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Picking The Perfect Printer

April 17, 2014 No Comments

All the printers out there have a common purpose — to print documents and pictures, save the latest 3D printers. So it might sound all rational to buy any kind of printer out there for your office or home. However, choosing the right printer for you needs is not as simple as it sounds. We will try to be as simple as possible with this guide to help you choose the right printer for your needs. If you already have a printer and if you figure out after going through this article that you have a wrong type of printer, you should probably change it or port it to the right environment so that you won’t be spending a lot of money on ink cartridges in the long run.

 

Kerry_1

 

Documents

If you are looking for a printer that should spit out hundreds of sheets of black and white documents that are duller than the dullest newspaper, you should probably get a laser printer. Most laser printers are at least 5 times faster than the average ink jet printers. Don’t spend a lot of time standing next to the ink jet printer as it takes its own sweet time to print out flawless documents. On the downside, laser printers might not deliver the same kind of print quality as an inkjet printer. This doesn’t mean the print quality would look awful. Since inkjets are built for printing photos the image and text quality will always look better when compared to laser printers. There are also laser printer that can print in color, but they could be a bit expensive. Most importantly, laser printers are extremely cost effective. An average laser printer will be slightly expensive when compared to an inkjet printer, but the investment is worth-it for all the money you are going to save on printer cartridges in the years to come.

 

Kerry_2

 

Color vs monochrome

Do you think you will seldom print photos and only want a printer to produce monochrome documents? You should get a monochrome laser printer. If you want to produce hundreds of sheets of black and white documents and occasionally print in color, you should probably get a color laser printer. You should think of a color laser printer as a super document printer that also has photo printing capabilities.

Color laser printers could be expensive although they could help you save a considerable amount of money in the long run. A simple alternative to not break the bank is to buy an entry-level laser printer and a low-cost ink-jet printer and use the laser printer for documents and the inkjet for photos and super important documents.

Photos

Are you looking for a printer that is meant to print crisp and vivid pictures? You need to get a photo only printer. Photo printers are technically speaking inkjet printers. Inkjet printers use ink cartridges as opposed to toners in laser printers. A normal inkjet printer could also printer pictures. However if you are a professional and want your pictures to be high quality and need to be printed in various photo standard sizes, you need to get a printer that is meant to print only photos. There are also laser photo printers, but the quality might not be on-par with photo only inkjets.

Home printers

It could be a daunting task to find the right kind of printer if you are a home user. Most home users might not have a clear idea about their printing requirements. So it is highly important to identify your needs before choosing a printer for your home. A lot of home users will look for a printer that can print documents as well as photos without breaking the bank. This is the main reason home users go for an affordable inkjet printer, which doesn’t need to a lot of investment. If you have school going kids who will be printing a lot, you should probably buy a separate entry-level monochrome laser printer so that you won’t end-up changing the printer cartridge every now and then.

Multi-functional vs normal printers

If you want your printer to do more than just print like, scan, copy, and fax. You should look for a printer with the right features. Multi-functional printers could be quite useful in an office environment, where on needs to copy, scan and send and receive fax. Home users could probably buy standard printers without all the bells and whistles. Multi-functional or all-in-one printers for offices will also have larger paper trays and in some cases multiple trays to hold thousands of sheets of paper.

To get informed about printer cartridges and compensation you can visit Ink Station and to find reviews on specific printer I would recommend browsing cNet. Best thing would be to consider two or more brands or models and once you compare prices you can make a decision to purchase your favorite.

 

Kerry Blake is a MS Office expert, trainer and lecturer for past seven years.

As he put it, “Most of my articles are inspired by people I meet in class. You can find me writing about technology and cars when I feel I got something to say.”

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