LASER PRINTER

Laser printing is a digital printing process that rapidlly produces high quality text and graphics on plain paper. As with digital photocopiers and multifunction printers (MFPs), laser printers employ a xerographic printing process, but differ from analog photocopiers in that the image is produced by the direct scanning of a laser beam across the printer's photoreceptor.

TYPES OF LASER PRINTER

1.Continuous Form Continuous form laser printers are usually put to better use in situations when large amounts of high-quality prints need to be made. With pin-feed tractors, paper control is tight and fast, and lessens the possibility of paper jams. Continuous form printers also use power stacking, effectively making them very efficient for tons of prints in a short period of time, which makes them optimal for commercial environments. Issues With Continuous Form A major issue one may find with continuous form laser printers is their gargantuan size. Most continuous form laser printers are about the size of an average copying machine, because they're designed to handle huge jobs without human intervention. As a result, they offer no convenience for someone who requires an efficient computer in their home.

2.Cut Sheet Monochrome Cut sheet monochrome laser printers are best used on desktops and in the home. Using friction feed to advance paper, this type of laser printer works best with multiple types

of prints, such as on envelopes, photographs, letterheads and transparencies. Non-commercial computer owners would probably find this kind of printer most convenient. Issues With Cut Sheet Monochrome The issues with the cut sheet monochrome are the exact opposite of those of the continuous form. Commercial environments would find the cut sheet monochrome laser printer to be too small and inefficient for convenient use. Without the ability to print large amounts of pages continuously while stacking the finished prints, a cut sheet monochrome laser printer just would not be able to support users in need of reliability without human intervention.

ADVANTAGES
The main advantages of laser printers are speed, precision and economy. A laser can move very quickly, so it can "write" with much greater speed than an ink jet. And because the laser beam has an unvarying diameter, it can draw more precisely, without spilling any excess ink. Laser printers tend to be more expensive than inkjet printers, but it doesn't cost as much to keep them running -- toner powder is cheap and lasts a long time, while you can use up

expensive ink cartridges very quickly. This is why offices typically use a laser printer as their "work horse," their machine for printing long text documents. In most models, this mechanical efficiency is complemented by advanced processing efficiency. A typical laser-printer controller can serve everybody in a small office. When they were first introduced, laser printers were too expensive to use as a personal printer. Since that time, however, laser printers have gotten much more affordable. Now you can pick up a basic model for just a little bit more than a nice inkjet printer. As technology advances, laser-printer prices should continue to drop, while performance improves. We'll also see a number of innovative design variations, and possibly brand-new applications of electrostatic printing. Many inventors believe we've only scratched the surface of what we can do with simple static electricity!

DISADVANTAGES
The laser printer's cartridges are more expensive then the cost of inkjet printer's toner. However they do last longer especially

if you remember to set the printer in black and white printing mode when printing black and white and only using the color mode when it is really needed. Another way to make an expensive color laser toner cartridge last longer is to keep the printer in low quality mode unless you are printing out the final document. There are very few disadvantages to owning a laser printer in general but one of them is definitely the cost. The money that you could spend on a very high-end inkjet printer will only buy you a very low-end color laser printer with limited capacities. Color laser printers with multi-functions such as a copier and a fax all in one are even more expensive. However a middle of the line black and white laser printer is comparable to the price of a top of the line color inkjet printer. Another disadvantage is the cost of the cartridges inside a laser printer. Sometimes the cartridges cost almost as much as the printer did which is why many people throw the entire printer out and buy a new one after the cartridge expires in year or two. If you live in a hot or humid climate a laser printer may not be the ideal solution for you. This is because running these machines can make a room very hot. The fuser inside them, which is the device that melts the plastic granules that

constitute the powder that makes up the toner onto the paper, heats up to as high as 200 degrees Celsius. Another limitation of a laser printer is that they only really print on certain kinds of paper. If you want to print out photographs then a laser printer is not for you as they are not yet capable of printing high-resolution images. Also you cannot put photographic paper through a laser printer. For the best quality images you need to buy a bubble jet ink printer that can transfer an image onto photographic paper. The color quality that you get with a bubble jet ink printer is just as good if not better than the color quality that you can obtain with a laser printer. A high-end color printer that produces quality color images can cost as much as $3,500 to $10,000 whereas you can get a good quality ink jet printer for about $200.

Another disadvantage of laser printers is that many of them are limited by the amount of memory that they are sold with. This can sometimes limit the number of fonts that you can use. To expand the memory of your color laser printer you usually have to buy a small RAM board. This is the only reliable way to install memory so that the color laser printer can utilize a number of fonts.

The more expensive a laser printer is the faster it is. The affordable models only print out about four pages a minute. Top end models print out about twelve pages a minute but they are not really affordable for the individual. Laser printers, especially the color laser printers, can also be heavy and take up a lot of desk space or room in the office. At the time of writing there was also no such thing as a portable laser printer. The reason that a portable laser printer has yet to be invented is because a battery does not yet exist that is small enough to provide laser printer functions with enough power so that it can be taken on the road.

FEATURES
Laser printers as well as LED printers rely on one and the same technology used at first in photocopying machines. This process is known as electrophotography and was invented in 1938 and developed by Xerox and Canon in the later 1980s. Electrophotographic process in laser printers, involves six basic steps: A photosensitive surface (photoconductor) is uniformly charged with static electricity by a corona discharge. Then the charged photoconductor is exposed to an optical image through light to discharge it selectively and forms a latent or invisible image.

Development is done by spreading toner, a fine powder, over the surface, which adheres only to the charged areas, thereby making the latent image visible. At the next step an electrostatic field transfers the developed image from the photosensitive surface to a sheet of paper. Then the transferred image is fixed permanently to the paper, by fusing the toner with pressure and heat. The last step is cleaning of all excess toner and electrostatic charges from the photoconductor to make it ready for next cycle.

Laser printers as well as LED printers offer the best print quality i.e. the highest resolution. The unique difference is the method of exposition or formation of the latent image.

Laser printer scanning assembly: Laser printers rely on a laser beam and scanner assembly to form a latent image on the photo-conductor bit by bit. The scanning process is similar to electron beam scanning used in CRT. The laser beam modulated by electrical signals from the printer's controller is directed through a collimator lens onto a rotating polygon mirror (scanner), which reflects the laser beam. Then reflected from the scanner laser beam pass through a scanning lens system, which makes a number of corrections to it and scans on the photoconductor.

HISTORY
Gary Starkweather

The laser printer was invented at Xerox in 1969 by researcher Gary Starkweather, who had an improved printer working by 1971[2] and incorporated into a fully functional networked printer system by about a year later.[3] The prototype was built by modifying an existing xerographic copier. Starkweather disabled the imaging system and created a spinning drum with 8 mirrored sides, with a laser focused on the drum. Light from the laser would bounce off the spinning drum, sweeping across the page as it traveled through the copier. The hardware was completed in just a week or two, but the computer interface and software took almost 3 months to complete.[citation needed] The first commercial implementation of a laser printer was the IBM 3800 in 1976, used for high-volume printing of documents such as invoices and mailing labels. It is often cited as "taking up a whole room", implying that it was a primitive version of the later familiar device used with a personal computer. While large, it was designed for an entirely different purpose. Many 3800s are still in use.[citation needed] The first laser printer designed for use in an office setting was released with the Xerox Star 8010 in 1981. Although it was innovative, the Star was an expensive (US$17 000) system that was purchased by only a few businesses and institutions. After personal computers became more widespread, the first laser

printer intended for a mass market was the HP LaserJet 8ppm, released in 1984, using a Canon engine controlled by HP software. The HP LaserJet printer was quickly followed by laser printers from Brother Industries, IBM, Apple Computer (with the LaserWriter) and others. First-generation machines had large photosensitive drums, of circumference greater than the paper length. Once faster-recovery coatings were developed, the drums could touch the paper multiple times in a pass, and could therefore be smaller in diameter. Laser printers brought fast, high quality text printing with multiple fonts on a page to the business and consumer markets. No other commonly available printer could offer this combination of features. As with most electronic devices, the cost of laser printers has fallen markedly over the years. In 1984, the HP LaserJet sold for $3500,[4] had trouble with even small, low resolution graphics, and weighed 32 kg (71 lb). As of 2008, low end monochrome laser printers often sell for less than $75. These printers tend to lack onboard processing and rely on the host computer to generate a raster image, but still will outperform the LaserJet Classic in nearly all situations.

BUSINESS MODEL
Multifunction lasers, or all-in-one (AIO) printers, make perfect sense for many small offices. These flexible machines allow you to print, copy, scan, and sometimes even fax from a single device, saving you a ton of space and cash. Laser-based AIOs vary greatly in price and features, however, so you want to do a bit of homework before spending hundreds of dollars on a new unit. Most laser AIOs will come with standard office functionality, such as built-in duplexing and an automatic document feeder, but you'll want to delve a bit deeper into your potential printer's feature list before making a decision.

One of the most important features to look at is duty cycle. (That's the most pages a printer is rated to print out in a month.) You'll want a printer with a rating that exceedsby a good marginthe average number of pages you print each month. For a small office, we suggest looking for a maximum duty cycle of at least 50,000 pages. You'll also want to pay close attention to maximum duty cycle versus recommended duty cycle. The maximum duty cycle is the absolute most pages you should subject your printer in any month, while the recommended rating is the number you should limit your printer to month in, month out. Even though a printer may

have a high maximum duty cycle, hitting this number month after month will stress it beyond what it was built to do. Another important feature to consider is paper capacity. For most small businesses, we recommend a printer that can store at least 250 sheets (half a ream of regular paper). Be aware, too, that you can sometimes purchase additional paper trays for many laser printers. If your office prints thousands of pages a month, consider one of these add-ons; no one wants to get up every few hours to refill a paper tray. In our roundup, you'll find a wide range of paper capacities. For example, offices with intense printing needs might consider the Dell 3335dn, which has a potential paper capacity of 800 sheets. You'll also want to make sure your printer is networkable, since we're assuming you'll be printing from more than one computer in a small or home office. Insist on an Ethernet port for setting up a wired network connection; most laser-based AIOs have one. Also, pay close attention to each printer's cost of consumables, meaning how much its toner and drum units will cost. A printer may have a low initial purchase price but end up costly in the long run if it requires expensive toner. As for the drum or drums, you typically won't need to replace them more than once or twice in the lifetime of a printer, but the sticker show

can be high (especially for color lasers, which can have four discrete drum units). Finally, you'll have to decide whether you want a color or monochrome (black-and-white) model. Do you print a great deal of color graphics and images? If so, it's best to go with a color unit. If your office is simply churning out text documents or graphics that don't require color, you'll save some money by choosing a monochrome printer. Both color and monochrome units are represented in this roundup. The models that we review below range in price from $199 to $1,299. The dramatic price span here means, most likely, that at least one of these units can fit the budget and print-volume needs of your business. Make sure you watch for sales, too; we've seen the price, for example, of the Samsung SCX-4623FW drop as low as $150. You can see real-time pricing below for most of the printers we review in this roundup.

COST
A lot of people still have this weird misconception about laser printers being expensive. These days the monochrome laser printers turn out a lot cheaper than their inkjet counterparts, and they are definitely a lot faster and arguably better. Many of the laser printers recover from paper-jams with much lesser fuss than the inkjet counterparts. Of course, it would be ridiculous to consider a monochrome laser printer if you're more into photo printing, or for any kind of requirement that requires you to print in colors; you'll be better off with inkjets in that case, but if you've been using your desktop inkjet for office document printing, maybe it's time you considered a change. Monochrome laser printers these days are cheap, can print high volumes a lot faster than any other alternative, and the noiseless functionality is obviously a plus point. So if you've been throwing away time and money on using inkjets for document printing, maybe you should consider these alternatives that will definitely help improve your productivity.

INKJET PRINTER

Inkjet printing is a type of computer printing that creates a digital image by propelling droplets of ink onto paper. Inkjet printers are the most commonly used type of printer, and range from small inexpensive consumer models to very large professional machines that can cost tens of thousands of dollars.

The concept of inkjet printing originated in the 19th century, and the technology was first extensively developed in the early 1950s. Starting in the late 1970s inkjet printers that could reproduce digital images generated by computers were

developed, mainly by Epson, Hewlett-Packard (HP), and Canon. In the worldwide consumer market, four manufacturers account for the majority of inkjet printer sales: Canon, HP, Epson, and Lexmark, a 1991 spin-off from IBM.

The emerging ink jet material deposition market also uses inkjet technologies, typically printheads using piezoelectric crystals, to deposit materials directly on substrates.

TYPES OF INKJET PRINTERS

1.Continuous Inkjet

The continuous inkjet (CIJ) method is used commercially for marking and coding of products and packages. In 1867 Lord Kelvin patented the syphon recorder, which recorded telegraph signals as a continuous trace on paper using an ink jet nozzle deflected by a magnetic coil. The first commercial devices (medical strip chart recorders) were introduced in 1951 by Siemens.[4]

In CIJ technology, a high-pressure pump directs liquid ink from a reservoir through a gunbody and a microscopic nozzle, creating a continuous stream of ink droplets via the PlateauRayleigh instability. A piezoelectric crystal creates an acoustic wave as it vibrates within the gunbody and causes the stream of liquid to break into droplets at regular intervals: 64,000 to 165,000 droplets per second may be achieved. The ink droplets are subjected to an electrostatic field created by a charging electrode as they form; the field varies 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 neighbouring droplets.

The charged droplets pass through an electrostatic field and are directed (deflected) by electrostatic deflection plates to print on the receptor material (substrate), or allowed to continue on undeflected to a collection gutter for re-use. The more highly charged droplets are deflected to a greater degree. Only a small fraction of the droplets is used to print, the majority being recycled.

CIJ is one of the oldest ink jet technologies in use and is fairly mature. The major advantages are the very high velocity (~50 m/s) of the ink droplets, which allows for a relatively long distance between print head and substrate, and the very high drop ejection frequency, allowing for very high speed printing. Another advantage is freedom from nozzle clogging as the jet is always in use, therefore allowing volatile solvents such as ketones and alcohols to be employed, giving the ink the ability to "bite" into the substrate and dry quickly.

The ink system requires active solvent regulation to counter solvent evaporation during the time of flight (time between nozzle ejection and gutter recycling), and from the venting process whereby air that is drawn into the gutter along with the unused drops is vented from the reservoir. Viscosity is

monitored and a solvent (or solvent blend) is added to counteract solvent loss.

2.Drop-on-Demand Inkjet

A Canon inkjet with CMYK cartridges Drop-on-demand (DOD) is divided into thermal DOD and piezoelectric DOD. Most consumer inkjet printers, including those from Canon, Hewlett-Packard, and Lexmark, use the thermal inkjet process. The thermal inkjet principle was discovered by Canon engineer Ichiro Endo in August 1977. In the thermal inkjet process, the print cartridges contain a series of tiny chambers, each containing a heater, all of which are constructed by

photolithography. To eject a droplet from each chamber, a pulse of current is passed through the heating element causing a rapid vaporization of the ink in the chamber to form a bubble, which causes a large pressure increase, propelling a droplet of ink onto the paper (hence Canon's trade name of Bubble Jet). The ink's surface tension, as well as the condensation and thus contraction of the vapor bubble, pulls a further charge of ink into the chamber through a narrow channel attached to an ink reservoir. The inks used are usually water-based and use either pigments or dyes as the colorant. The inks used must have a volatile component to form the vapor bubble, otherwise droplet ejection cannot occur. As no special materials are required, the print head is generally cheaper to produce than in other inkjet technologies.

Most commercial and industrial inkjet printers and some consumer printers (those produced by Epson and Brother Industries) use a piezoelectric material in an ink-filled chamber behind each nozzle instead of a heating element. When a voltage is applied, the

piezoelectric material changes shape, which generates a pressure pulse in the fluid forcing a droplet of ink from the nozzle. Piezoelectric (also called Piezo) inkjet allows a wider variety of inks than thermal inkjet as there is no requirement for a volatile component, and no issue with kogation (buildup of ink residue), but the print heads are more expensive to manufacture due to the use of piezoelectric material (usually PZT, lead zirconium titanate). A DOD process uses software that directs the heads to apply between zero to eight droplets of ink per dot, only where needed. Piezo inkjet technology is often used on production lines to mark products. For instance, the "use-before" date is often applied to products with this technique; in this application the head is stationary and the product moves past. Requirements of this application are high speed, a long service life, a relatively large gap between the print head and the substrate, and low operating cost.

ADVANTAGES
This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (May 2010)

Compared to earlier consumer-oriented color printers, inkjets have a number of advantages. They are quieter in operation than impact dot matrix or daisywheel printers. They can print finer, smoother details through higher printhead resolution, and many consumer inkjets with photographic-quality printing are widely available.

In comparison to more expensive technologies like thermal wax, dye sublimation, and laser printing, inkjets have the advantage of practically no warm up time, and lower cost per page. However, low-cost laser printers can have lower perpage costs, at least for black-and-white printing, and possibly for color.

For some inkjet printers, monochrome ink sets are available either from the printer manufacturer or from third-party suppliers. These allow the inkjet printer to compete with the silver-based photographic papers traditionally used in blackand-white photography, and provide the same range of tones: neutral, "warm" or "cold". When switching between full-color and monochrome ink sets, it is necessary to flush out the old ink from the print head with a cleaning cartridge. Special software or at least a modified device driver are usually required, to deal with the different color mapping. Some types of inkjet printers are capable of very high speed printing. One commercial high speed ink jet printer can print on 30 inch wide web at 200 meters / minute

DISADVANTAGES
Inkjet printers may have a number of disadvantages: (Original) ink is often very expensive. According to the BBC (2003), "The cost of ink has been the subject of an Office of Fair Trading investigation. Which? magazine has accused manufacturers of a lack of transparency about the price of ink and called for an industry standard for measuring ink cartridge performance". Many "intelligent" ink cartridges contain a microchip that communicates the estimated ink level to the printer; this may cause the printer to display an error message, or incorrectly inform the user that the ink cartridge is empty. In some cases, these messages can be ignored, but some inkjet printers will refuse to print with a cartridge that declares itself empty, to prevent consumers from refilling cartridges. For example, Epson embeds a chip which prevents printing when the chip claims the cartridge is empty, although a researcher who overrode the system found that in one case he could print up to 38% more good quality pages, even though the chip stated that the cartridge was empty.

The lifetime of inkjet prints produced by inkjets using aqueous inks is shorter (although UV-resistant inks are available) than those produced with solvent-based inkjets and so-called "archival inks" have been produced for use in aqueous-based machines which offer extended life. Because the ink used in most consumer inkjets is watersoluble, care must be taken with inkjet-printed documents to avoid even the smallest drop of water, which can cause severe "blurring" or "running". Similarly, water-based highlighter markers can blur inkjet-printed documents and discolor the highlighter's tip. The very narrow inkjet nozzles are prone to clogging. The ink consumed cleaning themeither during cleaning invoked by the user, or in many cases, performed automatically by the printer on a routine schedulecan account for a significant proportion of the ink used in the machine.

These disadvantages have been addressed in a variety of ways: Third-party ink suppliers sell ink cartridges at significant discounts (at least 10%-30% off OEM cartridge prices, sometimes up to 95%), and also bulk ink and cartridge selfrefill kits at even lower prices.

Many vendors' "intelligent" ink cartridges have been reverse-engineered. It is now possible to buy inexpensive devices to reliably reset such cartridges to report themselves as full, so that they may be refilled many times. Print lifetime is highly dependent on the quality and formulation of the ink as well as the paper chosen. The earliest inkjet printers, intended for home and small office applications, used dye-based inks. Even the best dye-based inks are not as durable as pigment-based inks, which are now available for many inkjet printers. Many inkjet printers now utilize pigment based ink which are highly water resistant: at least black ink is pigment-based. Resin or silicon protected photopaper is widely available at low cost, introducing complete water and rub resistance for dye and pigment inks, although it should be noted that the photopaper itself must be designed for pigment or for dye inks, as pigment particles are too large to be able to penetrate through dye-only photopaper protection layer. Inkjet printing head nozzles can be cleaned using specialized solvents; or by soaking in warm distilled water for short periods of time.

FEATURES
Inkjet printers technology development starts in the early 1960s. The first inkjet printing device was patented by Siemens in 1951, which led to the introduction of one of the first inkjet chart recorders. The continuous inkjet printer technology was developed later by IBM in the 1970s. The continuous inkjet technology basis is to deflect and control a continuous inkjet droplet stream direction onto the printed media or into a gutter for recirculation by applying an electric field to previously charged inkjet droplets. The drop-on-demand inkjet printer technology was led to the market in 1977 when Seimens introduced the PT-80 serial character printer. The drop-on-demand printer ejects ink droplets only when they are needed to print on the media. This method eliminates the complexity of the hardware required for the continuous inkjet printing technology. In these first inkjet printers ink drops are ejected by a pressure wave created by the mechanical motion of the piezoelectric ceramic.

HISTORY
Inkjet printers have certainly come a long way in the last two decades. And although we didnt see them in the stores until the 1980s, it was as far back as the mid 1970s when printer companies recognised that inkjet technology was going to be the wave of the future. But initially, companies were faced with the challenge of creating an inkjet printer that was affordable while at the same time could provide quality printouts. The more popular type of inkjet printer was invented by Siemens in 1977. These printers, sprayed ink only where needed and although they were less expensive, they were slower than continuous inkjet printers. Companies Overcome Inkjet Challenges One of the biggest challenges when creating inkjet printers was controlling the flow of ink from the print head onto the page. At first, the print head became clogged with dried ink. IBM used electrically-charged droplets to coat the page with ink but this strategy wasted a lot of ink and the technology didnt appeal to consumers. Eventually, these challenges were

met by Canon and Hewlett Packard in the late 1980s, when liquid inkjet printers hit the market in full swing. But before getting quality inkjet printers to market, it took a lot of trial and error and more than one company to complete the task. In fact, a number of companies are credited with making important contributions to inkjet technology and by 1990 inkjet printers began to become widely accepted. Today, inkjet printers are considered one of the most preferred printing methods. Currently, when you purchase an inkjet printer, you can buy a farily good printer for about 65. But did you know that when Hewlett Packard introduced the DeskJet Printer in 1988, it cost about 500? Inkjet Cartridges There are several reasons for the inkjet printer being so popular. One of the contributing factors in the success of inkjet printers is the printer ink cartridge. While each manufacturer recommends their own brand of printer ink cartridges, today there are many options such as remanufactured ink cartridges, replacement ink cartridges or a compatible cartridge that work well for a host of name brand printers. In fact, you can save a lot of money by getting inkjet refill kits and then refilling the cartridges on your own. Kudos to the development of printer ink cartridges, as they have made it possible to print quality prints on various sizes and

types of paper, fabric and film without spending a fortune. Today, you can find a wide range of cartridges on the Internet safely and reliably

BUSINESS MODEL
Microchips from Epson ink cartridges. These are tiny printed circuit boards; a deposit of black epoxy covers the chip itself

A common business model for inkjet printers involves selling the actual printer at or below production cost, while dramatically marking up the price of the (proprietary) ink

cartridges (a profit model called "Freebie marketing"). Most current inkjet printers attempt to enforce this product tying using microchips in the cartridges to hinder the use of thirdparty or refilled ink cartridges. The microchips monitor usage and report the ink remaining to the printer. Some manufacturers also impose "expiration dates". When the chip reports that the cartridge is empty (or out of date) the printer stops printing. Even if the cartridge is refilled, the microchip will indicate to the printer that the cartridge is depleted. For many models (especially from Canon), the 'empty' status can be overridden by entering a 'service code' (or sometimes simply by pressing the 'start' button again). For some printers, special circuit "flashers" are available that reset the quantity of remaining ink to the maximum. Some manufacturers, most notably Epson and Hewlett Packard, have been accused of indicating that a cartridge is depleted while a substantial amount of ink remains.

A 2007 study found that most printers waste a significant quantity of ink when they declare a cartridge to be empty. Single-ink cartridges were found to have on average 20% of their ink remaining, though actual figures range from 9% to 64% of the cartridge's total ink capacity, depending on the brand and model of printer. This problem is further compounded with the use of one-piece multi-ink cartridges, which are declared empty as soon as one color runs low. Of great annoyance to many users are those printers that will refuse to print documents requiring only black ink, just because one or more of the color ink cartridges is depleted.

In recent years, many consumers have begun to challenge the business practices of printer manufacturers, such as charging

up to $8,000 per gallon for printer ink.Alternatives for consumers are cheaper copies of cartridges, produced by third parties, and the refilling of cartridges, using refill kits. Due to the large differences in price caused by OEM markups, there are many companies selling third-party ink cartridges. Most printer manufacturers discourage refilling disposable cartridges or using aftermarket copy cartridges, and say that use of incorrect inks may cause poor image quality due to differences in viscosity, which can affect the amount of ink ejected in a drop, and color consistency, and can damage the printhead. Nonetheless, the use of alternative cartridges and inks has been gaining in popularity, threatening the business model of printer manufacturers. Printer companies such as HP, Lexmark, and Epson have used patents and the DMCA to launch lawsuits against third-party vendors.[19][20] An antitrust class-action lawsuit was launched in the US against HP and office supply chain Staples Inc, alleging that HP paid Staples $100 million to keep inexpensive third-party ink cartridges off the shelves.

In Lexmark Int'l v. Static Control Components, Case No. 035400 (6th Cir. Oct. 26, 2004) (Sutton, J.) the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled that circumvention of this technique[clarification needed] does not violate the

Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The European Commission[citation needed] also ruled this practice anticompetitive: it will disappear in newer models sold in the European Union. While the DMCA case dealt with copyright protection, companies also rely on patent protection to prevent copying and refilling of cartridges. For example, if a company devises all of the ways in which their microchips can be manipulated and cartridges can be refilled and patents these methods, they can prevent anyone else from refilling their cartridges[citation needed]. Patents protecting the structure of their cartridges prevent the sale of cheaper copies of the cartridges. For some printer models (notably those from Canon) the manufacturer's own microchip can be removed and fitted to a compatible cartridge thereby avoiding the need to replicate the microchip (and risk prosecution). Other manufacturers embed their microchips deep within the cartridge in an effort to prevent this approach. In 2007 Eastman Kodak entered the inkjet market with its own line of All-In-One printers based on a marketing model that differed from the prevailing practice of selling the printer at a loss while making large profits on replacement ink cartridges.

COST
This section needs additional citations for verification. (April 2012) Many inkjet printers have lower initial purchase prices than laser printers, but the cost per page when using original ink is usually significantly higher compared to a laser printer. The use of third-party compatible inks and toners may lower operating costs with either technology.

Inkjets use solvent-based inks which have much shorter expiration dates compared to laser toner, which has an indefinite shelf life. Inkjet printers tend to clog if not used regularly, whereas laser printers are much more tolerant of intermittent use. Inkjet printers require periodical head cleaning, which consumes a considerable amount of ink, and will drive printing costs higher especially if the printer is unused for long periods. If an inkjet head becomes clogged, third-party ink solvents/head cleaners and replacement heads are available in some cases. The cost of such items may be less expensive compared to a transfer unit for a laser printer, but the laser printer unit has a much longer lifetime between required

maintenance. Many inkjet printer models now have permanently installed heads, which cannot be economically replaced if they become irreversibly clogged, resulting in scrapping of the entire printer. On the other hand, inkjet printer designs which use a disposable printhead usually cost significantly more per page than printers using permanent heads. By contrast, laser printers do not have printheads to clog or replace frequently, and usually can produce many more pages between maintenance intervals.

Inkjet printers have traditionally produced better quality output than color laser printers when printing photographic material. Both technologies have improved dramatically over time, although the best quality giclee prints favored by artists use what is essentially a high-quality specialized type of inkjet printer. Laser printers are usually preferred in an office environment, since inkjet printers are generally much slower and may require more maintenance on a less-predictable basis. Specialized aftermarket continuous ink systems (CISS) for inkjets are available which allow higher volume inkjet printing without pausing for ink refilling, but these systems cannot increase the speed of the basic mechanism.