Laser printer technology is very different from the ink jet printer. Old fashioned ink jet printers that most households use of a major drawback, the ink smears if you don’t let it dry. We have all done it, and we have all wasted hundreds of copies due to this major drawback. Now there is a new printer in town, the laser printer. Many don’t understand the technology behind laser printing, so let’s take a look at how a laser printer works.  

The laser printer, as it’s name implies uses light, or a laser beam to print your image. The laser places an image on the drum of the printer then changes it into an electrical charge. As the drum turns, toner attaches itself to the electrically charged image. Then, through heat and pressure, the toner is applied to the paper. So, unlike an inkjet that places ink on the paper, a laser printer sets the toner on the paper with the heat and pressure.

At first, laser printers were only black and white. People who needed color printing still relied on inkjet technology. Today, laser printers are found in both black 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 much lower print resolution and not give you a very high quality clear print. Print resolutions start at 300 dpi and can go as high as 1200 dpi or more.

The lower priced laser printers will generally print only in black and white and use 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. Brother Laser Printers and Cannon Color Laser Printers are among the best selling models in America and are affordably priced. 

Laser printers will print text as well as graphics. However, to print graphic intensive pages, the laser printer will need additional memory space which can add to the cost of the printer depending upon which model you choose. Samsung laser printers are among the very best for high quality graphic prints.

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. Xerox laser printers are a leading all in one printer name brand with top speed and high quality. 

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.

[tags]peripheral, printer, laser printer, ink jet printers[/tags]