Fundamentals

A computer usually displays its answers on a screen. If you want the computer to copy the answers onto paper, attach the computer to a printer, which is a device that prints on paper.

The typical printer looks like a typewriter but lacks a keyboard. To feed information to the printer, you type on the computer’s keyboard. The computer transmits your request through a cable of wires running from the back of the computer to the back of the printer.

A computer’s advertised price usually does not include a printer and cable. The cable costs about $8; the typical printer costs several hundred dollars.

Printers are more annoying than screens. Printers are noisier, slower, cost more, consume more electricity, need repairs more often, and require you to buy paper and ink. But you’ll want a printer anyway, to copy the computer’s answers onto paper that you can give your computerless friends. Another reason to get a printer is that a sheet of paper is bigger than a screen and lets you see more information at once.

Printer dealers

To get a printer cheaply, phone these mail-order discount dealers:

Tri State Computer

650 6th Ave. (at 20th St.)

New York NY 10011

800-433-5199 or 212-633-2530

Harmony Computers & Electronics

1801 Flatbush Ave.

Brooklyn NY 11210

800-441-1144 or 718-692-3232

Micro Warehouse

444 Scott Dr.

Bloomingdale, IL 60108

800-551-3146 or 908-905-5245

Micro Warehouse offers the greatest variety of printers but charges more than the other companies. To get special attention, ask Tri State for David Rohinsky at extension 223 and tell him you’re reading The Secret Guide to Computers.

To get low prices locally, walk into chains of discount superstores, such as Comp USA (which sells all kinds of computer equipment) and Staples (which sells all kinds of office supplies and some computer equipment).

Three kinds of printers

Three kinds of printers are popular.

A dot-matrix printer looks like a typewriter but has no keyboard. Like a typewriter, it smashes an inked ribbon against the paper. Like a typewriter, it’s cheap: it typically costs about $150.

An ink-jet printer looks like a dot-matrix printer; but instead of containing a ribbon, it contains tiny hoses that squirt ink at the paper. It prints more beautifully than a dot-matrix printer and costs more. It typically costs about $200.

A laser printer looks like a photocopier. Like a photocopier, it contains a rotating drum and inky toner. It prints even more beautifully than the other two kinds of printers. Like a photocopier, it’s expensive: it typically costs about $400.

Special requirements

As you progress from a dot-matrix printer to an ink-jet printer to a laser printer, the quality tends to go up, and so does the price. But here are exceptions.…

Color If you need to print in color (instead of just black-and-white), get an ink-jet printer. The typical ink-jet printer can print in color beautifully. (Dot-matrix printers produce colors too crudely and slowly. Laser printers produce just black-and-white, except for ridiculously expensive laser printers that produce color and cost about $4,000.)

Mailing labels Although you can print mailing labels on all three kinds of printers, the easiest way to print mailing labels is on a dot-matrix printer.

Multi-part forms If you want to print on a multipart form (using carbon paper or carbonless NCR paper), you must buy a dot-matrix printer.

Old accounting software Some old accounting software requires that you buy a dot-matrix printer. It also requires that the printer be an expensive kind that can handle extra-wide paper.

Cost of consumables

After you’ve bought the printer and used it for a while, the ink supply will run out, so you must buy more ink.

In the typical dot-matrix printer, the inked ribbon costs about $5 and lasts about 1000 pages,

so it costs about a half a penny per page. That’s cheap!

In the typical ink-jet printer, the ink cartridge costs about $20 and lasts about 500 pages,

so it costs about 4 cents per page. That’s expensive!

In the typical laser printer, the toner cartridge costs about $80 and lasts about 4000 pages,

so it costs about 2 cents per page. That’s expensive, but not as expensive as the ink in an ink-jet printer.

Those prices assume you’re printing black text. If you’re printing graphics or color, the cost per page goes up drastically. For example, full-color graphics on an ink-jet printer cost about 50 cents per page.

For all three kinds of printers, you must also pay for the paper, which costs about 1 cent per sheet if you buy a small quantity (such as a 500 sheets), or a half a cent per sheet if you buy a large quantity (such as 5000 sheets). For low prices on paper, go to Staples.

You must also pay for the electricity to run the printer; but the electricity’s cost is negligible (much less than a penny per page) if you turn the printer off when you’re not printing.

Warning: if you leave a laser printer on even when not printing, its total yearly electric cost can get high, since the laser printer contains a big electric heater. (You might even notice the lights in your room go dim when the heater kicks on.)

Daisy-wheel printers

Although the most popular kinds of printers are dot-matrix, ink-jet, and laser, some folks still use an older kind of printer, called a daisy-wheel printer. It’s cute! Here’s how it works.…

Like a typewriter and a dot-matrix printer, a daisy-wheel printer smashes an inked ribbon against paper. To do that, the daisy-wheel printer contains a device called a daisy wheel, which is an artificial daisy flower made of plastic or metal. On each of the daisy’s petals is embossed a character: a letter, a digit, or a symbol. For example, one petal has the letter A embossed on it; another petal has B; another petal has C; etc.

Notice that each character is embossed. (The word “embossed” is like “engraved”, but an “embossed” character is raised up from the surface instead of etched into the surface.)

To print the letter C, the printer spins the daisy wheel until the C petal is in front of the inked ribbon. Then a hammer bangs the C petal against the ribbon, which in turn hits the paper, so that an inked C appears on the paper.

Boldface The printer can print each character extra-dark or regular. To print a character extra-dark, the printer prints the character, moves to the right just 120th of an inch, and then reprints the character. Since the second printing is almost in the same place as the original character, the character looks darkened and slightly fatter. Those darkened, fattened characters are called boldfaced.

Different wheels You can remove the daisy wheel from the printer and insert a different daisy wheel instead. Each daisy wheel contains a different font. For example, one daisy wheel contains italics; a different daisy wheel contains Greek symbols used by scientists.

The printer holds just one daisy wheel at a time. To switch to italics in the middle of your printing, you must stop the printer, switch daisy wheels (a tedious activity that requires your own manual labor!), and then press a button for the printer to resume printing.

Manufacturers The most famous daisy-wheel printer manufacturer was Diablo, founded by Mr. Lee in California. He sold the company to Xerox, then founded a second daisy-wheel printer company, Qume (pronounced “kyoom”), which he sold to ITT. In 1988 he bought Qume back. Other companies (such as Brother and Juki) invented imitations that claimed to be Diablo & Qume compatible.

Variants of the daisy wheel Over the years, many variants of the daisy wheel have been invented.

For example, Nippon Electric Company (NEC) invented a “wilted” daisy wheel, whose petals are bent. The wilted daisy wheel is called a thimble. Computerists like it because it spins faster than a traditional daisy and also produces a sharper image. It’s used just in NEC’s Spinwriter and Elf printers.

Another variation of the daisy wheel is the plastic golf ball, which has characters embossed all over it. IBM calls it a Selectric typing element. IBM uses it in typewriters, typesetting machines, and printers. It produces better-looking characters than daisy wheels or thimbles. Since it spins too slowly and needs too many repairs, IBM is discontinuing it.

Gigantic printers used by maxicomputers and minicomputers have characters embossed on bands, chains, and drums instead of daisies. Those printers are fast and cost many thousands of dollars.

Look closer

Now let’s take a closer look at each of the three popular kinds of printers: dot-matrix, ink-jet, and laser.…

Dot-matrix printers

A dot-matrix printer resembles a daisy-wheel printer; but instead of containing a daisy wheel, it contains a few guns, as if it were a super-cowboy whose belt contains several holsters.

Each gun shoots a pin at the inked ribbon. When the pin’s tip hits the ribbon and smashes the ribbon against the paper, a dot of ink appears on the paper. Then the pin retracts back into the gun that fired it.

Since each gun has its own pin, the number of guns is the same as the number of pins.

9-pin printers

If the printer is of average quality, it has 9 guns — and therefore 9 pins. It’s called a 9-pin printer. The 9 guns are stacked on top of each other, in a column that’s called the print head. If all the guns fire simultaneously, the pins smash against the ribbon simultaneously, so the paper shows 9 dots in a vertical column. The dots are very close to each other, so that the column of dots looks like a single vertical line. If just some of the 9 pins press against the ribbon, you get fewer than 9 dots, so you see just part of a vertical line.

To print a character, the print head’s 9 guns print part of a vertical line; then the print head moves to the right and prints part of another vertical line, then moves to the right again and prints part of another vertical line, etc. Each character is made of parts of vertical lines — and each part is made of dots.

The pattern of dots that makes up a character is called the dot matrix. That’s why such a printer’s called a 9-pin dot-matrix printer.

Inside the printer is a ROM chip that holds the definition of each character. For example, the ROM’s definition of “M” says which pins to fire to produce the letter “M”. To use the ROM chip, the printer contains its own CPU chip and its own RAM.

When microcomputers first became popular, most dot-matrix printers for them were built by a New Hampshire company, Centronics. In 1980, Japanese companies took over the marketplace. Centronics went bankrupt. The two Japanese companies that dominate the industry now are Epson and Panasonic.

Epson Epson became popular because it was the first company to develop a disposable print head — so that when the print head wears out, you can throw it away and pop in a new one yourself, without needing a repairman. Also, Epson was the first company to develop a low-cost dot-matrix impact printer whose dots look “clean and crisp” instead of looking like "fuzzy blobs”. Epson was the main reason why Centronics went bankrupt.

Epson is part of a Japanese conglomerate called the Seiko Group, which became famous by timing the athletes in the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. To time them accurately, the Seiko Group invented a quartz clock attached to an electronic printer. Later, the quartz clock was miniaturized and marketed to consumers as the “Seiko watch”, which became the best-selling watch in the whole world. The electronic printer, or “E.P.”, led to a better printer, called the “son of E.P.”, or “EP’s son”. That’s how the Epson division was founded and got its name!

Epson’s first 9-pin printer was the MX-80. Then came an improvement, called the FX-80. Those printers are obsolete; they’ve been replaced by Epson’s newest 9-pin wonders, the FX-880 (which costs $250) and the FX-1180 (which can handle extra-wide paper and costs $380). Epson’s cheapest and slowest 9-pin printer is the LX-300+ ($190). You can get those prices from discount dealers (such as Tri State).

Panasonic For a 9-pin printer, I recommend buying the Panasonic 1150 instead, because it prints more beautifully and costs just $149 from discount dealers such as Harmony. Too bad it can’t handle extra-wide paper!

Other Japanese Besides Epson and Panasonic, four other Japanese companies are also popular: NEC, Oki, Citizen, and Star.

Compatibility Printers from all six of those Japanese companies are intended mainly for the IBM PC, though they work with Apple 2 and Commodore computers also.

Apple The most popular printers for the Mac were the Imagewriter and the Imagewriter 2. They were designed by Apple to print exact copies of the Mac’s screen. They even print copies of the screen’s wild fonts and graphics. Apple stopped selling them.

7-pin printers

Although the average dot-matrix printer uses 9 pins, some older printers use just 7 pins instead of 9. Unfortunately, 7-pin printers can’t print letters that dip below the line (g, j, p, q, and y) and can’t underline. Some 7-pin printers print just capitals; other 7-pin printers “cheat” by raising the letters g, j, p, q, and y slightly.

24-pin printers

Although 9 pins are enough to print English, they’re not enough to print advanced Japanese, which requires 24 pins instead.

Manufacturers The first company to popularize 24-pin printers was Toshiba. Its printers printed Japanese — and English — beautifully. 24-pin Toshiba printers became popular in America, because they print English characters more beautifully than 9-pin printers.

Epson and all the other Japanese printer companies have copied Toshiba. Here are the cheapest wonderful 24-pin printers:

The Epson Action Printer 3250 has a black ribbon and costs $150.

The Panasonic 2130 has a black ribbon and costs $169 ($199 minus $30 rebate).

The Panasonic 2135 has a multicolor ribbon and costs $239.

The Epson LQ-570e is sturdier, easier to operate, has a black ribbon, and costs $240.

You can get those prices from Tri State and Harmony. While supplies last, Tri State has an even better deal: get a refurbished Epson LQ-570+ for just $160! Phone Tri State at 800-433-5199 or 212-633-2530.

The cheapest 24-pin printer that handles wide paper is the Epson LQ-2080 ($400).

24-pin printers print more beautifully than 9-pin printers but print slower, are less rugged, and don’t bang hard enough to print multiple copies on thick multi-part forms.

Pin arrangement In a typical, cheap 24-pin printer (such as the Epson Action Printer 3250), the even-numbered pins are slightly to the right of the odd-numbered pins, so you see two columns of pins. After firing the even-numbered pins, the print head moves to the right and fires the odd-numbered pins, whose dots on paper overlap the dots from the even-numbered pins. The overlap insures that the vertical column of up to 24 dots has no unwanted gaps.

In fancier 24-pin printers (such as the Panasonic 2130 & 2135), the 24 pins are arranged as a diamond instead of two columns, so that the sound of firing pins is staggered: when you print a vertical line you hear a quiet hum instead of two bangs.

Beyond 24 pins

The fastest dot-matrix printers use multiple print heads, so that they can print several characters simultaneously.

Why the daisies died

During the 1970’s, daisy-wheel printers were popular, but they’ve died out. Computerists have switched to dot-matrix printers instead, for the following reasons.

The mechanism that spins the daisy is expensive, slow, and frequently needs repairs.

Dot-matrix printers can easily print graphics by making the pictures out of little dots. Daisy wheels cannot.

Although the first dot-matrix printers had just 7 pins and printed ugly characters, the newest 9-pin and 24-pin printers from Epson and Panasonic print prettier characters than the average daisy wheel. Moreover, you can make the typical 9-pin printer imitate an 18-pin printer by doing 2-pass printing, in which the printer prints a line of text, jerks the paper up very slightly, and then prints the line again so the new dots fill the gaps between the old dots.

If you have a daisy-wheel printer and want to change to a different font (such as italics), you must spend your time manually switching daisy wheels. If you have a dot-matrix printer instead, just tell the printer which font you want (by pressing a button on the printer or on your computer’s keyboard), and the printer will automatically switch to different patterns of dots to produce the different font, since the printer’s ROM contains the definitions of many fonts. To make a daisy-wheel printer print so many fonts, you must buy several dozen daisy wheels, costing a total of several hundred dollars.

So daisy-wheel printers died because of competition from dot-matrix printers — and from ink-jet and laser printers, which print even more beautifully! Let’s examine those super-beautiful printers now.…

Ink-jet printers

An ink-jet printer resembles a dot-matrix printer but contains hoses instead of guns. The hoses (called nozzles) squirt ink at the paper. There are no pins or ribbons.

When you use an ink-jet printer, you hear the splash of ink squirting the paper. That splash is quieter than the bang produced when a dot-matrix printer’s pins smash a ribbon. If you like quiet, you’ll love ink-jet printers!

Most ink-jet printers can print in color. They mix together the three primary ink colors (red, blue, and yellow) to form all the colors of the rainbow.

The most popular ink-jet printers are made by Hewlett-Packard (HP). Recently, Epson and Canon have started making ink-jet printers also.

The ink-jet printers from all three of those companies are excellent. Each company makes a wide variety of ink-jet printers, at prices ranging from about $100 to about $1000. Here are some general tendencies:

HP’s printers produce the best-quality black. Canon’s produce the worst.

HP’s printers produce the prettiest colors. Canon’s produce the ugliest.

Epson’s printers produce the finest color details. Canon’s produce the crudest.

HP’s printers are the best at avoiding paper jams. Epson’s are the worst.

HP’s printers are the fastest. Epson’s are the slowest.

HP’s printers cost the most. Canon’s cost the least.

Each manufacturer has its own brand names:

HP’s ink-jet printers are called Desk Jets. Canon’s ink-jet printers are called Bubble Jets. Epson’s ink-jet printers are called Styluses.

Most printers are designed for the IBM PC. Most printers can be attached to a Mac also. Special Mac-only models are also available: HP’s Mac-only models are called Desk Writers; Canon’s Mac-only models, called Stylewriters, were marketed by Apple.

How does the ink get out of the nozzle and onto the paper?

In ink-jet printers by HP and Canon, a bubble of ink in the nozzle gets heated and becomes hot enough to burst and splash onto the paper. Epson’s ink-jet printers use a different technique, in which the nozzle suddenly constricts and forces the ink out.

When using an ink-jet printer, try different brands of paper.

Some brands of paper absorb ink better. If you choose the wrong brand, the ink will wick (spread out erratically through the strands of the paper’s fiber). Start by trying cheap copier paper, then explore alternatives. The paper brand you buy makes a much bigger difference with ink-jet printers than with dot-matrix or laser printers. Canon’s printers are the best at tolerating paper differences, but Canon’s ink is water-based and smears slightly if the paper or envelope gets wet (from rain or a sweaty thumb).

HP, Canon, and Epson are being attacked by three aggressive competitors (Xerox, Brother, and Lexmark), which sometimes offer better deals.

You can buy from discount dealers:

Tri State tends to have the lowest prices on HP and Brother printers.

Harmony has lowest prices on Epson, Canon, Xerox, and Lexmark printers.

PC Connection has the most informative catalog.

Ink-jet printers are divided into several categories.…

Dual-cartridge color

The most popular category is dual-cartridge color. If you buy an ink-jet printer in this category, you can insert two ink cartridges simultaneously, side by side.

One cartridge contains black ink. The other cartridge contains the color trio (red, blue, and yellow). The computer mixes together all 4 (black, red, blue, and yellow) to form all possible colors. That method is called the 4-color process.

Epson’s newest such printer is the Stylus Color 777, which costs just $89 from Harmony.

It prints precisely: the resolution is 2880 dots per inch vertically, 720 dots per inch horizontally, and the dots are squirted onto the paper neatly, without splatter. It prints fast: up to 8 pages per minute for black, 6 pages per minute for color. Those high speeds are obtained just while printing text in low resolution (360 dots per inch). To print a color photo in high resolution takes 1˝ minutes for 4"´6", 3 minutes for 8"´10". It comes with a 1-year warranty. The cartridges are long-lasting: they’ll print 600 pages of black text, 300 pages of color text; before the ink runs out and you must insert new cartridges. The black print head contains 144 nozzles; the color print head contains 144 nozzles (48 per color).

To compete against Epson, Canon offers several competitors. Canon’s cheapest is the Bubble Jet Color 2100 (BJC-2100).

It lists for $100, but you get a $50 rebate, bringing the final cost down to just $50! That gets you 720´360 dpi, 5 ppm black, 2 ppm color, 1-year warranty. The price includes a cartridge containing all 4 colors. An all-black cartridge costs extra and is needed to achieve the “5 ppm black” speed.

HP offers these:

HP Printer     Speed                                   Color resolution       Price

Desk Jet 840C   8 ppm black, 3    ppm color    600´1200               $149

Desk Jet 930C   9 ppm black, 7˝ ppm color  2400´1200               $190

Desk Jet 950C 11 ppm black, 8˝ ppm color  2400´1200               $280

Each can produce 600´600 black. Though HP’s black and color resolutions have low numbers, HP’s color looks good because HP’s printers can make each dot be several sizes. That chart shows price charged by Tri State.

Single-cartridge color

A cheaper category is single-cartridge color. This category lets you insert either a black cartridge or a color cartridge, but you cannot insert both cartridges simultaneously.

If you try to print black while the color cartridge is in, the computer tries to imitate “black” by printing red, blue, and yellow on top of each other. That produces a “mud” instead of a true black, and it’s also very slow. If you try to make such a printer reproduce a photograph, the image produced looks slightly “muddy”, “washed-out”, with poor contrast.

But the price is deliciously low! The main such printer has been Canon’s BJC-1000. Here’s why it costs little:

It comes in a box that includes one color cartridge (to get you started) but no black cartridge (which costs extra). The printer produces just 720´360 black, 360´360 color. The printer is very slow: just 4 ppm black, 0.6 ppm color. Its black print head contains just 64 nozzles; it color print head contains just 48 nozzles (16 per color).

It’s been selling for $75, sometimes minus a $30 rebate (bringing the final cost down to $45), but it’s being discontinued in favor of the BJC-2100, which costs just slightly more and is much better.

Lexmark’s Z-12 Color Jetprinter is a single-cartridge color printer that’s better than the BJC-1000.

You can order it directly from Lexmark for $50 (plus tax and shipping) at Lexmark’s Internet Web site (www.lexmark.com). Like the BJC-1000, its price includes a color cartridge but no black cartridge (which costs extra). Lexmark claims “1200 dpi” and “6 ppm black, 3 ppm color”. Lexmark also includes discount coupons so you can get good software cheap.

 

Special printers

The following printers have unusual abilities, for use by unusual folks.

Portable You can buy these portable ink-jet printers, which are tiny and weigh little: Brother’s MP-21C ($240, 2 pounds), Canon’s BJC-80 ($190, 4 pounds), and Canon’s BJC-50 ($305, 2 pounds, prints slower and more crudely than the BJC-80 but has the advantage of weighing less). They all work slowly, print less beautifully than desktop printers, and can’t handle big stacks of paper.

Instead of buying a portable printer, consider buying Canon’s BJC-1000. At 4.8 pounds, it weighs just slightly more than a portable printer and tends to work faster, print more beautifully, handle paper better, and cost less!

Wide-carriage Most ink-jet printers handle just normal-width paper, which is 8˝ inches wide. Canon, Epson, and HP all make expensive ink-jet printers that To print colors on wider paper, get Canon’s BJC-4550 ($269, 11"-by-17" paper) or Epson’s Stylus 1520 ($449, 17"-by-22").

4-cartridge color Suppose you’re printing a picture that contains lots of red but not much blue or yellow. When you use up all the red ink in a tricolor cartridge, you must throw the whole cartridge away, even though blue and yellow ink remain in the cartridge. What a waste! Canon’s BJC-3000 prevents such waste.

It uses 4 separate cartridges (a black cartridge, a red cartridge, a blue cartridge, and a yellow cartridge), so when the red ink runs out you can discard the red cartridge without having to discard any blue or yellow ink. It prints 9ppm black, 4ppm color. It costs just $99. Unfortunately, its cartridges are rather expensive.

Laser printers

A laser printer, like an office photocopier, contains a drum and uses toner made of ink. The printer shines a laser beam at the drum, which picks up the toner and deposits it on the paper.

Laserjet 5

For the IBM PC, the most popular laser printers are made by Hewlett-Packard (HP), whose laser printers are called Laserjets. After inventing its first Laserjet, HP invented a better version (the Laserjet 2), then an even better version (the Laserjet 3), then an even better version (the Laserjet 4).

Finally, in 1996, HP invented a truly great version: the Laserjet 5. I used it to print this book. It’s terrific!

It can print 12 pages per minute (12 ppm). It can print 600 dots per inch (600 dpi); and it uses a trick called Resolution Enhancement Technology (RET), which can shift each dot slightly left or right and make each dot slightly larger or smaller.

Its ROM contains the definitions of 45 fonts. Each of those fonts is scalable: you can make the characters as big or tiny as you wish. You also get a disk containing the definitions of 65 additional scalable fonts: put that disk into your computer, copy those font definitions to your computer’s hard disk, then tell your computer to copy those font definitions to the printer’s RAM. So altogether, the printer can handle two kinds of fonts: the 45 internal fonts that were inside the printer originally, and soft fonts that are copied into the printer’s RAM from the computer’s disks.

The printer contains 4 megabytes of RAM, so it can handle lots of soft fonts and graphics on the same page. Moreover, the printer uses a trick called data compression, which compresses the data so that twice as much data can fit in the RAM (as if the RAM were 8 megabytes).

Discount dealers have sold it for $988.

Cheaper Laserjets

For folks who can’t afford a Laserjet 5 at $988, HP invented a cheap Personal version (called the Laserjet 5P) and an even cheaper Lower-cost version (called the Laserjet 5L).

Afterwards, HP invented an improved 5P (called the 6P, sold by discounters for $709) and an improved 5L (called the 6L, sold by discounters for $379).

Newer Laserjets

HP has stopped selling all those Laserjets (the Laserjet 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5P, 5L, 6P, and 6L). Now HP sells these newer Laserjets instead:

Laser printer         Resolution       Black       Color   RAM               Paper      Printer codes  Price

Laserjet 1100xi        600dpi+RET   8ppm  no        2M+compr’n 8˝"´14"   PCL 5e              $400-$30

Laserjet 2100xi      1200dpi+RET 10ppm  no        4M+compr’n 8˝"´14"   PCL 6                   $660

Laserjet 2100M     1200dpi+RET 10ppm  no        8M+compr’n 8˝"´14"   PCL 6,  PS 2     $740

Laserjet 4050         1200dpi+RET 17ppm  no        8M+compr’n 8˝"´14"   PCL 6,  PS 2   $1070-$100

Laserjet 5000         1200dpi+RET 16ppm  no        4M+compr’n 11"´17"       PCL 6,  PS 2   $1400

Laserjet 8000         1200dpi+RET 24ppm  no      16M+compr’n 11"´17"       PCL 6,  PS 2   $2050

Laserjet 8100         1200dpi+RET 32ppm  no      16M+compr’n 11"´17"       PCL 6,  PS 2   $2500

Color Laserjet 4500    600dpi+RET 16ppm  4ppm 32M+compr’n 8˝"´14"   PCL 5c, PS 2   $2400

Color Laserjet 8550    600dpi+RET 24ppm  6ppm 32M+compr’n 12"´18˝" PCL E5c,PS 3 $4858

You can get those prices from discount dealers such as Tri State. In that chart, here’s what the “Printer codes” column means.…

When your computer wants to give the printer an instruction (such as “draw a diagonal line across the paper” or “make that scalable font bigger”), the computer sends the printer a code.

HP’s Laserjets understand a code called Printer Control Language (PCL), invented by HP. The newest versions of PCL are PCL 5e (which is plain), PCL 5c (which can handle colors), PCL Enhanced 5c (which can handle colors faster), and PCL 6 (which can handle 1200 dpi). They’re understood by the new Laserjets. Older Laserjets understand just older versions of PCL and can’t perform as many tricks.

Most IBM-compatible laser printers (such as the ones by Epson, Panasonic, and Sharp) understand PCL, so that they imitate HP’s laser printers, run the same software as HP’s laser printers, and are HP-compatible. But most of them understand just old versions of PCL and can’t perform as many tricks as HP’s newest Laserjets.

Some laser printers understand a different code, called PostScript (PS), invented by a company called Adobe.

Back in the 1980’s, when PCL was still very primitive, Postscript was more advanced than PCL. The fanciest laser printers from HP’s competitors used Postscript. The very fanciest laser printers were bilingual: they understood both PCL and Postscript.

Now that PCL has improved, it’s about as good as Postscript. PCL printers cost less to manufacture than Postscript printers.

In Postscript, each command that the computer sends the printer is written by using English words. Unfortunately, those words are long and consume lots of bytes. In PCL, each command is written as a brief series of code numbers instead. Since PCL commands consume fewer bytes than Postscript commands, the computer can transmit PCL commands to the printer faster than Postscript commands, and PCL commands can fit in less RAM.

Some Apple Mac programs require a Postscript printer. Some big printing companies that run printing presses require Postscript.

HP’s competitors

HP has many competitors.

NEC’s printers tend to go faster.

Lexmark’s printers tend to go faster and print more dpi (to produce finer text and photographs).

Printers from Panasonic, Brother, and Okidata tend to cost less; they’re bargains.

Printers from Kyocera cost less to run, because their toner (ink) cartridges last longer and cost less per page.

But I recommend buying from HP, because people who own HP Laserjets are very happy, including me! HP Laserjets are more reliable than other brands, need repairs less often than other brands, cause fewer software headaches than other brands, cost just slightly more than other brands, and let you buy more toner from your local store more easily. The only exception to my “buy HP” advice is HP’s Color Laserjets, which always get worse ratings than Magicolor laser printers, which are made by QMS. But you shouldn’t buy a color laser printer anyway: color laser printers are too expensive; and they’re much slower than black-only laser printers, even when printing just black! To get color, buy a nice, cheap color inkjet printer instead!

Apple used to make a Mac-compatible laser printer called the Laserwriter. Apple stopped making it. If you have a Mac, Apple recommends that you buy any laser printer that can handle Postscript. For example, buy the HP Laserjet 2100M: it’s the Mac-compatible version of the HP Laserjet 2100; it can handle the IBM PC and also the Mac.

Print engines

Each monochrome HP laser printer contains a photocopier print engine manufactured by Canon. In fact, each monochrome HP laser printer is just a modified Canon photocopier!

In many of QMS’s color laser printers, the print engine is made by Hitachi. Lexmark, Panasonic, Brother, and Okidata make their own print engines.

Older Laserjets

Many offices still use older Laserjets. Here’s how famous old Laserjets compare with modern ones:

Printer    Resolution      RAM          Speed  Variants

Laserjet 2 300dpi           ˝M              8 ppm 2P is 4ppm

Laserjet 3 300dpi+RET     1M               8 ppm 3P is 4ppm and ˝M

Laserjet 4 600dpi+RET     2M+com’n   8 ppm 4P is 4ppm, 4 Plus is 12ppm, 4L is 4ppm&1M&300dpi

Laserjet 5 600dp +RET     2M+com’n 12 ppm 5P is 6ppm, 6P is 8ppm, 5L is 4ppm&1M, 6L is 6ppm&1M

Under $300

HP’s cheapest laser printer is the Laserjet 1100xi, which costs $400-$30=$370.

Can’t afford $370? Then get a refurbished Laserjet 6L from Harmony for $289.

To pay even less, get a new OkiPage 8W (600 dpi, no RET, 8ppm) from Tri State for $229. That printer gives you 600 dpi (but no RET) and 8 ppm. It’s cheap because it contains very little RAM (it uses the RAM that’s in the computer instead) and it contains fewer moving parts since it contains a light-emitting diode array (LED array) instead of a traditional laser.

Best Buys

The cheapest good IBM-compatible printer is Canon’s BJC-2100 ($50 after rebate). For a better ink-jet printer, get an Epson’s Stylus Color 777 ($89) or HP’s Desk Jet 840C ($149) or HP’s Desk Jet 930C ($190). The next major step up is to get a laser printer, such as the HP Laserjet 2100xi ($660). Anything beyond that is luxury!

Printer technology

Now let’s plunge into the technical details of printer technology!

Impact versus non-impact

A printer that smashes an inked ribbon against the paper is called an impact printer. The most popular kind of impact printer is the dot-matrix printer. Other impact printers use daisy wheels, thimbles, golf balls, bands, chains, and drums. They all make lots of noise, though manufacturers have tried to make the noise acceptable by putting the printers in noise-reducing enclosures and by modifying the timing of the smashes.

A printer that does not smash an inked ribbon is called a non-impact printer. Non-impact printers are all quiet! The most popular non-impact printers are ink-jet printers and laser printers. Other non-impact printers are thermal printers (whose hot pins scorch the paper), and thermal-transfer printers (which melt hot colored wax onto the paper).

Each has its own disadvantages. Thermal printers require special “scorchable” paper. Thermal-transfer printers require expensive ribbons made of colored wax.

Resolution

If a printer creates characters out of dots, the quality of the printing depends on how fine the dots are — the “number of dots per inch”, which is called the print resolution.

9-pin printers usually print 72 dots per inch vertically. That’s called draft quality, because it’s good enough for rough drafts but not for final copy. It’s also called business quality, because it’s good enough for sending memos to your coworkers and accountant.

If you make a 9-pin printer do 2 passes, it prints 144 dots per inch. That’s called correspondence quality, because it’s good enough for sending pleasant letters to your friends. It’s also called near-letter-quality (NLQ), because it looks nearly as good as the letters produced on a typewriter. The typical 9-pin printer has a switch you can flip, to choose either 1-pass draft quality (which is fast) or 2-pass correspondence quality (which is slower but prettier).

A 24-pin printer prints 180 dots per inch. That’s called letter quality (LQ), because it looks as good as the letters printed by a typical typewriter or daisy-wheel printer. It’s good enough for writing letters to people you’re trying to impress.

A standard laser printer prints 300 dots per inch. That’s called desktop-publishing quality, because it’s good enough for printing newsletters. It’s also called near-typeset-quality, because it looks nearly as good as a typesetting machine.

A standard typesetting machine prints 1200 or 2400 dots per inch. Those are the resolutions used for printing America’s popular magazines, newspapers, and books.

HP’s Laserjet 2P Plus, 3, 3P, and 4L all print 300 dots per inch; but the 3, 3P, and 4L produce prettier output than the 2P Plus by using this trick: they can print each dot at 5 different sizes (ranging from “normal” to “extra tiny”) and nudge each dot slightly to the right or left. HP’s Laserjet 4 and 4P print 600 dots per inch.

Ink-jet printers by Canon and Epson usually print 360 dots per inch. HP’s ink-jet printers usually print 300 dots per inch.

Character size

To measure a character’s size, you must measure both its width and its height.

Width Like an old-fashioned typewriter, a traditional printer makes each character a tenth of an inch wide. That’s called “10 characters per inch” or 10 cpi or 10-pitch or pica (pronounced “pike uh”).

Some printers make all the characters narrower so you get 12 characters per inch. That’s called 12 cpi or 12-pitch or elite.

The typical dot-matrix impact printer lets you choose practically any width you wish. For example, the Epson LQ-850 can print 5, 6, 7˝, 8 1/3, 10, 12, 15, 162/3, and 20 cpi. The widest sizes (5, 6, 7˝, and 81/3 cpi) are called double-width, because they’re twice as wide as 10, 12, 15, and 162/3 cpi. The narrowest sizes (162/3 and 20 cpi) are called condensed or compressed; they’re 60% as wide as 10 and 12 cpi.

Some printers make each character a different width, so that a “W” is very wide and an “i” is narrow; that’s called proportional spacing. It looks much nicer than uniform spacing (such as 10 cpi or 12 cpi). The typical modern printer lets you choose either proportional spacing or uniform spacing. Uniform spacing is usually called monospacing.

Height The typical sheet of paper is 11 inches tall. If you put one-inch margins at the top and bottom, you’re left with 9 inches to print on.

After printing a line of type, the typical typewriter or printer jerks up the paper a sixth of an inch, then prints the next line. As a result, you get 6 lines of type per inch, so the entire sheet of paper shows “9 times 6” lines of type, which is 54 lines.

The fanciest printers, such as laser printers, can make characters extra-tall or extra-short. The character’s height is measured in points. Each point is 1/72 of an inch. A character that’s an inch tall is therefore called “72 points tall”. A character that’s half an inch tall is 36 points tall.

Like a typewriter, a printer normally makes characters 10 points tall. (More precisely, it makes the top of a capital “Y” 10 points higher than the bottom of a small “y”.) It also leaves a 2-point gap above the top of the “Y”, to separate it from the characters on the previous line. That 2-point gap is called the leading (pronounced “ledding”). That technique is called “10-point type with 2-point leading”. Since the type plus the leading totals 12 points, it’s also called “10-point type on 12” (or “10 on 12” or “10/12”).

Fonts

You can make a capital T in two ways. The simple way is draw a horizontal bar and a vertical bar, like this: T. The fancy way is to add serifs at the ends of the bars, like this: T. A character such as T, which is without serifs, is called sans serif, because “sans” is the French word for “without”.

Monospaced fonts The most popular monospaced fonts are Courier (which has serifs) and Letter Gothic (which is sans serif). Letter Gothic was invented by IBM in 1956 for typewriters. Courier was invented for typewriters also.

Proportionally-spaced fonts The most popular proportionally spaced fonts are Times Roman (which has serifs) and Helvetica (which is sans serif). Times Roman was invented by The Times newspaper of London in 1931. Helvetica was invented by Max Miedinger of Switzerland in 1954. (The name “Helvetica” comes from “Helvetia”, the Latin name for Switzerland.)

Samples Here are samples from the laser printer that printed this book (an HP Laserjet 5 printer):

This is Courier. It’s 12 points high and 10 cpi.

This is Courier Bold. This is Courier Italic.

This is Courier Bold Italic.

This is Letter Gothic. It’s 12 points high and 12 cpi.

This is Letter Gothic Bold. This is Letter Gothic Italic.

This is Letter Gothic Bold Italic.

This is 8-point Times Roman. It’s very tiny, but sometimes nice things come in small packages.

This is 9-point Times Roman, 10-point Times Roman, 11-point Times Roman,

12-point Times Roman, 13-point Times Roman,

14-point Times Roman, 14-point Times Roman Bold,

14-point Times Roman Italic, and Times Roman Bold Italic.

This is 8-point Helvetica. It’s very tiny, but sometimes nice things come in small packages.

This is 9-point Helvetica, 10-point Helvetica, 11-point Helvetica,

12-point Helvetica, 13-point Helvetica,

14-point Helvetica, 14-point Helvetica Bold,

14-point Helvetica Italic, and Helvetica Bold Italic.

This is 14-point Coronet. It’s a kind of script. Capitals are tall, most other letters tiny.

This is 14-point Marigold. Notice that the capital letters are surprisingly short.

This is 10-point Omega, Omega Bold, Omega Italic, and Omega Bold Italic.

10-point Garamond, Garamond Bold, Garamond Italic, Garamond Bold Italic.

10-point Antique Olive, Antique Olive Bold, Antique Olive Italic.

This is 10-point Albertus, and this is 10-point Albertus Extra Bold.

This is 10-point Univers, Univers Bold, Univers Italic, Univers Bold Italic,

Univers Condensed, Univers Condensed Bold, Univers Condensed Italic, Univers Cond. Bold Italic.

This is Line Printer. It comes in just one size: 8˝-point. It's 16.67 cpi.

Here are samples from a 24-pin dot-matrix printer, the Epson LQ-570:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here are samples from an ink-jet printer, the Canon BJ-200e. In these samples, the Canon is pretending it’s the Epson LQ-570. The Canon’s imitative printing looks better than Epson’s original, since Canon’s printer is an ink-jet instead of a dot-matrix. Look at how pretty Canon’s printing is:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Canon doesn’t imitate Epson’s OCR-B or Script C.

Paper

Laser printers and most ink-jet printers accept a stack of ordinary copier paper. You put that paper into the printer’s paper tray, which is also called the paper bin and also called the cut-sheet paper feeder.

Dot-matrix printers Though some dot-matrix printers handle stacks of ordinary copier paper, most dot-matrix printers handle paper differently. Here’s how.…

To pull paper into the printer, dot-matrix printers can use two methods.

The simplest method is to imitate a typewriter: use a rubber roller that grabs the paper by friction. That method’s called friction feed. Unfortunately, friction is unreliable: the paper will slip slightly, especially when you get near the bottom of the sheet.

A more reliable method is to use paper that has holes in the margins. The printer has feeder pins that fit in the holes and pull the paper up through the printer very accurately. That method, which is called pin feed, has just one disadvantage: you must buy paper having holes in the margins.

If your printer uses pin feed and is fancy, it has a clamp that helps the pins stay in the holes. The clamp (with its pins) is called a tractor. You get a tractor at each margin. A printer that has tractors is said to have tractor feed. Usually the tractors are movable, so that you can move the right-hand tractor closer to the left-hand tractor, to handle narrower paper or mailing labels.

A dual-feed printer can feed the paper both ways — by friction and by pins — because it has a rubber roller and also has sets of pins. The printer has a lever to the left of the roller and pins: if you pull the lever one way, the paper will pass by the roller, for friction feed; if you pull the lever the other way, the paper will pass by the pins, for pin feed.

Most dot-matrix printers have dual feed with movable tractors.

Paper that has holes in it is called pin-feed paper (or tractor-feed paper).

Like a long tablecloth folded up and stored in your closet, pin-feed paper comes in a long, continuous sheet that’s folded. Since it comes folded but can later be unfolded (“fanned out”), it’s also called fanfold paper. It’s perforated so you can rip it into individual sheets after the printer finishes printing on it. If the paper’s fancy, its margin is perforated too, so that after the printing is done you can rip off the margin, including its ugly holes, and you’re left with what looks like ordinary typing paper.

The fanciest perforated paper is called micro-perf. Its perforation is so fine that when you rip along the perforation, the edge is almost smooth.

Paper width Most printers can use ordinary typing paper or copier paper. Such paper is 8˝ inches wide. On each line of that paper, you can squeeze 85 characters at 10 cpi, or 170 characters at 20 cpi, if you have no margins.

Pin-feed paper is usually an inch wider (9˝ inches wide), so that the margins are wide enough to include the holes.

Some printers can handle pin-feed paper that’s extra-wide (15 inches). Those wide-carriage printers typically cost about $130 more than standard-width printers.

Speed

The typical printer’s advertisement brags about the printer’s speed by measuring it in characters per second (cps) or lines per minute (lpm) or pages per minute (ppm). But those measurements are misleading.

Dot-matrix and ink-jet printers For example, Epson advertised its LQ-850 dot-matrix printer as “264 cps”, but it achieved that speed only when making the characters small (12 cpi) and ugly (draft quality). To print characters that were large (10 cpi) and pretty (letter quality), the speed dropped to 73 cps.

Panasonic advertised its KX-P1091 dot-matrix printer as “192 cps”, but it achieved that speed only if you threw an internal switch that made the characters even uglier than usual!

For dot-matrix and ink-jet printers, the advertised speed ignores how long the printer takes to jerk up the paper. For example the typical “80-cps” printer will print 80 characters within a second but then take an extra second to jerk up the paper to the next line, so at the end of two seconds you still see just 80 characters on the paper.

Daisy-wheel printers To get an amazingly high cps rating, one daisy-wheel manufacturer fed its printer a document consisting of just one character repeated many times, so the daisy never had to rotate!

Laser printers To justify a claim of “8 pages per minute”, Apple salesmen noticed that their Laserwriter 2 NT printer takes a minute to produce 8 extra copies of a page. They ignored the wait of several minutes for the first copy!

Like Apple, most other laser-printer manufacturers say “8 pages per minute” when they should really say: “1/8 of a minute per additional copy of the same page”.

Keep your eyes open Don’t trust any ads about speed! To discover a printer’s true speed, hold a stopwatch while the printer prints many kinds of documents (involving small characters, big characters, short lines, long lines, draft quality, letter quality, and graphics).

Interfacing

A cable of wires runs from the printer to the computer. The cable costs about $8 and is not included in the printer’s advertised price: the cable costs extra.

One end of the cable plugs into a socket at the back of the printer. The other end of the cable plugs into a socket at the back of the computer. The socket at the back of the computer is called the computer’s printer port.

If you open your computer, you’ll discover which part of the computer’s circuitry the printer port is attached to. In a typical computer, the printer port is attached to the motherboard; but in some computers (such as the original IBM PC), the printer port is attached to a small PC card instead, called a printer interface card, which might not be included in the computer’s advertised price.

When the computer wants the printer to print some data, the computer sends the data to the printer port; then the data flows through the cable to the printer.

Serial versus parallel The cable contains many wires. Some of them are never used: they’re in the cable just in case a computer expert someday figures out a reason to use them. Some of the wires in the cable transmit information about scheduling: they let the computer and printer argue about when to send the data. If the computer’s port is serial, just one of the wires transmits the data itself; if the computer’s port is parallel, eight wires transmit the data simultaneously.

Parallel ports are more popular than serial ports, because parallel ports transmit data faster, are more modern, and are easier to learn how to use. Unfortunately, parallel ports handle only short distances: if the printer is far away from the computer, you must use a serial port instead.

When you buy a printer, make sure the printer matches the computer’s port. If your computer’s port is parallel, you must buy a parallel printer; if your computer’s port is serial, you must buy a serial printer instead.

If your computer has two printer ports — one parallel, one serial — you can attach the computer to either type of printer; but I recommend that you choose a printer that’s parallel, because parallel printers cost less, and because many word-processing programs require that the printer be parallel.

Standard cables The typical parallel printer expects you to use a cable containing 36 wires. Just 8 of the wires transmit the data; the remaining wires can be used for other purposes. That 36-wire scheme is called the industry-standard Centronics-compatible parallel interface.

The typical serial printer expects you to use a cable containing just 25 wires. Of the 25 wires, just 1 transmits data from the computer to the printer; the remaining wires can be used for other purposes. That 25-wire scheme is called the recommended standard 232C serial interface (RS-232C serial interface).

Weird cables If your computer is an IBM PC or clone, you’ll get a surprise when you try attaching it to a parallel printer (which expects 36 wires): your computer’s parallel port contains just 25 wires instead of 36! To attach the computer’s 25-wire parallel port to a 36-wire parallel printer, computer stores sell a weird cable that has 25 wires on one end and 36 wires on the other. It’s called an IBM printer cable. If it’s fancy enough to handle transmissions in both directions, it’s called a bidirectional IBM printer cable. If it’s even fancier and can handle transmissions quickly in both directions, it’s called an IEEE 1284 cable.

If your computer is small, cute, and old (such as the Apple 2c, 2GS, Commodore 64, Radio Shack Color Computer, or old Mac), you’ll get a surprise when you try attaching it to a standard serial printer (which expects 25 wires): your computer’s serial port contains fewer than 10 wires! You must buy a weird cable that has 25 wires on one end and fewer on the other.

To attach a printer to an iMac, you must buy a Universal Serial Bus cable (USB cable).