Laser Printers Buying Guide
July 19, 2007
Laser printers are traditionally known as office printers, though they are starting to make an appearance in more fluent or high volume printing homes. Laser printers use toner, which is powdered ink, instead of wet ink cartridges as inkjets do. A rolling drum is charged positively, as is the ink. A laser (or LED lights in some) knocks the positive charge off the drum in the shape of the information to be printed. The toner particles are repelled by the positive charge, which will result in unprinted white on the page, and attracted to the laser shaped areas on the drum. The ink, which sticks to the drum due to electrostatics is then passed over a paper charged to attract it off the drum. It sits on the paper and is passed through two rollers that fuse the toner to the paper using heat.
Advantages to laser printers are no smearing of ink after printing is complete, overall lower printing costs per page when doing high volume printing, and usually speed. Disadvantages are slow warm up speed if printing has been stopped, initial costs higher than inkjets, and generally low quality colour reproduction.
Paper
Generally laser printers will be boxy in shape to accommodate the mechanical parts necessary to make its special printing process happen. The paper will have its own tray, though a few will have extending flat feeder guides. Paper capacity may range from 50 sheets to 500 or more. Paper size is generally limited, though higher end models can accommodate larger sheets. Be sure to select the printer with the right capacities and sizes for your work load.
A duplexing unit will allow you to print on both sides of the paper, cutting costs.
Speed
Laser printers load the entire image first. After this, all parts of the ink laying process can occur simultaneously, greatly speeding up the process. Paper speeds are measured in pages per minute (ppm). From model to model this ranges from 5 pages per minute to more than 25 pages per minute. Some high end office models can print 200 pages a minute. Black and white printers tend to print 15 pages per minute or more. Photo laser printers generally print less than 5 pages per minute. They can be very slow, especially when high quality is required.
Resolution
Resolution is labeled in dpi or dots per inch. It measures the quality and clarity of the output. The number will be given in terms of horizontal and vertical resolution. Typical laser printer resolution is 1200 dpi x 1200 dpi. Laser printers can be more precise than other printers and usually generate higher resolution black and white output. Resolution and quality of colour output generally suffers. Higher quality colour printing can be had to the detriment of speed and economics.
Colour
Traditional colour laser printing requires the printer to transfer each of the three different colours separately. Misalignment of the drum can occur which causes blurring or other quality issues. Some laser printers have an extra large drum in which all colours may be laid down without moving the drum first, improving accuracy. These will print very slowly. Sometimes the ink will be waxy instead of the traditional powdered toner.
Colour capable printers will generally be the only ones capable of direct connect. Direct connect allows you to hook a device such as a digital camera directly to the printer.
Printer Type
Laser printers are available as network printers, photoprinters, personal printers and workgroup printers. Higher end models can do multi-functions such as photocopy, or fax.
Network printers allow multiple computers to use them. They usually have a wireless connection.
Personal Printers are connected to one computer. They can be wireless or connected by a cable.
Work group printers are a type of network printer which is dedicated to a specific work group in the office.
Photo printers are technologically specialized to handle special inks and create quality photos. Photo capable printers are more likely to come with memory card slots and pict bridges. Pict bridges allow the printer to read the memory card with out the aid of a computer.
Platform
An operating platform is the software that runs your computer. Examples of this are Micrsoft winders XP, NT, Vista, or MAC. Its very important to select a printer that is compatible with your operating system or the two will not be able to communicate.
Memory
Since laser printers load the entire document prior to printing, it must contain a certain amount of memory. Having a large memory is critical when printing extremely long or graphic intense documents, or graphics alone. Memory is known as RAM (random access memory). The printer should have at least 1 MB of RAM for one page of low resolution graphics, and 4 MB of RAM for 1 page of higher resolution graphics.
