Printers – What is the Difference?

Something to consider, aside from initial purchase cost, is operation and maintenance costs. You can quickly pick up an inkjet for $50, but take a look at the size of the ink cartridges. If it runs out every 100 pages, you’re going to spend much more on ink in the first year, than if you had purchased a much better quality laser.

Image Quality

BW text and simple graphics will look sharper on a laser printer. If you use a good quality inkjet paper, though, most casual users will be hard-pressed to notice the difference. On the other hand, a good photo inkjet printer will give an excellent color laser printer a run for its money in quality and cost. If you’re going to print many photos, your best choice would be inkjet.

Duty Cycle

You’ll see ‘Duty Cycle’ listed mostly on specs for laser printers. This refers to how much paper the printer is expected to be able to handle each month. This will be a factor for you if you are buying for a large office, or if you are publishing your fliers regularly. You have to ask yourself: How many prints will I do every month? Now that doesn’t say your printer will break if it’s rated at 30,000 and you print 30,050 one month. If you know, though, that you will print 75,000 pages a month, don’t buy a printer rated at 50,000.

What can connect?

The last thing left to consider is what machines will be connecting to this machine, and how? Will the printer be on a network? Will different operating systems access it? If you’re going to be the only user, and you have one PC with XP running on it, you have to make sure you have the right ports and that it has drivers for XP. If, on the other hand, you are part of a small Linux workgroup, you’re going to somewhat limited on your selection.

What’s Emulation?

This is a feature that mostly used for older programs. Say you have a printer that emulates an Epson FX80. That means it understands the commands used to communicate with an Epson FX80. Your plan may require a specific printer to function correctly. Some programs, especially in vertical markets like Real Estate and Insurance, make direct requests to the printers. Your printer must be the right type of printer, or it must emulate that printer, to speak the language. If you have special software, other than off the shelf types like Word or Photoshop, be sure to check the program’s printer requirements.