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Finding your Way among Printers |
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Making a choice regarding a printer may start with answering the question about what tasks your printer is going to perform. Do you print a large number of monochrome (black and white) documents? Will you print any school or university essays with some simple colour pictures or diagrams? Or are you dreaming of the beautiful pictures on your hard drive being transformed into hard copies? The answers to these questions will influence the correct choice of a printer. From the experience, most often the best choice for home will be a relatively inexpensive colour inkjet printer able to provide acceptable quality of both text and photos. A simple laser printer is another good alternative. It will quickly print large volumes of documents at relatively low cost. In addition to it you can have a colour inkjet printer designed for photo printing.  If you need colour printing, there are two possibilities, a colour laser or inkjet printer. Not so long ago nobody would think of buying a colour laser printer for home due to its unaffordable prices. Now there are fairly inexpensive units in this market segment. In fact, colour laser printers have two advantages, the high rate of printing and relatively trouble-free operation. The cost of printing with a laser colour printer is quite high even if compatible supplies are used not to mention any original consumables. You will not get a print of high photographic quality even with a high-level colour laser printer. Of course you cannot expect it from a low-cost printer for home use. At the moment the compact photo printers are becoming more common. They are made compact to be carried, and it is better to use conventional devices to print photos in standard conditions as a small printer has little ink and the cartridges are more difficult to find. Normally at home we use a printer only to print text files and less often photos. So, if you are not a professional photographer and high-quality colour printing is not so critical, then you should not overpay. It should be enough to buy a small inkjet printer within the price range of $150, and it will perform many of your tasks though rather slowly. If you work at home, it may be appropriate for you to purchase an all-in-one multi-functional device. All-in-One Makes our Life Easier Until recently several separate devices such as a printer, a copier, a scanner and a fax were used to perform some operations. With the all-in-one devices it is possible to use one unit as a bridge between the paper-based and digital documents, making it easier to share them. Advantages of the all-in-one devices The all-in-one units have some obvious advantages compared to printers, scanners and other devices. First of all, it is considerably cheaper to buy an all-in-one unit than buying a scanner, a printer, a copier and other devices separately. Secondly, the all-in-one units are lightweight and occupy much less space on your desktop rather than all of its components bought separately. Another indisputable advantage is that setting-up is very easy with only one CD containing the drivers for all the built-in devices. In addition, such a unit requires only one data cable. Shortcomings of the all-in-one printer One of the minuses of an all-in-one printer is that if any component fails to operate, you undertake the risk of being left without anything at the same time. Of course, the risk of such failure is small but nevertheless there is a risk you can remain without a printer, a scanner and a copier. Before you choose an all-in-one printer you have to decide whether you need it for home or office, because an all-in-one printer will be used in different ways in different places. For example, in the office you will need to make more photocopies but print more photos at home.  How to choose an all-in-one printer for home? It depends on the tasks your all-in-one printer will perform. It is reasonable to have a high-quality colour one to print images and digital photographs. The best option for your home is an inkjet all-in-one printer preferably with continuous ink supply or a refillable cartridge. Thus you can save about 20% on printing and ink and secure yourself from buying cartridges. In any case the choice of an all-in-one printer will depend directly on the tasks it will perform. If you need high-quality digital photographs, the best for you would be a jet multifunctional device which will print limited information. If the all-in-one printer is to perform a considerable amount of work, you will stick to the laser version of an all-in-one printer. Future prospects We deal with paper-based and electronic documents in our regular activities. Paper documents are indeed easier to read but the electronic form allows modifying, editing, adding pieces of text or images from other materials, then print it out, send an e-mail or fax. In the future new solutions should be first introduced in all-in-one devices. The more functions they can offer, the more interest consumers will demonstrate. Back |
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