Choosing a printer – inkjet or laser?

The right printer is an essential part of your home or office computer set up. The buying process can be a confusing one, not least because leading manufacturers seem to release a new model of each type almost every day, and lets not forget the huge range of ink cartridges and f=”http://www.accentyourpc.co.uk”>laser toner, which seem to change on an hourly basis!

So, what is the best choice? Well, unfortunately there is no definitive answer for this question as it really depends on your individual needs. What you can do however, is clue yourself up on the advantages of each type, and make an informed decision when purchasing.

We’ve listed the two types of printer below, and included a simple list of the pro’s and con’s of each. After all, there is no sense in us waffling on when all you’re trying to do is buy the right printer!

Inkjet Printers – Pro’s

Cheap to buy. Main brand printers retail from as little as £30 (US$60).

Choice. Wide range available, from specialist photo printers to all in one printer/scanner/copier devices.

Footprint. An inkjet printer generally has smaller dimensions than a laser, often making it more suitable for the home office.

Ease of use. Designed primarily for the home and small office market, inkjets tend to be simple to use and have easily accessible features.

Paper options. Just about every printer manufacturer also offers its own range of printer paper. Depending on the desired finish you can choose anything from standard inkjet copier paper, to matt or gloss photo paper specifically designed for this type of printer.

Inkjet Printers – Con’s

Cost per copy. Despite the low initial purchase price of an inkjet printer, the cost per printed page remains high when compared to laser printing due to the higher relative cost of ink cartridges vs. laser toner. This issue however is not particularly serious for home users, who print in low volumes. It becomes more of an issue the more pages you print. Buying your ink cartridges from www.accentyourpc.co.uk could help to minimise this difference even further.

Efficiency. Since inkjet printers spray ink on to the page, the result is that much of the ink cartridge is wasted through absorption when using standard paper. High quality prints often require multiple coats of ink to ensure the correct density and therefore maximum clarity.

Print speed. Inkjet printers are much slower than laser printers in general, especially when printing in colour.

Longevity. Inkjet printers tend to be produced on the cheap in order to keep retail prices down. The quality of components can be much lower than laser printers. The fact that they spray ink to the page also means that they are liable to clogging over time. An inkjet printer will rarely outlast a laser if both are subjected to equal use.

Accuracy. Spraying ink on to a page from ink cartridges is much less accurate than the precise methods of a laser printer. This results in a slight blur effect on most printed pages.

Vibration. The movement of the ink cartridges or print nozzle across the page whilst printing can often lead to a strong vibration effect if the printer is placed on a computer desk. This can prove to be an annoyance for some people.

Ink drying time. It stands to reason that the ink is sprayed on to the page wet. Consequently, pages require a little time to dry before being picked up. Ignoring the drying requirements can see smudges appearing across your printed document. Inkjet prints also do not stand up to rain very well, which whilst not normally a problem, if you print the address on an envelope with an inkjet, postal workers may have a hard time reading it on occasion!

Inkjet Printers – Summary

If you print mainly at home and in lower volumes, consider an inkjet printer. They are versatile thanks to the range of combination devices, and the cost per copy, whilst relatively high, is probably largely irrelevant to you thanks to the low purchase price. A wide choice of paper gives you a good selection of finishes for your photo prints and the quality is likely to be more than satisfactory for framing and display.

Laser Printers – Pro’s

Cost per copy. Laser technology makes very efficient use of toner when printing resulting in a low cost per copy. Whilst toner cartridges appear expensive, you can usually print somewhere in the region of 4,000 pages before replacing your laser toner cartridge. Compared to an approximate average yield of 300 pages for a typical ink cartridge costing roughly a third of the price, the long term savings are highly apparent. Laser copier paper is also generally cheaper than the equivalent paper designed for inkjet printers.

Efficiency. These printers work by attracting the laser toner (ink) on to the page using an electronic charge. Since the printer is able to calculate the precise pattern of the print, only the exact amount of laser toner required is applied. This results in very little wastage.

Print speed. Laser printers are able to print at very quick speeds, in some cases up to 35 pages per minute. Compared to approximately 10-15 pages per minute for an inkjet printer, this represents a significant advantage during large print runs, or when production time is critical.

Longevity. A properly maintained laser printer can last for many years and print in excess of a million copies during this time providing you use the recommended original laser toner cartridges.

Accuracy. The electrostatic technology behind laser printers ensures that the ink is applied to the toner in a highly precise manner. Since the ink is not sprayed but attracted to the page via an electronic charge there is little margin for error.

Print quality. Once the toner has been attracted on to the page it is then heated causing it to fuse with the paper. This produces a clean and clear finish which is water resistant and has a natural sheen. Photo paper can be used to give a gloss or matt finish to an image printed on a colour laser printer.

Networking features. Laser printers often have built in networking designed for environments where multiple users require the ability to print over a network.

No ink expiry. Whilst ink cartridges for inkjet printers can dry and be rendered useless if left unused for an extended period, laser toner does not suffer from this issue.

Laser Printers – Con’s

Expensive to buy. Traditionally, laser printers cost more to acquire than their inkjet counterparts. However, this trend is now changing with mono laser printers starting to appear on the market for as little as £100 (US$200). Colour laser printers however, remain relatively expensive, priced at around the £300 (US$600) for an entry level model.

Footprint. Laser printers tend to be larger in size than inkjet models, which can cause an issue for home users, yet presents less of a problem in the office environment.

Electricity requirement. Laser printers have a higher power requirement than inkjet printers which may be noticeable on your electricity bill over time.

Warm up time. If a laser printer has not been used for a while, it requires time to warm up the printing drum before a print can be output. This time varies considerably, but is extended if the printer has been switched completely off to save power.

Laser Printers – Summary

For home users who print mainly text documents a mono laser printer may be an economical choice. The initial purchase price aside, you are likely to see a better return on your investment over time. Until colour lasers reduce significantly in price, users wishing to undertake colour printing at home may be better served with an inkjet printer for the time being.

In terms of office users, the increase in print volume seen in any typical office justifies the purchase of a laser printer, colour or mono, from the outset. Choosing an inkjet for business would almost certainly be false economy unless it is required for a special task such as large format printing on paper of A3 size or above.

Don’t forget, when your cartridges do run out, visit www.accentyourpc.co.uk for the best deals on ink cartridges and laser toner.

Stay tuned for our next article!

The printers utilizing inkjet technology were first introduced in the late 1980s and since then have gained much popularity while growing in performance and dropping in price. They are the most common type of computer printers for the general consumer due to their low cost, high quality of output, capability of printing in vivid color, and ease of use. Each printer which works on inkjet technology places extremely small droplets of ink onto paper to create a text or an image.

In the personal and small business computer market, inkjet printers currently predominate. Inkjets are usually inexpensive, quiet, reasonably fast, and many models can produce high quality output. Like most modern technologies, the present-day inkjet is built on the progress made by many earlier versions. Among many contributors, Epson, Hewlett-Packard and Canon can claim a substantial share of credit for the development of the modern inkjet technology. In the worldwide consumer market, four manufacturers account for the majority of inkjet printer sales: Canon, Hewlett-Packard, Epson, and Lexmark.

The typical inkjet printer usually includes inkjet printhead assembly, paper feed assembly, power supply, control circuitry and interface ports.

The inkjet printhead assembly contains several components. One of them is the printhead which is the core of the inkjet printer and contains a series of nozzles that are used to spray drops of ink. Another printhead component is the inkjet cartridge or inkjet tank. Depending on the manufacturer and model of the printer, ink cartridges come in various combinations, such as separate black and color cartridges, color and black in a single cartridge or even a cartridge for each ink color. The cartridges of some inkjet printers include the print head itself. The printhead along with the inkjet cartridge/s are moved back and forth across the paper by device called a stepper motor using a special belt. Some printers have an additional stepper motor to park the print head assembly when the printer is not in use which means that the print head assembly is restricted from accidentally moving. The print head assembly uses a stabilizer bar to ensure that movement is precise and controlled.

One of the paper feed assembly components is the paper tray or/and paper feeder. Most inkjet printers have a tray that the paper is loaded into. The feeder typically snaps open at an angle on the back of the printer, allowing the paper to be placed in it. Feeders generally do not hold as much paper as a traditional paper tray. A set of rollers pull the paper in from the tray or feeder and advance the paper when the print head assembly is ready for another pass after which another step motor powers the rollers to move the paper in the exact increment needed to ensure a continuous image is printed.

While earlier printers often had an external transformer, most printers sold today use a standard power supply that is incorporated into the printer itself.

A small but sophisticated amount of circuitry is built into the printer to control all the mechanical aspects of operation, as well as decode the information sent to the printer from the computer. It is connected to the computer by a cable through the interface port. The interface port can be either parallel port, USB port or SCSI port. The parallel port is still used by many printers, but most newer printers use the USB port. A few printers connect using a serial port or small computer system interface (SCSI) port.

Different types of inkjet printers exist based on the method they use to deliver the droplets of ink. There are three main inkjet technologies currently used by printer manufacturers. The thermal bubble technology used by manufacturers such as Canon and Hewlett Packard is commonly referred to as bubble jet. In a thermal inkjet printer, tiny resistors create heat, and this heat vaporizes ink to create a bubble. As the bubble expands, some of the ink is pushed out of a nozzle onto the paper. When the bubble collapses, a vacuum is created. This pulls more ink into the print head from the cartridge. A typical bubble jet print head has 300 or 600 tiny nozzles, and all of them can fire a droplet simultaneously. Thermal inkjet technology is used almost exclusively in the consumer inkjet printer market. The ink used is usually water-based, pigment-based or dye-based but the print head is produced usually at less cost than other ink jet technologies.

Contrary to the bubble jet technology, the piezoelectric technology, patented by Epson, uses piezo crystals. A crystal is located at the back of the ink reservoir of each nozzle. The crystal receives a tiny electric charge that causes it to vibrate. When the crystal vibrates inward, it forces a tiny amount of ink out of the nozzle. When it vibrates out, it pulls some more ink into the reservoir to replace the ink sprayed out.

The continuous inkjet method is used commercially for marking and coding of products and packages. The first patent on the idea is from 1867, by William Thomson. The first commercial model was introduced in 1951 by Siemens. In continuous inkjet technology, a high-pressure pump directs liquid ink from a reservoir through a microscopic nozzle, creating a continuous stream of ink droplets. A piezoelectric crystal causes the stream of liquid to break into droplets at regular intervals. The ink droplets are subjected to an electrostatic field created by a charging electrode as they form. The field is varied according to the degree of drop deflection desired. This results in a controlled, variable electrostatic charge on each droplet. Charged droplets are separated by one or more uncharged “guard droplets” to minimize electrostatic repulsion between neighboring droplets. The charged droplets are then directed (deflected) to the receptor material to be printed by electrostatic deflection plates, or are allowed to continue on undeflected to a collection gutter for reuse. Continuous inkjet is one of the oldest inkjet technologies in use and is fairly mature. One of its advantages is the very high velocity (~50 m/s) of the ink droplets, which allows the ink drops to be thrown a long distance to the target. Another advantage is freedom from nozzle clogging as the jet is always in use

When printing is started, the software application sends the data to be printed to the printer driver which translates the data into a format that the printer can understand and checks to see that the printer is online and available to print. The data is sent by the driver from the computer to the printer via the connection interface. The printer receives the data from the computer. It stores a certain amount of data in a buffer. The buffer can range from 512 KB random access memory (RAM) to 16 MB RAM, depending on the printer model. Buffers are useful because they allow the computer to finish with the printing process quickly, instead of having to wait for the actual page to print. If the inkjet printer has been idle for a period of time, it will normally go through a short cleaning cycle to make sure that the print heads are clean. Once the cleaning cycle is complete, the inkjet printer is ready to begin printing. The control circuitry activates the paper feed stepper motor. This engages the rollers, which feed a sheet of paper from the paper tray / feeder into the printer. A small trigger mechanism in the tray / feeder is depressed when there is paper in the tray or feeder. If the trigger is not depressed, the inkjet printer lights up the “Out of Paper” LED and sends an alert to the computer. Once the paper is fed into the inkjet printer and positioned at the start of the page, the print head stepper motor uses the belt to move the print head assembly across the page. The motor pauses for the merest fraction of a second each time that the print head sprays dots of ink on the page and then moves a tiny bit before stopping again. This stepping happens so fast that it seems like a continuous motion. Multiple dots are made at each stop. It sprays the CMYK (cyan / magenta / yellow / black) colors in precise amounts to make any other color imaginable. At the end of each complete pass, the paper feed stepper motor advances the paper a fraction of an inch. Depending on the inkjet printer model, the print head is reset to the beginning side of the page, or, in most cases, simply reverses direction and begins to move back across the page as it prints. This process continues until the page is printed. The time it takes to print a page can vary widely from printer to printer. It will also vary based on the complexity of the page and size of any images on the page. Once the printing is complete, the print heads are parked. The paper feed stepper motor spins the rollers to finish pushing the completed page into the output tray. Most inkjet printers today use inkjet inks that are very fast-drying, so that you can immediately pick up the sheet without smudging it.

Compared to earlier consumer-oriented printers, inkjet printers have a number of advantages. They are quieter in operation than impact dot matrix printers or daisywheel printers. They can print finer, smoother details through higher printhead resolution, and many inkjet printers with photorealistic-quality color printing are widely available. In comparison to more expensive technologies like thermal wax, dye sublimations, and laser printers, the inkjet printers have the advantage of practically no warm-up time and lower cost per page (except when compared to laser printers).

The disadvantages of the inkjet printers include flimsy print heads (prone to clogging) and expensive inkjet cartridges. This typically leads value-minded consumers to consider laser printers for medium-to-high volume printer applications. Other disadvantages include ink bleeding, where ink is carried sideways away from the desired location by the capillary effect; the result is a muddy appearance on some types of paper. Most inkjet printer manufacturers also sell special clay-treated paper designed to reduce bleeding. Because the ink used in most inkjet cartridges and ink tanks is water-soluble, care must be taken with inkjet-printed documents to avoid even the smallest drop of water, which can cause severe “blurring” or “running.”

Besides the well known small inkjet printers for home and office, there is a market for professional inkjet printers; some being for page-width format printing, and most being for wide format printing. “Page-width format” means that the print width ranges from about 8.5″ to 37″. “Wide format” means that these are inkjet printers ranging in print width from 24″ up to 15′. The application of the page-width inkjet printers is for printing high-volume business communications that have a lesser need for flashy layout and color. Particularly with the addition of variable data technologies, the page-width inkjet printers are important in billing, tagging, and individualized catalogs and newspapers. The application of most of the wide format inkjet printers is for printing advertising graphics; a minor application is printing of designs by architects or engineers.

If you are new to building your own custom gaming computer, this article will introduce you to the main components that make up a gaming PC. These components will be the guts of your gaming machine, so you need to choose them carefully. Starting with perhaps the most important part of any computer system:

CPU / Processor

The Central Processing Unit (also known as the processor) is considered the brains of a computer. It does all the mathematical calculations that the software asks it to. Without a decent CPU in your gaming PC, your games won’t run very fast.

Motherboard

If the CPU is the brains of a computer, then the motherboard is the heart. All other components connect to the motherboard one way or another, so it acts as the hub of all the components in your PC. If you lack a good motherboard in your system, your gaming PC won’t perform well no matter how good your other components are.

RAM

The RAM (Random Access Memory) in a computer is the memory that running programs rely on. The more RAM you put in your gaming PC, the faster your programs and games will run.

Hard Drive

The hard drive is used to store all your programs and data. You need a hard drive big enough to fit all your stuff on it, without it clogging up due to lack of room.

Graphics Card

The graphics card (also known as video card) will be one of the most important parts of your gaming PC. It is the component responsible for drawing all the 3D graphics and special effects that you see in the games you play. You need to get a good graphics card to be able to play the latest games in all their glory.

Case and Power Supply

Pretty self explanatory, the computer case houses all your precious little components under one roof. The power supply provides power to your PC. These two components are essential for a working gaming PC.

Conclusion

We have covered the main workhorse components that you will need to build your gaming PC with. You should also consider other components such as a sound card, networking card, and CD/DVD Drive, amongst others, to complete your gaming PC.

The simple test of HP Mini 2133 battery

Let us take a look at this HP Mini 2133 battery life. From our point of view before the media coverage of such Internet features of this product is any time a free tour of the Internet. This function perfectly or not, is bound to need strong support of the power system. To this end, the HP Mini 2133 is equipped with a three-core 10.8V 28Wh lithium ion battery the life test results are as follows:

The final results, in the full-torn BatteryMark 4.0.1, the piece of the battery capacity of adhering to a moderate 73 minutes (in this test phase HP Mini 2133 to 70% of the screen from top to bottom, and power management in XP system on the all power-saving features of the option off). If the day-to-day use, can reduce the screen brightness, and then associated with energy-saving function of the operating system, I believe that this battery may last 100 minutes usage time, the same time the satellite A300 battery can work 250 minutes.

Evaluation of a line of the products are excellent, I believe that their long working hours under the state of the performance of body temperature can also be regarded as one of important criteria. After all, no one is willing to use a long period of time may be the Internet version, the body temperature to achieve the degree of fried eggs. To this end, the author carried out in the HP Mini 2133 battery life test, the use of the testo 825-T2 Infrared Thermometer their body temperature was tested (the testing process in the basic maintenance of the indoor temperature around 25 degrees Celsius ).

To the final testing results, HP Mini 2133 battery in the performance of body temperature can be used in this part of “disorder” to make an assessment. The main heat source is basically in the left side of the keyboard and the left side of the fuselage cooling air vents, under the late??inspection, the region where is the processor. VIA C7M processor so “hot” performance really let my accident. In addition, the HP Mini 2133 notebook cooling Apple Design and passive fanless cooling body has some similar, are relying on the most metal body heat away. Therefore, HP Mini 2133 in the use of process engineering plastic materials than other Internet users this will bring the feeling of heat battery.

Might see here, there will be readers to PC Mark05, 3D Mark06 Although the classic, but I do not know this will be the actual performance of the notebook is. You can not come to the actual point? OK, of course, no problem! The needs of readers, that is our goal. Next, I look for you to display the HP Mini 2133 HD video decoding ability.

Proficiency test in high-definition decoding of H.264 I selected encoding format, video resolution of 1280 × 720 specifications “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” to carry out the tests. As shown in the following screenshot, HP Mini 2133 in the performance tests can be described as barely passing. But its good sound, images can be synchronized, the screen is still a natural transition. During playback, HP Mini 2133 occupancy rate of the basic processors in about 90% of the entire process. Used as a VIA S3G UniChrome Pro II integrated GPU, system bus frequency is only 400MHz notebook, this performance is still talking about the past. HP Mini 2133 is HP addtion in netbook to support HP Pavilion DV1000,Pavilion DV3000, DV4000, DV4, DV5, DV7 As shown in game screenshot, HP Mini 2133 in the performance of the game is also still far from satisfactory. More than two games in high definition is not set up the premise, can smooth out the feeling. Perhaps this author is really some redundant tests, select Netbook “Internet of the” consumer products more convenient for a working or living conditions, most of them has been interested in the age of the game. However, I would like to express here is that, HP Mini 2133 in your spare time can also become a tool for your entertainment pleasure. Perhaps it is not strong enough performance, but occasionally or inadequate.

As HP’s first ultra-portable mobile notebook, HP Mini 2133 HP carried on “with the most user needs for a wide range of mobile solutions,” the commitment to “full-function ultra-portable + + the best experience” to meet the unique advantage of increasingly strong The ultra-portable mobile needs. Its elegant exterior design, whole weight of only 1.19Kg, measuring only 27mm (positive) × 255mm × 165mm, its concise and well anodic alumina shell design, while ensuring at the same time compact and durable machine can reduce the weight of ; in the main configuration, equipped with 1GB or 2GB of memory (only has one memory slot settings), Genuine Windows Vista Home operating system, as well as standard disk drives, can provide fairly good experience.