Computer Printers

Unfortunately there is no way to answer this since this is akin to asking "what is the best portable air pump for your car?" As long as you get one that has the features you seek, it is the best for your purposes. All wireless printers will work the same way: connect to the wireless network established by your wireless router or wireless access point, accept the print job from your computer, and print said job as requested. You can do this with either inkjet or laser technology.

The advantage to an inkjet printer is that the short-term cost will be lower as you can find some cheaper printers at places such as Wal-Mart for as little as $29 on sale. However, such cheap printers are also designed to be "throw-away" items: once they run out of ink or anything goes wrong with them, it will be cheaper to get a new printer as opposed to getting them fixed or replacing the ink cartridges. To get a reliable inkjet printer that is only a printer, you will want to spend about $75 as a good rule of thumb. If, on the other hand, you are wanting to get a multi-function inkjet printer (meaning that it not only prints but also scans, copies, and frequently also works as a fax machine), then you can expect to spend $125-150 for one that is reliable and will provide good service.

The problem with inkjet printers is that over the long run they are much more expensive to use. The ink cartridges are about $30-40 each (with some being even more expensive) and almost universally the black cartridges hold ink for 500 pages of printouts (based on an average coverage of five percent of the page, meaning that if you took all the droplets of ink on the paper and combined them, they would cover only about five percent of the entire surface of that page). When you do the math, that works out to about six to eight cents per page which, as you will see in just a moment, is much higher than a laser printer.

Something else that I feel I should mention is that it is a bad idea to try to save money on ink cartridges by either refilling your own cartridges over and over again or by using only refilled cartridges (or "compatible" cartridges) constantly. The reason for this is that the cartridges from the original manufacturers have lubricants in the ink that actually help the components of the printhead remain in good shape. So, rather than go "cold turkey" on the OEM cartridges and use only after-market options, the best way to save money and what I recommend to my clients is to alternate them. In other words, if the set of cartridges in the machine are OEM, then the next set you can use can be after-market. If the current cartridges are after-market, then the next set should be OEM.

Laser printers are generally more expensive but you also get more speed and generally less noise from them than you do from an inkjet. A good print-only laser printer will often cost about $150. These will almost exclusively be monochrome (meaning that they have only a black toner cartridge and, therefore, have no color capability but they can print in greyscale). Once you send the print job to the printer, the first page may take a bit longer to print out than the rest because the fusing assembly (the hot part that melts the toner and bonds it to the paper) needs a few seconds to warm up but after that, they can send out pages anywhere from 16 pages a minute up to 45 or more per minute (depending on just how much you want to spend and how fancy you want to get). Toner cartridges tend to be a bit more pricey than their inkjet counterparts, often in the neighborhood of $50-80 for compatible cartridges or up to about $150 for original manufacturer cartridges but you also get a massive increase in the number of pages out of them. For the added money, most monochrome printer cartridges will last anywhere from 2000 pages to 5000 pages. So, that would mean a per page cost of about one to four cents per page, sometimes even lower. A good example is the Samsung ML-3312ND I use in my office. Its cartridge holds about 5000 pages of toner and I am able to get the cartridges for as little as $40 apiece, so that makes the cost only 0.8 cents a page.

If you want a multi-function laser printer, then you will also generally get color capability. The disadvantage is that you will have four toner cartridges rather than just one and given the fact that they still try to keep the size of the printer fairly small, that means that the sizes of the cartridges are reduced. This results in the cartridges holding only about 1000 to 1500 pages of toner rather than 2000 to 5000 as in their monochrome cousins. However, because of this smaller size, they tend to be less expensive, often being about $30-40 per color (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black). For a good multi-function laser, you are typically looking to spend around $400.

You may run across other types of printers out there that may confuse the issue but they are subdivisions of the two major types I have discussed. The easiest way to determine which general type of printer technology is being used is by looking at where the ink/toner cartridge is installed. If it moves back and forth inside the printer, it is inkjet. If not, it is laser.

If you need further assistance in narrowing down the choices for your situation, feel free to drop me a line. I am glad to help you compare various models and advise you as to which I think would best fit your needs. Ultimately, however, the choice is yours and generally one quality printer is just as good as another.

It is possible to share most printers with the other computers in a network.

Many printers today can print pictures directly from camera memory cards. You put the memory card in the slot for that type card and you can print pictures using the printers control panel.

If you have a home network, any printer can be networked from your computer allowing other computers on the network to print on it.

Some printers can be connected directly to the network (without having to be connected to a computer) and anyone on the network can use it.