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Acquaint Yourself With Computer Printers

2007-11-28

A computer printer is a device used for printing text or images on hard copy stored in electronic form, generally on physical print media like paper. Printers are designed to support both local and network connected users simultaneously.

Nowadays, modern printers can directly interface to electronic devices like digital cameras. Some printers that come with non printing features are commonly known as Multi-Functional Printers (MFP) or Multi-Function Devices (MFD). It integrates various functions of multiple devices into one. Such types of printers are extremely useful for small businesses and home offices.

As opposed to a traditional printer, a multi-functional printer is a combination of devices like Printer, Scanner, Photocopier, and Fax Machine. Likewise, there are numerous other types of printers widely available in the market. Let's take a look at them:

Laser Printer: A laser printer works in a similar fashion as a photocopier does. It has a roller which is charged with electricity. A laser beam is passed to remove the charge from portions of the roller.  The parts hit by the laser are powdered by the toner which is then transferred from the roller to the paper. Finally, the ink is baked into the paper with the help of a heater incorporated in the printer. People generally prefer laser printer because of its ability to give high quality output and high speed. 

Dot Matrix:  It has a print head that moves across the page. A dot matrix printer produces characters using a cluster of pins which press an inked ribbon to the paper, thereby creating a dot. Each character is made in the same way. Dot Matrix printers are relatively cheaper and durable. These qualities still attract businesses which use them as invoice printers. 

Ink Jet and Bubble Jet:  It works in a manner similar to a Dot Matrix Printer. However, its print head sprays liquid ink onto the page instead of pressing a dry ink against the page. Ink jet and bubble jet printers are better known as predecessors of laser printers. They produce better image quality and run faster.

From inkjets to monochrome and color lasers, different printers are designed to accomplish different tasks. Companies like DELL, CANON, LEXMARK, BROTHER, EPSON, and HP HEWLETT PACKARD are most preferred when it comes to buying a printer. Nowadays, computer printer support is widely available on the Internet which saves you from taking it to any expensive technician for troubleshooting.

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Multifunctional Printers - Home Office Workhorses

2007-11-26

Businesses are now practicing conservatism. They choose, hire, and propose ideas and solutions that are multi resultant. Such is the case with office equipment as well. Like the all in one printer.

These all in one printers offer a myriad of office essential features. Aside from printing documents, these machines more or less function as a photocopier, a scanner, and a fax machine. They take up less space because of integration of several pieces of office equipment.Also, let's not forget less cost for setting up (as opposed to getting individually the fax, photocopier, scanner and the printer), and less hassle in maintenance. All these features make all in one printer highly favorable office equipment.

Here are some of the best all in one printers that recently hit the market.

Canon MultiPass390 All in one Printer

A rare breed of speed and quality packed with a lot of vital features, the Canon Multipass390 is indeed intended to deliver. It has superb quality. In fact, this all in one printer can print photographs on a scanned 4 x 5 inch with relative ease and the output is a genuine-quality copy. It has speed too; colored printings are logged at 12 pages per minute, 18 pages per minute for a regular monochrome document.

Though the Canon MultiPass seems to be out of production now, you can still get refurbished models from varied vendors. Be sure to read reviews though, so that you know what you can expect.

Dell All in One Printer 922

This goodie churns out text prints at a quick rate of 7.7 pages per minute though slow on colored graphics, around 1 page per minute.

It is among the fastest in the ‘old' market; 19 pages per minute. Quality printing is achieved by its 1200 x 4800 dpi for maximum printer resolution. Though it doesn't feature a fax, it has a Flatbed scanner though, with 600 ppi scanner optical resolution and a copier capability.

HP PSC 1315 All in One Printer

Though this model is not famous for its speed, the HP PSC is celebrated for its clean output. Many consumers who bought this model turned out to be etremely pleased with its delightful impressive quality albeit that was stained for its remarkable slow page per minute.

All in One Printers are praised because of their multifunctional capability. Businesses can save office space, due to the integration of several pieces of equipment into one; The only drawback is the occasional breakdowns when you will be left with, not one, but four pieces of office hardware not working.

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Top 5 Multifunctional Printers in the Market for Home and Office Use

2007-11-22

Multifunction printers have been talked about to a great extent in the last couple of years. So what's the hype all about or rather why are they so great? The very fact that they have printer, copier and scanner all enclosed in the same unit offers a powerful combination of functionality and compactness. These especially are great for small businesses or home-based offices that cannot afford to buy separate printers, copiers and scanners for their daily requirements.

The top 5 in the market

When it comes to multifunction printers for home offices, one needs to look at several aspects - the first being the cost - though of course cost isn't the only driver. Here we look at the top 5 picks in the best multifunctional printers and also state why they're so good.

1. Brother MFC- 7820N Printer

This one's a winner all the way. All of Brother's multifunctional printers come with easy installation and set up. However, what sets this one apart from its siblings are compactness, high speed and affordability. It has sharp and crisp laser quality printing, has a scanning resolution of around 1200x1200 dpi. It has good quality fax as well. The layout and design is one of the most note-worthy aspects of this multifunction printer. The feeder in the printer is especially designed for even envelop printing, which makes this even more versatile. With an average speed of 20 ppm and a surprisingly quick warm-up speed of 10 seconds, this printer is much better when it comes to its other counterparts.

2. Canon Pixma MP600

Canon Pixma MP600 has a high quality print output, with sharp and crisp text and photos. With a mono speed of 30 ppm and color of 24 ppm and a color resolution of 9600x2400 dpi, it provides high quality color prints. However it lacks a film scanner or an automatic document feeder.

3. HP Officejet 9120 multifunction printer

This multifunction printer is great for an office workgroup for a home based business. It has an Ethernet print server and good multitasking ability with scanning, copying and fax abilities inbuilt. With a relatively good mono speed of 25 ppm and color of 22 ppm, and two sided copying, this printer suffices for home office use.

4. Samsung SCX 4200

This one's a laser multifunction printer and has a 600x600 dpi resolution, a mono speed of 18 ppm. Being a laser printer, it is much better than the ink cartridges. It provides good quality prints and a reasonably good speed. All in all, the Samsung SCX 4200 multifunction printer comes at an affordable price which makes it good for home office use.

5. Epson AcuLaser CX11NF

This one's a color laser multifunction printer and hence isn't really great at printing color photos. However its good for text and graphics in general. The Epson AcuLaser CX11NF multifunction printer has an average speed of 18 ppm for text and 4 ppm for graphics (which can be quite slow). The tray input capacity is just 180 pages.

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Top 5 HP Multifunctional Printers for Office Use

2007-11-15

Having a multifunctional color printer around the office certainly helps to pick up the pace when projects are due. The issue becomes, however, how much needs to be spent to get the quality and efficiency required without having a hunk of plastic sitting in the office when there are fewer smaller projects in the pipe line.

Are there substitutes?

Striking the even balance of having a multifunctional color printer around and sending out the bigger jobs is an age-old issue. With Hewlett Packard (HP), however, there may be some comparison shopping to be done so that the office supplies and capital expenditures budgets do not get too depleted.

Depending upon the layout of a particular office there may not need to be a need for more than one multifunctional color printer. In some instances having a few lesser quality multifunctional printers available in a cube situation, with a lead unit as a centerpiece for larger projects, may be an option.

Cube top

In this instance, hp multifunctional color printers can range from $70.00 on up. Reviews suggest that the functions, on the lower cost machines, may require a bit more attention from the user but that they work well in situations that may just require a visual hard copy for inspection. The HP Office Jet 4315V may work in this situation. The unit was perceived to be slow (in the users' perception) and the scans could have been better. Each, however, was acceptable to a degree. The real "pain" was in the need to swap ink colors in and out depending upon need.

The next step up but along the same lines, at $170.00, is the HP Office jet 7410. A workhorse of a printer by most accounts it provides hard copy with little effort. It does not shoot out the copy with remarkable speed but it does produce at a solid rate. Swapping out color and black ink continues to be an issue but for the given application this is less of an issue.

Upper end

The hp multifunctional color printer designed to meet a vast majority of office needs is the HP Jet Pro L7680. This unit offers all the bells and whistles that an office could want and was named Editors Choice by several computer magazines. Media card slots, HP OEM ink cartridge, filing options and 16 pages per minute page speed. For a unit that doubles the cost of the other smaller machines, at $358.00, this unit does the trick. Scanner and fax finish off the unit so that a complete system is included.

If the top end is desired the Laser Jet 3390 is available at $437.95. This unit includes the other options mentioned with solid performance characteristics. As a laser may suggest, paper throughput is high at 29 pages per minute.

Middle end

As is often the case a purchaser wants something in the middle. In this case, the HP Photo Smart 2575 XI may be the unit of choice. The unit is still fast and has all the features but at a varying level of sophistication.

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Canons Excellent Multifunctional Printer Sales in Vietnam

2007-11-11

Canon has achieved high sales and export growth in Vietnam this year, a senior official from the Japanese printer and camera giant has said. Mike Asao, director of Canon Singapore's HCMC Representative Office, said sales had risen by 20 per-cent on average, though it was 50 per-cent for some products like laser and ink-jet printers. In Vietnam, Canon mostly makes low-end printers meant for developing markets. Asao told Thanh Nien Daily Thursday at a product launch ceremony that the demand in the country was rising constantly.

At the ceremony, 23 new models of single and multifunctional printers, cameras, video camcorders, and scanners were unveiled for the Vietnamese market. They are being made in Canon's Thailand plant. Asao added that printer exports from Vietnam in 2007 would be worth US$1 billion. Canon Vietnam produces mainly two kinds of products, laser and ink-jet printers, all of it for export. Last year, printer exports were worth $700 million, almost twice as much as the previous year.

Canon is the biggest Japanese investor in Vietnam with an investment of $306 million and three plants set up since 2002. They are located in Hanoi's Thang Long Industrial Zone (IZ) and the Que Vo and Tien Son IZs in Bac Ninh Province, also in the north. They have a total capacity of 2.23 million units per month.

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A New Wireless Multifunctional Printer Unleashed By Lexmark

2007-11-04

The multifunctional Lexmark X6570 is aimed at home and small offices, with impressive fax features at its heart. Although wireless networks have become very much a part of homes and small offices up and down the country, the wireless printer and multifunction device markets have yet to catch fire. Realistically, it's only a matter of time before this situation is rectified, as the ability to send documents and pictures to a printer from any machine on the wireless network must be desirable in a typical multiple-PC home or office. Lexmark has been leading the way for some months now, and its latest range of printers and MFDs is fully equipped to jump aboard the wireless bandwagon. The multifunctional Lexmark X6570 is aimed at home and small offices, with impressive fax features at its heart. 33.6Kbps transmission is available, and the 25-page ADF (auto document feeder) turns this into a highly capable fax machine.

Lexmark also has a wireless multifunctional printer for the home, the Lexmark X4850 - reviewed here. But that's not the only interesting trick the Lexmark X6570 has up its sleeve, and the ability to smoothly print on both sides of the page is a feature you're unlikely to get without paying a significant sum for a good laser printer.

Although setting up the Lexmark X6570 isn't the shortest of processes, it is about as easy to follow as it could be. Lexmark's excellent installation routine takes you through every step, displaying picture after picture so that you can see exactly what you should be doing. Connecting the Lexmark to the wireless network is a cinch, thanks to the colour-coded indicator. In practise, we had few problems sending a document to the device when it was on the other side of the room.

This being a multifunctional printer, the Lexmark X6570 can of course handle printing, scanning and copying as well as faxing. While there's nothing special about the Lexmark's specifications, we found that the X6570 handled most tasks with aplomb. You should be expected to wait for high-quality text output - the highest mode is considerably cleaner than the others, but slows you down to just 1.3ppm, as opposed to 13.3ppm and 6.1ppm for the two lower quality modes.

The Lexmark X6570 is pretty good at colour photos as well, with a palette that's just a shade dark, but nonetheless rather vivid and exciting. You will have to wait again, with decent output available in the middle mode at a rate of 1.4ppm (pages per minute). As a scanner we found the Lexmark X6570 to be very acceptable, producing fast and fairly accurate scans in most cases.

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