FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Printers 
What to buy, what you need, and how to set it up
April 1,2003 -- The topic for April will be about printers.
Everyone sooner or later will need a printer. Uses are to print out hard copy of
sites you visited. Letters ,memos and reports you created. Or print out that new
banner or sign you just finished.
Basically there are 3 kinds of printers. Impact ,which
include your dot matrix and daisy wheel printers. Inkjet printers and Laser
printers. They come in either serial, parallel or USB. Price ranges from a few
dollars for the older impact printers to several hundred for the latest color
laser printers.
Impact printers are the older printers. You may well
remember having one with your commodore 64. They fall mainly into 3 distinct
types. Daisy Wheel which print characters using an actual wheel . Much like your
old IBM selectric typewriter. The advantage of such a printer is that it prints
letter quality documents and that it is relatively inexpensive to acquire. (new
they are around $200 and you can generally buy one used for $5 or $10). This
make a logical choice if you are a business and are creating proposals with a
professional look. Also they are a great choice for individuals who need it for
school papers or to create resume's. The drawbacks they are slow, noisy and
cannot do color or graphics.
Dot Matrix printers offer the flexibility of doing Near
Letter Quality printing and graphics. They are different from a daisy wheel in
that it creates letters and graphics using a matrix of tiny pins. Printers are
rated by the number of pins that the matrix contains. A 24 pin printer will
produce documents of higher quality than a 12 pin. Color is only obtained by
changing the color of the ribbon. Thus for color printing a dot matrix is
impractical. However low cost of purchase (They can be bought for around $20
from us) and ribbon is cheap (generally $5-$10) . Makes it a logical choice as a
"second printer" for an individual or a business. Both the daisy wheel
and the dot matrix use either loose or continues form which use the sprocket
holes on both sides of the printer. Paper comes in various weights. (20lb is
recommended as the best). Continuous is recommended as you will not have to constantly
feed paper into the holding bin and you will not have the spacing problems
either.
The last type of impact printer is the thermal printer. They create characters
by using a heating element that transfers it onto special coated paper. The cost
and maintenance are more than a dot matrix. So the most common uses are for
label makers. Prices for new ones are around $100
The next group and most widely used are the color inkjet printers. This is an
item I recommend you buy new. As they are inexpensive (They can bought as
cheaply with ink and all for around $50). They are made by Hewlett Packard,
Epson, Canon, Brother, Xerox and Lexmark. Price is determined by the speed of
the printer (measured in page per minute *ppm for both black and white printing
and color) and weather you need to swap cartridges for black and white only
printing, color or photo printing. Some more expensive ones offer photo printing
and special letter shapes (fonts) and special features. Print quality is
measured in dpi (dots per inch) the higher the dpi the better the quality. One
note I recommend AGAINST purchasing those all in one (printer, copier, scanner,
fax) printers. As they are difficult to install . While the printers themselves
are relatively inexpensive they are like the Polaroid cameras. The
money is made on the replacement ink. A color cartridge can last about 125 pages
and a black and white cartridge last about 300 pages. I recommend that you
purchase an extra set of cartridges when you buy your printer. And then go buy
it online via a service like ebay. There you can purchase your ink for over 50%
of retail list. Save money on shipping by buying more than 1 at a time.
The last group I am going to cover are the laser printers. They are more
expensive but not too much (new they are around $300 up .Used can be had as
cheaply as $50). Lasers are generally black and white only, can do sharp
graphics and professional text. They are faster than inkjet and the cartridge
(called a toner) last upwards of 2500 pages. While the toner is more expensive
than ink cartridges. They are more economical in the long run. The color lasers
have the advantage of the black & white lasers. With the added advantage of
color too. However with prices beginning at $700 upwards to $10,000 .They are impractical
for the home & small business users.
In addition to your printer purchase. You will need the necessary cable to
plug into your computer. Printers come serial (older ones,commodores,mac etc)
Parallel (You will need a IEEE printer cable) and USB (you will need a USB
cable) some printers have both USB and Parallel connections. USB is fastest
followed by the parallel. In addition you will need to a driver disk on CD or
Floppy (Always included with a new purchase and used purchase from us) . All you
need do to install your new printer is to follow the included "Quick Start
Guide" verbatim. And you are all set !!
This concludes this months topic. If you have any suggestion on what you like
covered .Just drop us a line. And if you need further help or guidance. Feel
free to drop in or call
For More Information Contact:
Thompson's Computer Center
Rt 287 Niles Valley,Pa
Tel: 570-376-2452
FAX:
Internet: thomcom@epix.net
