Other Sites
Before the Internet and email became my primary communications medium, I did quite a bit of computer printing � first with a now dinosaur-like Wangwriter II word processor that had a big, noisy, daisy-wheel printer integral, and later with an Apple ImageWriter II dot-matrix printer when I switched to a Mac in the early '90s.
The daisy wheel in the Wang actually did a very decent job, especially with a carbon strike ribbon, and I even inherited an impressive selection of fonts with it in the form of a bunch of quick change daisy wheels. Alas, it was also as slow as cold molasses running uphill, and deafeningly loud.
The ImageWriter was considerably faster and much more versatile, and in "Best" (or "near letter quality") mode it didn't do a half-bad job. Indeed, I shouldn't be using the past tense here because I still use the ImageWriter for some of the hard copy printing I still do, which isn't a lot these days. We have four Macs that can support it, and it remains convenient to use.
Yes, I also have an inkjet printer � for the past three-plus years a not-great but serviceably utilitarian Lexmark Z-35. However, a grievous deficiency of inkjets for someone who uses printers as sporadically as I do is that the ink hardens and clogs the cartridge heads between uses. There is a program with the Lexmark software to clear the heads, but it wastes copious amounts of ink, and replacing just one set of color and black & white cartridges costs as much as the printer itself sold for complete with cartridges (for example, this week my local local (well, 50 miles, which is as local as it gets for electronics stores here) Circuit City has the equivalent Lexmark basic inkjet printer with two cartridges for CAN $47.95, and I've seen them advertised at Radio Shack complete with color and black ink cartridges and a USB cable thrown in for CAN$44.99, which is less than what the two ink cartridges retail for for separately). The term "loss leader" comes to mind. If the cartridges would fit, it would actually be cheaper for me to buy one of these new printers than to replace the cartridges in my Z-35.
PC Mag's Lance Ulanoff had an interesting article on this topic a few months ago:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1832537,00.asp
The computer printer as a disposable consumable? Say it isn't so. This really rubs me the wrong way. However, that's what my Lexmark has become. If it had better quality output, I would have considered shopping around for alternatives to the obscenely expensive OEM replacement cartridges from Staples or Wal-Mart or an online vendor, or even considered trying some refill kits. However, the Z-35, while it's been dependable, produces mediocre text and image quality.
However, be aware that some brand printers are reportedly disabled if “foreign� cartridges are used, the better one supposes to protect the $11 billion ink cartridge racket... er... industry, so refill kits may be the only viable non-OEM option.
One online supplier of inkjet refill kits (and third-part ink cartridges) is Meritline, whose products are compatible with HP, Canon, Lexmark, Epson, Xerox, Sharp, Brother and other brand name printers, the Meritline Inkjet Combo Refill Kit can refill a the same cartridge up to twelve times.
The kit comes with DuraFIRM ink technology which is claimed to create prints that are brighter, more vivid, more UV resistant and even more water resistant than prints created using regular ink. Colors included in the kit are Magenta, Cyan, Yellow and Black, along with all necessary refill tools (Sealing plugs, Eyelet Screw, Hole Making Tool, Syringe with Refill Needle) are provided with the kit.
Meritline provides a comprehensive range of downloadable refill instructions to guide the user through the refill process.
Says Michael Diz, Meritline VP; “As far as we’re concerned, the price of ink jet printing should match the downward pricing trend of printers. The introduction of the Meritline Inkjet Combo Refill Kit is a step in that direction and a strong response to our customers needs. Coupled with Meritline’s DuraFirm Premium Photo Paper and our refill kit, we aim to save our customers thousands of dollars in hi-quality printing costs alone.�
For additional information, visit:
http://www.meritlineproducts.com/products/ink/index.html
Another supplier of discount inkjet cartridges is:
http://www.atlanticinkjet.com/
As for me, I just got a discontinued model Canon Pixma at a good price, which uses cheaper (but still absurdly expensive) replacement ink cartridges. For the amount of printing I do, inkjet cartridge costs actually wouldn't be a major expense issue if it weren't for the clog and clear routine, which is also time-consuming and annoying. Suffice to say I'm not a big fan of inkjet printers.
By contrast, I have what appears to be a lifetime supply of ImageWriter ribbons, and new ribbon cartridges are only about nine bucks. The consumables aspect of dot matrix printers was much more attractive. That may be one reason (strike-through capability is another) that you can still buy ribbons for ImageWriters ( http://www.mac-pro.com/s.nl/sc.2/category.59/.f ),and used units in good condition can sell for more than many brand new inkjet units.
Nevertheless, the inkjet is now the undisputed king of the consumer printing market, although for folks who are primarily interested in printing text and monochrome graphs, there are now good, relatively inexpensive home and small office laser printers available.
The first commercial inkjet printer technology was Canon's "Bubble Jet," accidentally discovered in 1977 when an employee touched an ink-filled syringe with a hot soldering iron. The heat forced a droplet of ink out of the needle and voila! - a new printing technology was born.
Inkjet printers function by spraying tiny (c. 50 and 60 microns) droplets of black and white or colored ink onto paper or other media, and are capable of resolutions of up to around 1440x720 dots per inch (dpi). The dots may be of different colors combined together to create photo-quality images. For really acceptable photo printing quality you need a four-color (CMYK) printer, and professional quality photo images require six colour support including light cyan and a light magenta. However, photo-optimized inkjet printers tend to do relatively poorly printing text, alas. Early color inkjets supported three colours: cyan, magenta and yellow (CMY) which can also combined to produce black, somewhat inefficiently. Better to use a real black (K) ink cartridge for text printing.
Inkjet printers tend to be slowish � typically 2-6 pages per minute (ppm) for text and about 2-3 minutes for images. The traditional advantage of inkjets has been their ability to produce quality color images, but the price of color laser printers has been dropping over the past five years, diminishing the cost gap. While inkjets are cheaper to purchase upfront than lasers, they are much more expensive to operate � up to ten times more expensive than laser printers for consumables and required quality papers.
Colour printing with an inkjet printer will run you approximately a whopping 20-30 cents and black inkjet text about 3-6 cents per page, while color laser output is in the range of 3-8 cents a page, and monochrome laser text costs roughly 3-5 cents a page � the foregoing costs all for printer consumables and not including paper. Laser printers can get fine results using cheap plain paper, while inkjets need special (read expensive) papers for truly optimal results, especially for photo reproduction. Coated inkjet paper will cost about 10 cents a page and glossy photo stock around $1.50 per sheet. Ouch!
Laser printers, whose technology predates inkjets, employ a laser beam to produce an image on a drum by altering the electrical charge on the drum wherever the laser is focused. The drum then rolls through a reservoir of toner, which is picked up by the charged portions of the drum and transferred to the paper through a combination of heat and pressure.
If you are only interested in text printing, a monochrome laser is probably your best and most economical option. A monochrome laser will output razor sharp text at about 6-8 ppm (pages per minute) and black & white graphics at around 2 ppm. Monochrome toner is relatively cheap and laser printers have the tremendous advantage of working well with regular paper. Samsung's 1610 black and white laser printer can be found for under $100.
However, laser printers do have some additional maintenance costs besides toner. The OPC (Organic Photoconductor) drum, developer unit, ozone filter and fuser wand will occasionally have to be replaced, possible all together as a cartridge unit, which can negate some of the laser's operating economy advantage over inkjets.
Color (CMYK) laser printers can produce high quality color images, as well as sharp text, and are significantly faster than inkjets, say: 6-8 ppm for text and 1 ppm for graphics. Color lasers are much more expensive to purchase than even top quality inkjet printers, but if you do a lot of printing, the total cost of ownership may be lower, since coloured laser toner is less expensive per page than inkjet ink.
What about other types of computer printers? The ancient ball or daisy-wheel jobbies like my Wangwriter are virtually dead, and the ImageWriter's venerable dot-matrix technology, in which small pins strike a ribbon coated with ink, causing the ink to transfer to the paper at the point of impact nearly so except for specialized applications where strike-through is required for making carbon copies.
The only printer technologies popular for home and small office use these days are inkjet and laser, but several others that are used in professional institutional and industrial settings.
• Solid ink printers that use sticks of wax-like ink that are melted and applied to the paper as print media. The ink then hardens in place.
• Dye-sublimation printers that use long rolls of transparent film resembling sheets of red-, blue-, yellow- and gray-colored cellophane which are embedded with solid dyes corresponding to the four basic colors used in printing: cyan, magenta, yellow and black (CMYK). The print head incorporates a heating element that applies variable temperature, depending on the amount of a particular color needed, which vaporizes the dyes which then permeate the glossy surface of the paper. Dye-sub printers do a complete pass over the paper for each color, gradually building the image, which makes them pretty slow.
• Thermal wax printers combine the principles of dye-sublimation, solid ink, and dot matrix technologies, using a ribbon somewhat like a typewriter ribbon incorporating alternating CMYK color bands. The ribbon passes in front of a print head that has a series of tiny heated pins which cause the wax to melt and adhere to the paper. By applying pressure and heat to the ribbon the image gets transferred to the page.
• With thermal autochrome printers, the color is in the paper rather than the printer. Cyan, magenta and yellow layers in the special paper are activated by application of a specific amount of heat by the print head, which passes over the paper three times, providing the appropriate temperature for each color layer as needed.
Portable printers are designed to be compact enough to fit in a briefcase, light to carry and run on battery power. The typically employ inkjets or thermal transfer ribbon which work somewhat like a typewriter ribbon that has been impregnated with dye. By applying pressure and heat to the ribbon the image gets transferred to the page.
Thermal transfer models tend to be smaller than inkjets but provide lower image quality, slower print times, and significantly higher cost per page. Both monochrome and color printing are possible depending on what kind of cartridge/ribbon you buy. In general, cost per page for both text and color will be higher for portables because their small cartridges don't have high page capacity. Portable printer prices will typically range between $150-$500.
Since portables run on battery power, battery life is a key consideration if you need to print more than a few pages at a time. A standard Nickel-Cadmium (NiCad) battery can print around 90 pages on one charge and can be recharged without removing it from the printer. A less common kind of battery is the Nickel Metal Hydride (NiMH) which lasts longer but takes longer to recharge. Not all printers include the battery in the price so be aware of that when comparison shopping.
More information on computer printers can be found at these sites:
http://www.viewz.com/shoppingguide/printer.shtml
http://home.howstuffworks.com/inkjet-printer.htm/printable
http://www.pctechguide.com/13inkjets.htm
Charles W. Moore
Tags: Hot Topics ï News ï MooresViews ï
