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Printers (more)
More printer jargon...
By: David K. Every
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2002-03-11 08:20:14
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 here is a lot of jargon around printers; I'll try to demystify some of it.
A basic term is "pages per minute"; which is just that, how fast the printer can print a page, or more accurately, how many pages it can do in each minute. People don't realize how long a minute is when they are waiting for the printer to finish; especially when they just printed a lot of pages. But generally I've felt that more than 5 or 10 pages a minute is pretty good for most home use (and is only rarely annoying). While in businesses, where I print larger documents, I like the 15-20 page-per-minute printers.
Another term used is DPI; for "dots per inch". The idea is the more dots per inch, the better (smoother) each letter will look, especially in smaller sized characters. So generally more is better. However, there are some things to know; like different technologies compare different. Ink-jets squirt ink on a page, but the page absorbs that ink and it can bleed or splatter. Toner based printers (laser) tend to fuse dry-ink dust on a page, so are crisper and doesn't bleed. So a laser and ink-jet printer with the same DPI are not necessarily the same quality; in most cases the laser printer will look better. Only on high quality (expensive) paper will the ink-jet come close to the laser in quality. As an over-generalization, I just divide the ink-jets resolution by two when comparing them to laser printers.
Which brings us to the question; how much resolution do you need? Well, it matters what you are doing. For most black text at normal sizes, 300 x 300 looks pretty good and 600 x 600 is nice and sharp. If I'm doing lots of gray-tones, logos, small text, or doing page/image reductions, then 1200 x 1200 is better still. Even at these resolutions, it is getting into the quality of the paper making a noticeable difference; with shiny, high gloss and tight weave papers allowing for better results.
With color photographs and images, quality can matter even more. A lot of it will have to do with the resolution you take the picture, and again the quality of the paper, but as a generalization, more is better. Almost all printers now days have different techniques for getting more or better looking color. So if you care a lot, it helps to read product reviews; but if you are the average user, most printers can look pretty good if you use them correctly.
English writing is vertically oriented and has lots of vertical lines in it; so it needs fewer dots vertically than horizontally. Some printers take advantage of that and are asymmetrical, and have something like 1200 x 600 DPI. This makes sense if you print your pages normal mode (up and down) and if you use mostly English; but if you print them sideways (landscape) or do lots of drawings or photos, then you may be sacrificing resolution (quality) in directions that matter. Your usage will make an impact on the quality and what resolution is good enough for you.
Some printers have an option called "duplexing"; being able to print on both sides of a page. I find this very handy at saving paper on larger documents. This option is not cheap, or common, but for some uses it is worth the price. Because of the price, it is more used in businesses than homes.
Printers have to be connected to your computer. There are FireWire, USB, Parallel and Network printers. Network printers are good for offices or homes with lots of computers, since many people can connect to the same printer (on a network). But that option tends to cost more, so isn't as common in most homes. FireWire is the fastest, easiest, most expensive and the rarest of the printer connections. Parallel printers are common and cheap, but the slowest and on their way out. USB tends to be the sweet spot for homes; easy to hook up, fast enough, and cheap to buy, assuming your computer has USB (was made in the last 5 years).
So you should now understand a lot more about printers and their terms than you did a few minutes ago.
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