transferring toner (powdered ink) to paper passing over an electrically charged drum. The process produces crisp black-and-white text and graphics. Laser printers generallyoutrun inkjet, churning out black and white text with a speed of 12 to 18 ppm. Black and white laser printers usually cost about as much as midprice inkjet, but are cheaper to manage. Laser cartridges, about $ 50 to $ 100 print thousands of pages in black and white cost per page for 2 to 4 cents. Color laser printers are also available. Price: $ 150 to $ 1,000 (black-white), $ 400 and above (color).
IMPORTANT
Printers differ in detail iscapable of producing. Resolution in dots per inch (dpi), is often touted as the main measure of print quality. But other factors, such as sequences of points on how they are formed by software instructions from the number of drivers, too. On default settings, where you normally expect run-dpi inkjet printer currently on the market in general with a resolution of 600x600. For color photos can be enhanced dpi. Some printers up to 5,760 x1, 440 dpi. Laser printer for home useoffer dpi is usually 600 or 1,200. Print photo inkjet color on special paper with a higher dpi can be softer shades of color, but can slow printing significantly.
Most inkjet printers have a monitor to alert when you are running out. Generic ink cartridges usually cost less, but most produce prints far less ink brand, so per-print costs are cut, not all. And the print quality and durability are perhaps not so good.
For the two-sided printing,You can use the odd pages of a document, then turn the pages on the right side a second pass through the printer to print. A few printers can automatically print on both sides, but slows printing.
HOW TO CHOOSE
Be skeptical about advertised speeds. Print speed may vary depending on what you print, and in what capacity, but the speeds you see in ads are generally higher than you are likely to get normal use. Theirno reliable way to compare the speeds of different brands because each company has its own methods to measure speed. We use the same tests on all models, printing text pages and photos that are similar to what you can print. As a result, our values are realistic and can be compared across brands.
Do not depend on the resolution. A print resolution, expressed in dots per inch, is another possible source of confusion. Ceteris paribus, the more ink dots a printer usespaper, more detailed image. But dot size, shape and location also affect the quality, that is not based solely on a resolution.
Consider the cost of supply and price of the printer. High color cartridge costs can make a bargain-priced printer a bad deal in the long term. Shop around for the best prices for cartridges, but be careful, off-brand, we have found brand-name cartridges, superior print quality and lower total cost per page is often comparable.
Glossy Photo Papercosts about 25-75 cents per sheet, so use plain paper for works in progress, and save the good stuff for the final results. We obtained the best results with the brand of paper. One might be tempted to make a cheaper, but remember to buy, to reduce the lowest level of photo quality paper and may not be as strong as fading.
Decide whether you want to print photos without using a computer. Print without a computer saves a step and a little 'time. Functions such asSupport for memory cards, PictBridge support (a standard that a camera can be connected directly to compatible printer), or a wireless interface are convenient. But if you directly from the camera to the printer, you can see what you put on digital photography to tweak in the first place, the ability to image attributes, size, color, brightness and others. And with a 4x6-compromise printer that gives you the ability to print on larger media.
Weigh convenience features. MorePrinter make borderless prints like from a photo lab. The most important thing when you print the full size of the document, as you might with 4x6-inch cards. Otherwise, the edges off.
If you want to use 4x6-inch paper regularly, for a printer with a 4x6-inch tray that makes it look easier on paper this size feed. With these small sheets, however, the cost per photo to be higher sync some photos on 81 / 2 x 11 inch paper.
On some modelsif you want to use the photo inks to get the best image quality, you must remove the black cartridge and replace it with the photo cartridge. Then you need the black for text or graphics to replace. This can become tedious. Models that hold all the ink tanks simultaneously eliminate this problem.
Consider the connections. Printer with USB 2.0 ports are now fairly widespread. However, they are not possible, a rate much faster than USB. All new computers and printers haveUSB 2.0 or USB compatible both. Computers more than six years, only one parallel port.
Decide if you need scanning and copying. A multifunction device offers color copying, scanning and saving space. The downside is that the scanner multifunction devices' may have a lower resolution is the last stand-alone scanners. Stand-alone scanners is best to deal with negatives and slides. And if one part breaks down the unit, the entire unitrepaired or replaced.
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