Unravelling the mysteries of printers

Despite living in a digital age, there's still a need for printed documents.

One of the big ironies of the digital age is the fact that we still need to print information onto bits of dead tree. Be it zapping out photos for the album or even an invoice for a client, printers are still must have tech, yet choosing the right one can be a daunting task. Not only are there a multitude of different printer technologies to choose from, the bewildering array of printer jargon can be pretty baffling too.

Choosing the right printer

From DPI to PPM, the sheer volume of printer related bumf a buyer has to learn about and then sift through can be enough to put anyone off printer shopping permanently. Feeling the pain of many a frustrated printer buyer I've compiled this list of plain English printer specs for your reading pleasure.

When shopping for any type of printer, be sure to check out the cost per page specs. The measures used by manufacturers to quote cost per page specs on glossy brochures may vary, but any figures quoted will at least give you an indication of how much any printer is likely to cost to run. The cost of running a printer over its lifetime can, and will, be many times its original purchase price.

Another consideration that can impact on any printer cost to use specification is toner or ink cartridge capacity. The frequency with which you'll need to change ink or toner cartridges figures prominently in any costs for any printer you're considering.

If shopping for an inkjet, aim for one with separate ink cartridges for each colour that can be replaced individually as different colours never run out at the same time and having separate cartridges means you won't waste unused ink when you run out of one colour.

Print resolution, is quoted as DPI (that's the amount of dots able to be squeezed into a square inch, or Dots Per Inch). In a nutshell, a higher DPI spec inch should equate to higher quality text, graphics and photos. There are however caveats. Some printers use print resolution enhancement technologies that typically work by filling in spaces between dots so the edges of text and lines look smoother. Although this improves the apparent quality of text and graphics, it won't do anything to improve photos. Be sure to check that the maximum DPI output quoted for any printer you're considering is for its actual output rather than its output enhanced resolution.

Equally as important as output capabilities is print speed. Typically quoted as pages able to be printed per minute (PPM), many manufacturers quote the printers fastest print speed for low quality prints rather than slower speeds for high quality or photo prints. Make sure that any quoted speed corresponds to the output quality you're most likely to use most often.

Paper handling is another key spec to take into account. Make sure that any printer you're thinking of buying can accommodate any different types and sizes of stationary. Not all printers can work with heavy card or do double-sided printing (which is often referred to as duplexing and can effectively halve the amount of paper used). If you're likely to print using various paper sizes, a printer with multiple paper trays will save you from a lot of pre-print paper fiddling. If you're looking at printing out large volumes of big documents, multiple output trays and document collators will save you a tonne of work (if your budget can stretch that far).

Printer Technologies

The sheer number of ways manufacturers have found to print is incredible. Over the last 30 years, printers have gone from being expensive, clunky, automated typewriters only capable of lo-fi black-and-white output, to the sleek, near silent photo capable thoroughbreds we now take for granted.

Most early printers used impact technologies that worked along similar lines to typewriters, bashing pins against an ink coated ribbon, onto a piece of paper to create a collection of dots that made up a printed character. Lo-fi print quality aside, the big downside of this approach was that impact printers were also incredibly noisy.

Things have long since moved on and the search for faster and quieter printers capable of higher-quality output has led to printers that melt wax, heat dye, spit ink, or even use lasers to print.

Like their older impact printer counterparts, most make up text and images using lots tiny dots, but nowadays the dots are so petite that they're unable to be seen without a magnifying glass. Hundreds and even thousands of dots are typically crammed into a square inch to make up the photo prints we take for granted.

Inkjets

Most inkjets typically have Cyan, Yellow, Magenta and Black ink cartridges which when used together can create almost any colour you're ever likely to need. Inkjets can cost anywhere from $70 upwards and work by squirting lots of tiny drops onto paper, which make up images or text. These ink droplets are so small that an amazing 4,800 (or more) can be precisely placed into a single square inch.

Whilst almost any inkjet can print photos, inkjets that are designed with photo printing and using photo paper gives better results. Photo capable inkjets typically use an extra ink cartridge to produce a wider range of colours. Most photo printers can also print directly from compatible digital cameras or memory cards. When used with photo optimised inks and glossy photo papers, photo inkjet printers can generate results that can be tough to tell apart from prints from a photo specialist store.

Cheaper low end inkjets will typically hold one or two cartridges (typically one has black ink and the other colour inks). Four cartridge inkjet printers are becoming more commonplace, with each cartridge holding a different coloured ink. This is a good thing as you only need replace the ink you use whereas single or double cartridge printers force you to throw out all the unused ink in a cartridge just because one colour is used up.

Laser Printers

Not only are Laser printers fast, most are also whisper quiet and their text print quality is stunning. For printing large amounts of text, a laser printer's low per-page print costs and the typically high page yield per toner cartridge make them pretty hard to beat.

Laser printers work by using a laser to imprint a mirror image of a document onto a static sensitive drum which is then coated in static sensitive toner powder that sticks to the parts of drum that have been charged by the laser. The toner is then transferred off the drum and onto paper (which works much like those school science experiments that use static to make paper stick to a comb). The toner is then heated and melted onto the paper, making the document permanent.

Until recently most low cost personal laser printers have tended to be black and white only, but low colour laser printers are also now becoming increasingly affordable.

Multi-Function Printers

Another really nifty type of printer is the multifunction printer, which are the print equivalent of a Swiss army knife. These usually consist of an inkjet or laser printer, fax machine and scanner, making them incredibly versatile.

Multifunction printers can be used as a fax, a photocopier, a scanner for transferring documents and images onto your PC and they'll even print too. One of the big draw cards with a multifunction printer is that they can also reduce the clutter usually associated with operating a printer, a separate scanner and freestanding fax machine by giving you the full enchilada in a single compact device.

Solid ink and Dye Sub Printers

Solid ink printers were used in the past as high-end colour office printers, although they've largely been superseded by colour lasers, they're still popular with designers and produce great results for graphics on transparencies. Solid Ink printers typically work using solid waxy sticks of Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and blue which are melted and sprayed the ink on a rotating, oil coated drum. The paper then passes over the drum and the image is transferred onto the page.

Dye-sublimation printers are similar to solid ink but use heat to transfer dye onto paper. Documents are usually transferred colour at a time using separate colour panels. Dye-sublimation printers are used by print professionals and graphic designers for high-quality colour pre-press prints. More recently, Dye sublimation printers have become increasingly commonplace as dedicated 6x4" photo printers squarely aimed at the consumer market.

Home Printer Options

If printing lots of colour graphics, photos and the odd text document are your thing, the sheer versatility of inkjet printers can make them a great choice for home users. According to Darryn Rickwood, IPG Country Manager, Hewlett-Packard, "Inkjets are quite versatile, they offer laser quality black text, graphics, do photos and handle multiple paper types"

If printing large amounts of text is likely to be a consideration but photos and colour graphics are also a priority, consider purchasing a separate low-end laser printer alongside an inkjet. Laser printer toner cartridges tend to have a significantly higher print capacity than inkjet cartridges which means more pages per toner cartridge and a lower cost per page for printing text.

If cranking out 6x4" glossy photo prints is your only printing need, consider a dedicated photo printer. Most photo printers resemble a normal inkjet that's been shrunk in the wash and typically incorporate memory card readers and a USB port for transferring photos. Beware, however, that getting decent photo prints requires glossy photo paper be used and that can be costly.

Last but by no means least, if the entire household is likely to want to use the printer, consider a network-capable printer which can plug into a spare network port on your broadband router, or connect to your home network using a wireless connection. As long as your kids or partner can access your home network, they should all be able to access the printer.

Work Printer Options

Where home users tend to print a combination of text, graphics and photos, businesses typically create lots of text and a small amount of graphics. Because of this, the lower cost per page spec of a typical mono laser printer often makes them a better choice over an inkjet for printing text.

This said, inkjet manufacturers are rapidly catching up and inkjets such as Hewlett-Packards OfficeJet Pro can have a superior cost-per-page to some low end laser printers if your overall print volumes are not too large.

Print requirements are also likely to cary depending on the size of business according Rickwood, who says that "reviewing the differences between lasers an ink an inkjet has lower up front costs and in some cases can offer lower running cost than a laser, for bigger businesses, you can network many laser printers and they can also be leased allowing the business to spread their total cost of ownership over the lease period"

If printing large volumes of colour graphics (excluding photo prints) is a likely requirement, a colour laser printer might a good bet. Because Colour laser printers use toner, not ink cartridges, they tend to be able to belt out a larger volume of pages before toner cartridges need to be replaced. Although colour laser toner cartridges can be costly, they're still usually significantly cheaper for printing out large volumes of colour graphics on an ongoing basis, especially compared to printing similar volumes of colour graphics using an inkjet printer.

If you don't however print a lot of pages containing colour graphics but still need to zap out the odd photo quality print, an inkjet printer remains your best choice (although a mono laser could still be your best choice for printing text).

If your business is likely to have multiple people wanting access to a printer, consider a printer with inbuilt network options.

3rd party vs original cartridges

Most of us typically want to print photos that'll last once framed and hung on a wall, or put in albums. Alas inkjet ink cartridges are expensive and many inkjet owners choose to save on printing costs by using more affordable third party ink cartridges or even by refilling existing cartridges with third party inks.

Although this can dramatically reduce printing costs, there is a potential downside. In 2006 a study done by Wilhelm Imaging Research (WIR), found that photos printed in inkjets with refilled or third party cartridges tended to fade much quicker than photos printed with inks from the printers' manufacturer.

Testing found that prints made with many third party or refilled ink cartridges faded up to an astonishing 730 times faster than prints made with original inkjet cartridges.

Testing was done using third party and refilled inkjet print cartridges from leading European brands as well as those from major print manufacturers which were subjected to accelerated light fading tests to predict how many years of display was possible before noticeable fading occurred.

Last but by no means least check that the printer brand you're considering have environmentally sound printer consumable recycling policies. According to Rickwood, HP "have a full lifecycle programme which means we recycle used cartridges via our planet partners programme where all HP cartridges are broken down into their raw materials and are re-used to make other products".