How to select the printer

The two most popular and readily available printers are the ink jet printers and laser printers. The laser printer uses a laser beam to mark an image on a drum, which then fuses this image to the printer. On the other hand, the ink jet printer sprays ink through tiny jets on to the page without any laser imaging.

Inkjets can print anything from spreadsheets, brochures to word documents and photos. They are considered optimum for printing professional and inexpensive documents on a small scale. Hence they could cope only with small print volumes, the chief advantage being that they are far more affordable than laser printers. That is to say, such printers have lesser running costs than laser printers.

Inkjet printers are lightweight and small in size. Many of them are sold with their carry cases to make it convenient to carry them from one place to another. Naturally they become perfect partners for laptops and PDAs or any other devices that need printing facilities.

But, in case your requirement is for more advanced print jobs then you should think of buying a laser printer. Laser printers are made to take voluminous workloads and print at a much faster speed. And the quality of the print is far superior to that of the inkjet printer. That is why not only the laser printers cost more but even the consumables of the laser printer are more expensive. Laser printers are portable and can be carried from one place to another. Sometimes they come with their own hard cover carry cases for convenience in shifting them around.

If you own a laptop, you would be well advised to consider purchasing an all in one solution. These systems have the advantage of being lightweight, small and would answer all your printing, scanning and photocopying needs. That is, all in one device. These low cost all in one systems are usually ink jet printers, hence their running costs is quite low as compared to the laser printers. They usually come with their own hard carry cases, so you could carry them wherever you travel. Keeping these factors in mind, you could surely find a printer suitable for yourself.

Carla Inchiostrona is the owner and webmaster of FTP Printer, a leading Internet portal for printer information.