While at work, I help a lot of customers pick out a new printer. So in this article I will cover some of the most commonly asked questions I get. But... Before you go out looking for a new printer, here are some of the things you should ask yourself.
1. What are my printing needs? You really want to know what you'll be printing before choosing a printer. Some printers are more efficient for certain types of printing then are others. Some can be quite costly to maintain if all you are going to do is print out your homework.
2. How many pages per day, week, month will I print? Your printing volume is important. For example, if your print volume is high, you may want to consider a laser printer for long term cost savings.
3. Do I want to print photo's or just documents. While photo quality printers will print any document, it may be costly to do so in some printers, as the black ink cartridges often tend to be different prices, sometimes higher sometimes lower then the color.
4. Do I even need to print in color or just black and white? Small black and white laser printers have come way down in prices these days.
5. What type of paper will I want to use? (Cardstock, photo paper, mailing labels etc.) If you intend to print out greeting cards on cardstock, you need to go with a slightly higher end printer. Cheap printers can't handle that thickness of paper.
6. Does the printer I am replacing use a USB Cable or does it have a Parallel (big fat Plug)? Printers no longer come with the cables to hook them up to the computer.
7. It also helps to know the age of the computer you will be hooking it up to. If you are still using Windows 95, your pretty much out of luck and would be better off looking for a used printer on eBay, Windows 98, it's going to be hard. If you are using XP, your USB ports may still be out of date and need to be upgraded, at a cost of aprox bucks for a USB 2.0 card and for an install. (If you bought your computer in the last 3 years or so, you should be ok with this.) It can also be helpful if you know how much memory your computer has and how fast your processor is. This can be found out by going to the control panel on your start menu and clicking on the system icon.
Once you know this information, you are ready to go choose a printer. The first thing you will notice is that there are a lot of differences between printers.
Laser Printer vs. Inkjet
For the average home user an inkjet printer is adequate. Most people I deal with want to be able to print out the occasional photo from their digital camera and their documents. Some just want to print out their homework. An ink jet printer is great for this.
Laser printers are more designed around the needs of a business. They are more cost effective for higher volume printing. They do not use ink, instead they use a powdery substance called toner. Many are black and white only, and take a single toner cartridge, color laser printers take four toner cartridges, black, cyan, magenta and yellow.
Laser printers are usually a lower resolution print and are not considered photo quality. However they give a permanent bond, so if you intend to print out brochures, they are better done on a laser printer. If the paper gets wet, it can still be read, unlike an inkjet. A few of these such as Oki, use a waxed based toner which gives you a nice magazine quality glossy print, most however give a flat finish.
A toner cartridge can range in price from on up. Although toner is usually more expensive per cartridge, page yields average 3000 to 5000 plus pages printed per cartridge. Inkjet cartridges get you between approximately 200 to 600 pages per cartridge. These page yields are usually based on printing text only at 5% page coverage.
Photo Printer vs. Document Printer
In the ink jets, there are differences between the two. This has mainly to do with the ink. There are two types, dye based inks, which are better for photo's, and pigment based inks which are better for documents. Some inks are chemically formulated to work with the manufacturers brand of photo paper, but most brands of photo paper will work with any printer. Hewlet Packard for example has put kind of a bar code on back of their photo paper which the printer reads, claiming a chemical bond with HP Photo Paper and therefore the fastest print.
Another difference is in the print heads (where the ink sprays out from). With Canon, Brother, Epson and some newer HP's, the print heads are actually a part of the machine. This requires regular printing, meaning at least a page a month (weekly would be better), otherwise the print heads could dry up, and then it can actually be cheaper to replace the printer, if the replacement print heads are even available. These printers are generally better for photo printing.
With Lexmark and most HP's the print head is a part of the cartridge. So when you replace the cartridge, you get a new print head. These tend to be better document printers, although they will print out good photo's the others tend to be better at it.
The market trend in home printers is pushing more towards photo quality. With print resolutions reaching 9600 DPI, (Dots Per Inch), you would never know the difference between a photograph printed from your printer vs. one that is printed out at your local photo shop. However, many of the new features of some of these printers can be confusing.
Features
Photo printers are coming with a range of new features including card readers and LCD screens. With this combination, you can take the card from your digital camera and put it in the printer. Your pictures then show up on the screen and you can print out the photo from that.
Picture bridge capabilities is another common feature. With this type of set up, you plug your picture bridge compatible camera into the printer and tell it to print the picture from the camera. Pretty much any name brand digital camera 2 to 3 years old will have this capibility.
All in One machines, can print, copy, scan and some even have fax capabilities. To fax you plug a phone line into the printer. Many of these may not work properly with older computers because of the outdated USB ports.
Some printers are network ready. You can plug them into a router and print from any computer on the network. Others can be used in a network with a print server.
Attachments
Although most printers come with a set of cartridges, these are usually starter cartridges. This first set has about half to a third of the ink in a new set of cartridges. So the sales person will try to talk you into buying a set of cartridges.
You will also need to buy a USB cable to hook the printer up. Although older printers came with a parallel cable to hook up to the computer, these cables are outdated. So you may also have to be prepared to buy a cable.
