Printers: can't live with them, can't
live without them. Despite this, we'll do our best to help you and those
infernal machines reach some kind of truce.
Although offices and educational
establishments are doing their best to move away from paper, the fact is that
sometimes, you just can't beat having the work there on the desk in front of
you. Whether it's an attempt at a more natural proofread, creating references
for revision, or a printout to accompany a presentation, there are still plenty
of reasons that you might need to get documents off your PC and into the real
world.
Even so, few devices have caused as much
misery to computer users over the years as the humble printer has managed to. A
cocktail of driver conflicts, wonky paper problems and unexplained hardware
faults frequently combine to make the simple act of printing a letter into
something far more complicated and frustrating than it should be.
However, until the day when we can all
agree that no-one should ever have to use a printer again, you need to have
access to one. Maybe today you can e-mail someone a PDF instead, maybe tomorrow
you can print something at the library, but one day, you'll need to make a hard
copy of your work at short notice, and on that day you'll have to have a
printer handy. That doesn't mean you're completely without a choice, of course
- over the next few pages, we'll help you decide which of the many available
printers can fill the real gap in your life.
Printer Basics
Modern printers are divided into a few
basic categories, each with their own advantages and disadvantages. If you're
just after something that can print out the occasional form or document, you
can (and probably should) consider a cheap inkjet. They're low-priced,
low-maintenance and as if to prove how cheap they are, you'll probably end up
paying more for ink cartridges in the first year than you spent on the printer
itself. They're an also no-frills device, though, which means if you're
planning anything even vaguely fancy - double-sided printing, or multiple paper
sizes for example - you can expect a lot of fiddling and failed attempts before
chancing upon the correct procedure. If wasting paper upsets you, it's probably
best to go with something more complicated.
In any case, don't expect an inkjet printer
to last very long. If a sub- $80 inkjet lasts three years, before it needs
replacing, you're doing well.
If you want something more capable, or plan
to do a lot of printing, you can buy a multi-function printer (otherwise known
as an all-in-one, and abbreviated to either AIO or MFP). These are essentially
printers which have had a scanner and/ or fax machine grafted onto them,
doubling or tripling their size, but greatly increasing their capabilities.
Many have a variety of additional features, including wireless networking
support, which makes them ideal for home office work or small businesses.
However, their photocopying function will also prove useful if you expect to be
doing a lot of research out of textbooks, and university students will probably
appreciate that they're very space efficient, given the limited living space
that's generally afforded to the modern day student.
However, all-in-ones are still mostly
inkjet printers. If you're running off a lot of documents - for example, if
you're sharing one printer between several heavy users, or if you plan to be
producing long manuscripts (like projects, dissertations and essays), then
you'll want a laser printer.
While often expensive laser printing offers
the best quality and print speeds of all consumer printers, they are also large
and hard to maintain. They might be ideal for small offices and such like, but
they're not normally necessary for casual home use.
Laser printers come in two main types:
monochrome and color. Unlike inkjets, which are simple and cheap enough that
monochrome printers have been priced out of existence, there's still a
substantial difference in price, performance and complexity between color and
monochrome laser printers, and the separation still exists. Check which you're
buying before you get the credit card out!
Technically, laser printers don't actually
use ink, but toner drums. Monochrome laser printers use a single photosensitive
drum that picks up an electrostatic charge when a laser beam is shone onto it.
The charged areas of the drum then pick up toner and transfer it to the paper.
Where, in inkjet printers, liquid ink is squirted onto a page and left to dry,
in laser printers it's toner particles which take their place. These particles
are melted by the laser, then transferred onto the page where they cool, fusing
with the surface of the paper as they do so. The results are generally
higher-quality than laser printers, and far quicker to produce.
Color laser printers use the same four-color
combination of black, cyan, magenta and yellow as inkjets, only with one toner
drum for each color. However, toner drums are expensive, and due to the process
used each color takes one full pass of a page to print. For that reason, a
full-color page will take almost four times as long to print in a laser printer
as a monochrome one, but it'll still be faster than an inkjet!
What To Buy
Choosing what type of printer to buy
largely depends on what it is that's motivating you to buy one in the first
place. To help you make a decision, we've created a few case studies so that
you can determine which type of printer best matches your personal needs.
Cheapest Printer
You're looking for a printer that won't
cost a lot of money. It'll be used infrequently - maybe once a fortnight or
less - and you don't want to have to spend a lot on aftercare and ink either.
However, it'll be subject to a wide variety of uses, from printing letters to
photo-quality images and everything in between. The documents it prints are likely
to be short - brief essays or one-off images, and they aren't likely to be
needed in a hurry either.
