Understand the Use of Computer Printers

A computer printer is a peripheral device that is normally used to transform the soft copy of a document, a graph, or an image into hard copy of plain pages. A printer might be directly connected to a computer through which printing commands are sent. Shared printers on the network provides centralized access to all connected computers.

Computer printers have different printing speeds depending upon the type of a printer and things that are being printed. A Document with fewer amounts of data will be printed faster than a full page solid image.

Different varieties of printers:

These are some types of computer printers that are available in the market:

1. Inkjet Pinter
2. Laser Printer
3. The Plotters Printer Version
4. The Dot-matrix Printer Type
5. The very cool type of Thermal Printer

An inkjet Printer is the most common type of computer printer. It has a low purchasing cost and high printing quality. Liquid droplets are used to print documents on papers. Laser printers use LED technology to acquire the toner particles on plain paper. Laser printers are faster and more economical to purchase as compared to inkjet printers.

Understand the different modes of printers and speeds.

Printing modes of a printer are:

1. A batch of many characters
2. Bit-mapping the image
3. A vector image

These printing modes depend upon the type of a printer. Previously, printing speed was measured in "characters per second", but nowadays printing speed is measured in pages per minute (PPM) of an office document (A4 or Letter size paper).

Types and Sizes of Printer Papers:

Several kinds of paper are available in markets that are used for printing purposes. Some of the most commonly used papers are: Matte Paper, Glossy Paper, Bright White Paper, Resume Paper and Card Stock.

Glossy paper is mostly used for printing images and photos. Printer paper also comes in various sizes to meet the user's requirement. Commonly used paper sizes are A4 size, letter size and legal size.