Buying A New Printer

If you are looking for, an ink jet, monochrome laser, or a color laser printer, you will find the information here that you need to buy a new printer.

Different printers do different jobs. We will go over them feature by feature. When buying a new printer most people try to balance price, speed, and print quality. Ink jet printers and digital cameras are changing the way we print pictures. Ink jet printers have become one of the best options for turning a digital image into a photograph. The price is right and you can now get a high quality photo from home.

Monochrome laser printers have text quality so good and uniform that the output samples are almost indistinguishable. Features are the main selling point. Because of the extra paper trays and more memory, laser printers can print more efficiently. Also, they come with more capable drivers and easier remote management. Color lasers are dropping in price and because of this more users can afford adding color to their workplace documents. So far the least expensive color laser we have seen is around $1000.

Print Quality:
All color laser and monochrome laser printers print razor sharp text. Color lasers can print color charts and two-dimensional graphics pretty well but they don't match what an ink jet printer can do with a photograph. Ink jet photos are beautiful but most of them will produce somewhat fuzzy and jagged font test, it just cannot reproduce the fine line detail of line art or graphics.

Resolution:
To determine print quality and speed is not by looking at the resolution specifics, instead just print out a sample and see for yourself. This is because most any inkjet on the market can print a beautiful 8 x 10 photo, that is how good the modern printers have become. Fairly modest resolutions for laser printers suffice for printing sharp text and simple graphics.

Cost Per Page:
The cost of ink has the biggest impact on overall cost over time. Generally you will pay $21 to $38 for a three-color cartridge and $12 to $34 for a separate black cartridge. Most of the time the cheaper the cartridge, the less ink you get; usually 300 to 800 pages per cartridge.

Monochrome and color laser cartridges cost around 2 to 4 cents per page for black text. The color laser has separate toner cartridges for each color and these can cost up $250 each, but black is cheaper. Even though this sounds really expensive the per page cost is cheaper than ink jet because the yield is much higher which ranges from 6000 to 12,000 pages per cartridge.

Features:
Ink jet printers all offer pretty much the same features; a paper tray that holds 50-150 sheets or 10 envelops. They have minimal buffer memory and no networking option. But there are a few manufacturers that offer a business oriented ink jet with higher capacities, larger paper trays, wireless networking and extra memory.

Lasers printers are made more for businesses with their features. Monochrome laser holds up to 600 sheets of paper and color up to 1200. You can even get optional trays that hold up to 5000 sheets of paper. Corporate lasers usually include at the least, 8MB of RAM and can be expanded to get up to five times that amount for queuing multiple print jobs at one time.

Photo Printing:
Several quality in jet printers include features like a dedicated USB port for connection your digital camera directly to your printer. Built in media card slots that where you can plug in a storage card and hit a button for instant prints and an LCD menu for selecting your prints. With either of these two options you do not need a computer. You will get beautiful photos with these printers. Don't rule out general-purpose ink jet printers, because they can serve very well as photo printer also. If you change your setting to 'best' or 'photo' mode and use the premium photo paper these inexpensive (around only $100.) printers can give you high quality photos.


Bonnie Archer
Computer Accessories
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