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Today, most consumers use an ink jet printer in their home. They understand that the ink is placed onto the paper and must dry – or the printing will smear on the paper. A laser printer is still less common in the home and may still be less understood by most home consumers. Laser printers are the staple for office printing though. The laser printer technology is very different from the ink jet printer.
The laser printer, as it name implies incorporates light, otherwise known as a laser beam. The light or laser places an image on the drum of the printer. When this image is placed in the drum, it changes the electrical charge on the drum. As the drum turns, toner attaches to the drum where the electrical charge has changed. Then, through heat and pressure, the toner is applied from the drum to the paper. Copy machines also use this technology. So, unlike an inkjet that places ink on the paper, a laser printer sets the toner on the paper with the heat and pressure. A professional resume would always look better if printed on a laser printer. At first laser printers were only black and white printers. People who needed color printing still relied on inkjet technology. Today, however, laser printers are found in both blank and white as well as color models. Laser printers can be found in all price ranges. The price will depend on the features found on the printer. Lower priced laser printers will have a lower print resolution. Print resolutions start at 300 dpi and can go as high as 1200 dpi or more. Also, the lower priced laser printers will generally print only in black and white and use only one toner cartridge. Color laser printers, on the other hand, require the black toner cartridge as well as three other color toner cartridges to produce color prints. Laser printers will print text as well as graphics. However, to print graphic intensive pages, the laser printer will need more memory which can add to the cost of the printer. An additional cost factor for laser printers is the print speed. Some early models only printed a few pages per minute, ppm. Today, laser printers are much faster. The faster the print speed is, the more your laser printer will cost. One little known feature with laser printers is a print encoding done on each page printed by a laser printer. Each page printed contains a small identification mark. This is done to help track counterfeiters who had used the high quality of laser printers to print counterfeit money. Each piece of paper can be identified to a unique laser printer by the manufacturer. |
