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Inkjet or Laser Printer... A frequently asked question?
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Black & White Documents
This is just your normal black and white printed page i.e. a document from MS Word, spread sheet or printed pages from the internet that are actually in colour but do not need to be printed in colour.
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Black and White Laser – The Black and White (monochrome) laser printer is one of
the best deals you can get when it comes to printing. The cost per page is roughly 1/10 that of an inkjet printer and the printing speed is equally impressive. There is also a good supply of quality compatible products, further reducing running costs.
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Inkjet Printer – All inkjet printers will print black and white documents, to a high standard. However, if you do a lot of printing of documents, the inkjet printer is not the most economical way to do this (although as mentioned earlier using compatibles cartridges for this type of printing can significantly reduce running costs).
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Dot Matrix Printers –These are not used much anymore, but they are still needed where impact printing is required. Applications that require printing multi-part forms or printing through special mailing envelopes still use this type of printer. Some SME users still print reports on dot matrix or line printers.
Photographs
Printing high quality photos is the hardest and most costly type of printing. Not only do you have the high cost of ink, but also the high quality photo paper can be very expensive.
Dye Sublimation
– This type of printer probably produces the best quality photographic prints out of the printers that are normally available for home or SME use and is one of the few printers that can actually print true continuous tones. The cost per print is a little higher and you are locked into special paper and supplies. You would normally only use this type of printer for printing photographs.
Inkjet - Inkjet printers are very popular mainly due to their excellent colour printing capability as well as their low initial cost. You may even get one for free; however, the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) is very high due to high ink replacement costs. Printer manufacturers are continually improving their print quality and reducing the print cost per page. For the best photo reproduction, select a 6 colour version.
CONCLUSION
No single printer is perfect for all types of printing. The most cost effective way to handle all your printing needs is to have multiple printers.
Below is a brief list of what is best for what job.
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Black and White Laser for Documents and spread sheets.
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Colour Laser for colour brochures, flyers and printing colour letterheads.
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All-In-One Inkjet for scanning, copying and the occasional colour photo.
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Large WIDE Format Inkjet Printer for printing large items.
As most businesses do not need this many printers, the most cost effective thing you can do is purchase one black and white laser printer to be used for all your general printing needs for when you can get away without colour. you might ask, why not use the colour laser for the black and white printing too? And the answer is you could, but the overall TCO of the colour laser printer is higher than that of a black and white laser.
**NB: ** Multi-Function Printers** – Both Laser and Inkjet printing technology come in the Multi-Function format. These devices combine Printing, Copying, Scanning and sometimes Faxing in one unit.
Networked Printers – Many printers now come as standard with built-in networking capability (including built-in wireless). A printer with networking allows any user in the home or office to print to this printer without having to connect to it directly or have one central PC permanently on (acting as a print server). Back....
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