Quick Guide to Printing

Before taking decision on buying a printer one should consider whether you want a color or monochrome printer. If you are not printing color or need a printer for photo prints from your digital camera then buying a monochrome printer will be cheaper and probably a better machine for your budget. A monochrome laser printer (or LED printer) will be cheaper but you also need to bear in mind that they tend to only offer a fixed printer resolution and you are unable to manipulate printing options very much if at all. If you are simply printing text however, they are a good workhorse and cheap.

Moving into the field of color printing, the rise of digital photography has in turn led to an increase in photo print quality print capabilities that can be used in the home. If you are looking for photo print quality then you should be looking at a good photo printer and one that has a comprehensive and easy to use photo studio software package for producing effects, eliminating red eye and general editing. You also need to keep a close eye on the costs of the consumables, particularly the printer ink and toner cartridges as these can be very expensive and the manufacturers expect to make their margin from these rather than the hardware. You should probably focus on a high quality ink jet machine rather than a laser printer as the reproduction quality tends to be better, though the differential is being eroded as the technology develops.

A laser printer will probably be the best option if you are a heavy user and printing hundreds of pages of text, typically with a need for a high quality print finish that customers and users expect to have from you. Laser printers also tend to be faster, have a greater printer ink yield and offer a greater degree of reliability than ink jet printers.

Whichever printer type you are going for, you should check a few things from the manufacturer first. Look at the duty cycle, which is the manufacturer's estimate of how many printed pages can be produced in a month of usage. The rule of thumb is to select a printer that has a duty cycle at least three times that of your own estimated printer usage in order to maximize the efficiency of printer use and minimize maintenance.

Another thing to check is the manufacturers estimate for total print volume, which is the manufacturers estimate of the total mileage that the printer is expected to handle. You will find that beyond this anticipated lifespan the warranty will usually be invalidated as the machine become uneconomical to maintain and repair. If you are a business user you should expect a three year life cycle for the printer but this can vary depending on your usage.

Looking at printer speeds, you need to be careful with what they are actually trying to tell you. Often the printer speed is nothing more than a measure of how fast the feeder mechanism can move the sheet of paper through the printer from the paper tray to the output tray. If printing is actually involves this can be significantly different and you need to be sure that you are actually looking at the speed with which the printer actually can print. In this instance you will be looking for the PCW ratings and the better the rating the faster the actual printing speed for a given level of quality.

Its better to buy a new Printer rather than buying both New Cartridges as the cost of both the cartridges is equivalent to get a new Desk jet/Bubble jet Printers. It has one more advantage of getting Printer warranty too.