Computer printer

Electronic device which produces a

representation of an electronic document
on physical media

A Lexmark printer

A computer printer is a piece of hardware

for a computer. It allows a user to print
items on paper, such as letters and
pictures. Mostly a printer prints under the
control of a computer. Many can also work
as a copying machine or with a digital
camera to print directly without using a
computer.

Types of printers
Today, the following types of printers are in
regular use:

Inkjet printers, also sometimes called

bubble jet printers use colored ink they
put on a paper.
Plotters are large format inkjet printers,
or printers that use special pens.
Laser printers transfer tiny particles of
toner onto the paper. Most do not print
colors.
Dye sublimation printers produce very
high quality images. Three colors are
used. Cyan, Magenta and Yellow. Each
color is printed one at a time from
cellophane sheets. The image is the
sealed with an clear top layer. Some
small photographic printers made by
Kodak and Canon use this process.
Thermal printer is an inexpensive printer
that works by pushing heated pins
against heat-sensitive paper. Thermal
printers are widely used in calculators
and fax machines. Many 20th century
computer printers worked this way.
Impact printers worked by striking the
paper with an inked ribbon. They were
noisy.
Dot-matrix printers are now almost
extinct. There were models with 9
pins and models with 24 pins.
Daisy Wheel printers were a
typewriter printer. Results looked
hand-typed. They had no real
graphics and very loud. Few were
made in the 21st century.
Line printers contain a chain of
characters or pins that print an
 entire line at one time. Line printers
are very fast, but produce low-
quality print.

Producing output
Printers are programmed using a
programming language. The printer
interprets the program, and the outputs the
result. There are two big classes of such
languages: Page description languages,
and Printer Control languages. A page
description language describes what a
page should look like. The program in a
page description language is sent to the
printer, which interprets them. Printer
command languages are at a lower level
than Page description languages, they
contain information that is specific to the
printer model.

Common programming languages for

printers include:

ESC/P
Postscript
PCL
GDI
HPGL and HPGL/2
PDF
VPS

Cost of printers
When comparing the cost of a printer,
people often talk about how expensive it is
to print one page. This cost usually has
three components:

1. The cost of the printer, how expensive it

was to buy the printer
2. The cost of the consumable; the printer
needs supplies (called toner, ink, or ribbon)
to print
3. The cost of the paper; some printers
need special paper to print on

Printers that are more expensive to buy

will usually be less expensive in the
consumables (the ink, toner, or ribbon
used by the printer). Therefore, laser
printers are often more expensive to buy
than inkjet printers, but are not as
expensive to use over a long period of
time. Inkjet printers on the other hand have
a higher cost of consumables because the
ink tanks they use are more expensive
than the toner for a laser printer. Laser
printers that can print in color are usually
more expensive than those that only print
in black and white. Some expensive
printers can do other things such as print
on both sides of the paper, automatically
sort the output, or staple the pages.
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