Buying a printer can be a complicated business, there are
more shapes, sizes and types of printers available to the home and small
business user than ever before. Printers have also become specialized for their
intended purpose.
It is no longer a case of "a printer is a
printer". Printers are now designed to be
good in a particular area rather than a "Jack-of-all trades", which
will do everything.
An often overlooked issue, is the very serious consideration
of cost of ownership, which is all about of how much it will cost to keep your
printer running (see below). So making
that decision on which printer to go for, can be a seriously arduous task,
especially if you are keen to buy a printer that is not only affordable to buy,
but also cheap to run.
So here is the information that you need to know and
consider, that no one tells you about!
We have not expanded on which printer is the best at any given time,
because models constantly change and you can find that information in any
current glossary PC magazine off the shelf.
Instead, here you will find the good, bad and ugly bits from the
different types of printers available so you can make an informed decision
yourself.
Laser Printers
Laser printers work in a similar way to photocopiers, except
they use a laser instead of a bright light to scan with. They work by creating an electrostatic image
of the page onto a charged photo-receptor, which in turn attracts toner in the
shape of an electrostatic charge. Toner
is the material used to make the image (as ink is in an inkjet printer) and is
a very fine powder, so laser printers use toner cartridges instead of ink
cartridges.
Laser Printers have traditionally been the best printing
solution for heavy office users as they produce a very high quality black text
finish and offer relatively low running costs.
However, laser printers have advanced a great deal recently and their
prices have steadily dropped, as a result there are now compact laser printers,
multi-function and color laser printers all at very affordable prices. Laser printers make sense if you need to do a
lot of high quality black or color prints, not photos. The great thing about a color laser printer
is that they can print a very good quality color image on standard copier
paper, so you do not need to use expensive photo paper for large jobs. Do check the prices of the consumables before
you buy the printer as these can be very expensive for color laser printers.
Laser
printers are the best solution for people who are printing in large
volumes, that is, in 100's of pages at a time or 1000's of pages per
month. Color lasers also take quite a
while to warm up, so are not ideal for printing single pages.
Solid Ink Printers
Solid ink printers use solid wax ink sticks in a
"phase-change" process, they work by liquefying wax ink sticks into
reservoirs and then squirting the ink onto a transfer drum from where it is
cold-fused onto the paper in a single pass.
Solid ink printers are marketed almost exclusively by Tektronix / Xerox
and are aimed at larger businesses and high volume color printing.
Solid ink printers used to be cheaper to purchase than
similarly specified color lasers and fairly economical to run owing to a low
component usage, today it is not necessarily any cheaper than a color laser
printer. Output quality is good but
generally not as good as the best color lasers for text and graphics or the
best inkjets for photographs. Print
speeds are not as fast as most color lasers.
Dye-Sublimation
Printers
Dye-Sublimation printers use heat and solid color dyes to
produce lab-quality photographic images. Dye-Sub printers contain a roll of
transparent film made up of page-sized panels of color, with cyan, magenta,
yellow, and black dye embedded in the film. Print head heating elements
vaporize the inks, which adhere to a specially coated paper, as the ink cools
it re-solidifies on the paper. Color intensity is controlled by precise
variations in temperature.
Dye-sublimation printers lay down color in continuous tones
one color at a time instead of dots of ink like an inkjet, because the color is
absorbed into the paper rather than sitting on the surface, the output is more
photo-realistic, more durable and less vulnerable to fading than other ink
technologies.
The downside of Dye-Sub printers is that they are generally
more expensive to buy and run, usually limited to photo sized prints only and
can only print onto one type of specialized paper as well as being quite slow
to print.
Dye-Sublimation printers are best for those who want to link
up their digital camera to a purpose built printer and print out the finest
quality photos at home without fuss.
Dot Matrix Printers
Dot matrix printers are relatively old fashioned technology
today with poor quality print, slow and very noisy output. This type of printer is no longer used unless
you wish to create invoices using the continuous paper with holes on both
sides. The good thing is that they are
very cheap to run!
Cost of Ownership
Many printers today are very cheap to buy, but people are
sometimes shocked to discover the cost of replacing the consumables (ink or
laser cartridges, imaging drums, fuser, oils, specialized papers etc). The cost
of replacing the ink can sometimes cost more than the printer itself! This is one of the most commonly overlooked
factors when printers are reviewed and yet one of the most important things to
consider before handing over your hard earned cash. Tests run in 2003 by Which? magazine famously
compared the cost of HP's ink with vintage 1985 Dom Perignon.
A Sheffield City Council report aimed at helping schools
decide on the best-value printers to buy, calculated total cost of ownership
over the lifetime of a printer (not sure how long that is!). Adding up all the running costs, ink or
toner, paper, maintenance and even electricity, SCC worked out that a color
inkjet costs approx 38 cents per page to run compared to a color laser which
costs approx 7 cents per page. Sheffield City Council advised its schools that
if they printed more than three color pages a day (assuming a 40-week academic
year) they should buy a laser.
These figures cannot be taken hard and fast due to the many
variables involved, but it is generally accepted that the cost per print of a
laser printer is cheaper than that of an inkjet, which is in turn cheaper than
that of a sub-dye printer. However, you
would have to do a fair amount of color printing to take advantage of the
economy cost offered by a laser printer.
For More Info: http://ctcopier.com/repair-services/
No comments:
Post a Comment