Advice on Printers
Lesson 11
Printers can be one of the toughest things you buy, which is why most people make a mistake and get the wrong one. In a sales type enviroment, buying the computer itself is such a big deal that people do not give their printers proper thought. That's why we see people who only print black text crying the blues about buying so many ink cartridges, and people who print photo’s so often disappointed with the qualith of the images they print. It's important you think about the future cost of printing before you ever make your purchase. For the most part, printing photos is still pretty expensive, and printing text is still pretty cheap. It's been that way for as long as we can remember - yes, the quality of the printing has improved, but for the most part the cash breaks down the same it always has. There are two main categories of printers; you have your laser, primarily thought of for business, and you have your inkjets, the printers that use ink cartridges (these are typically thought of as printers for home users). Below, we will break down a little about each.
Inkjet:
For most people, inkjet printers have been a fixture in their homes just about as long as a computer has. In the very beginning, you may have seen them only with black ink... but for as long as we can remember, they have been both black ink and color. For home users, there are several things you need to know about your printer. The first is how much the ink will cost. It's important to know what it's going to cost everytime you print something. Often times, there is a certain amount of sticker shock when they go to replace their first set of cartridges. Sometimes it costs as much $60-$70 - far outweighing that $30.00 discount they got at the time of purchase. Below is a picture of a pretty standard inkjet printer.
Cartridges:
We were going to work this into the above paragraph, but there's some important information you should have about your printers inkjet cartridges. While they sometimes run out of ink because you used it all, they will also sometimes run out of ink because you didn’t use them enough, and they dried up. There are a lot of ways to end up in your car on the way to get a new set of cartridges - for this reason you will always want to keep a spare set around the house. You also need to be smart about how you buy cartridges. Printer manufacturers get pretty tricky to help combat the high price on ink... Sometimes they'll, put less ink in the cartridges, or use lower quality ink. You may want to consider getting generic ink, but buyer beware... Low quality ink will last less than it's high quality counterpart.
Laser:
Laser printers can print in either color, or black (for many years, it was just black). Businesses use them because of the high yield printing cartridges. A single cartridge can print as many as 10,000 sheets of paper. Laser printers are fundamentally different, in that they use toner that gets heated and melted inside the printer itself, whereas inkjet printers rely on liquid ink. It works just like a copy machine, in a lot of ways. It becomes very affordable to print, costing pennies per sheet when speaking of pure black ink. Many home users overlook going with a laser printer, because they are afraid about not having color - but we switched to one years ago, and love it! No drying out cartridges, no messes to clean up, it just works every time. As a general rule, laser printers have a much sharper picture, especially when it comes to text and grayscale images. Keep in mind, if you want to print photos at home, this option imay not be the best for you. Color laser printers are expensive, and so are their toner cartridges. If you are a college student, someone who only needs black ink, or someone who prints very little color, this is probably the best option for you. As for those few random pictures you want to print now and again, what we do is just upload them to a store website that allows us to pick up our photos. Truth be told, the quality is still way better out of a photomart than any home printer.
Below are pictures of a typical laser printer and toner cartridge:
If you have any questions at all, shoot on over to our forum and ask away.
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