The ABCs of Printers

The printer has become one of the most important accessories to a computer system nowadays. Look into every home or office and chances are you will not find one that does not have a printer. Indeed, the printer has become a must-have especially for producing published works or hard copies of files and data.

The printer is a valuable and indispensable tool especially for those in the printing press or professional print and graphic businesses. To date, they still hold the top spot for mass printing works as well as the demand for high-definition results. Many of them make use of a computer printer to achieve good quality prints and to produce the prints faster.

There are actually many printer types available in the market today. One type of printer is the local peripheral printer, or simply the computer printer. A computer printer is attached directly to the computer using a printer cable. It allows the user to print directly from the source.

Another type of printer is the network printer. This is a single printer connected to or shared by many computers through a built-in network. It allows both local and network connected users to print documents from their computers.

A user can print data using an impact printer. An impact printer is a printing device that uses a printer head. This printer head contains several metal pins which strike against a ribbon to produce the print on the page. The most common example of an impact printer is the dot-matrix printer. This is a low-definition device and is typically used in printing invoices or cash register receipts.

A non-impact printer, on the other hand, prints faster and more quietly. The most popular example for this will be the thermal printer. A thermal printer, as the name implies, utilizes heat to print on special heat-receptive paper. This is normally found or used in portable calculators and fax machines. The ink-jet printer is another example of a non-impact printer. It squirts fine jets of ink from the ink cartridges onto the paper.

Another type of printer is the toner-based printer. This makes use of the same technology that is utilized in photocopiers. One common example of a toner-based printer is the laser printer. The laser printer uses dry powdered ink and laser beam technology. Becasue of its speed and commendable quality, laser printers have become a popular choice among offices and corporate settings.

Color printers can print not only black or monochromatic pages but also those with full color. Photo printers, which have become more popular thanks to digital cameras, are classified as color printers. However, these normally contain more ink cartridges than the standard inkjet printer so they can print more realistic and high-definition pictures. Some photo printers can print pictures no bigger than the standard 4” by 6” size and do not require to be attached to a computer for them to print.

The advent of modern printer technology saw the rise of the so-called multi-function printer or the “all-in-one” printer. True to its name, an all-in-one printer is an all-purpose device that allows users to scan, print, fax, or even photocopy a document. Most models can also be attached directly to other external accessories like memory cards, USB/flash or external drives, and image-capture devices like digital cameras.