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How Buying a New Printer Might Save You Money
By: Hamie Dahan
Planning on buying a new printer? Why don't you take a look at this short article and learn how you could save money in the long run?
Printer Basics
Non-impact printers today may be classified into inkjet or a laser printer. From where I'm from, the popular type of printer is the inkjet type. I personally use a Canon BJC3000 printer.
How does an inkjet printer work? It works by shooting "jets" of ink onto the paper. Ink droplets from this type of printer are so small that a drop measures anywhere from 50-60 microns ( the average diameter of human hair is 85 microns! Now thats small! ) The dots then are precisely positioned together. Along with other color, they form an image.
Laser printer on the other hand works by using dry ink (called a toner), static electricity and heat to bond and place the ink onto paper.
There are other types of non-impact printers such as solid ink printers, dye-sublimation printers, thermal wax printers and thermal autochrome printers but the most probable type you will buy will either be an inkjet or a laser printer.
Each printer type has their disadvantages and advantages. The most obvious in my opinion would be the cost of replacing inks. Inkjet printers today usually have 4 to 6 "ink tanks" while a laser printer would have a toner. How would this relate to you saving money? When an inkjet printer runs out of color, usually you just have to replace 1 or 2 ink tanks. On a laser printer, you would have to replace the entire toner.
The cheapest inkjet I have come across was $66.99 and the cheapest laser printer was $175.99 both are HP brand. Now let us go to ink prices. A toner for an HP laser printer is about $31-$47 while for the inkjet it costs anywhere from $11 to $16.
Laser printers are generally faster than inkjets when printing monochrome documents (gray, black or white). This is useful if you are running a business where you print lots of black text and speed is needed.
To end, if you are going to use your printer for everyday chores and speed is not of an issue and would like to save money in the long run, go inkjet. If you are going to use your printer for heavy duty monochrome printing, like in your home-office you are better off using a laser printer.
Hope this short article helped you in some way.
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