Printers, scanners, faxes, multifunction printers
Faxes, I start with them, because rarely buy a fax home. A little bit about faxes, in fact it is a mixture of several devices, a printer, a scanner and a modem with a telephone. Unfortunately, they cannot be used separately. The main task of a fax is to transmit documents by telephone (more precisely, by telephone line). Faxes use plain and thermal paper in their work. Plain paper refers to A4 paper, as well as smaller sizes. Everyone saw the thermal paper too, now most of the checks are printed on it. Unlike plain paper, thermal paper comes in rolls. Hence, advertising is not uncommon, on some faxes, “AutoCut.” Thermal transfer (for plain paper), thermal paper, inkjet, laser printing, faxes are now printed using such methods. The opinion about the method can be very subjective, and the technology is now constantly improving, but they read thermal paper from the worst (and cheapest) printing, and laser printing is the best. Inkjet printing has not taken root. Otherwise, in the information by fax you will see the same parameters as the phones: Caller ID, Caller ID, answering machine, etc.
Printers, today there are a number of printers: inkjet, laser, sublimation. Consider home printer options.
Inkjet printer prints ink on paper (very rough description). Quite inexpensive printers, but I have a small resource for printing 300-500 sheets. They are purchased mainly for the home, when you need to print something in small volumes or for printing photos. Inkjet printers are found in black and white and color. You can also meet a photo printer, this is the same inkjet printer, but with great guidelines for printing photos. Inkjet printers have one significant minus, in addition to a small resource, with prolonged downtime of the printer, the ink in the nozzles of the cartridges dries, then the printer stops printing. It is worth mentioning that it also depends on the cartridge, take HP cartridges as an example, the print head is on the cartridge and when the ink dries, you can simply replace it, but such cartridges are expensive, and if you take Epson cartridges as an example, they are very cheap, but the print head is on the printer and when the ink dries, replacing the cartridge will not help.
Laser printers are mainly bought at home and in offices. They differ in very large printing resources of 3000 pages (for b / w printing). Simple enough to refuel. But they are more expensive, and color laser printers are noticeably more expensive. Also, laser printers are noticeably inferior to inkjet printers in photo printing.
Sublimation printers are quite expensive for the home and are rarely bought home. They are mainly used for printing (text, image) on hard surfaces. If you are interested, you can read about them here.
In the information about printers you will find: paper size, print resolution, speed, connection type, ext. opportunities.
Paper size – this means the maximum size, mainly A4 format. Of course, there are printers that print on large sizes, but we do not consider them, because they are not at home, for example, a plotter (large format printer) can cost 100 thousand.
Print Resolution – measured in dpi, the number of dots per square inch. Indicates with what accuracy and detail the printer can print. Usually, the larger the parameter, the better, but for the text there is no need for high resolution.
Speed - the number of sheets per minute.
Type of connection – at this time it is USB.
Additional features – it depends on the manufacturer’s imagination, you can find: negatives scanners, wireless transmission (WiFi, Bluetooth, infrared), disk printing, etc.
There are a lot of scanners now, from handheld to large flatbed scanners. All are free to scan at least in b / w version, at least in color. They differ mainly in scanning speed and scanning resolution. Scan Resolution is the number of dots per square inch.
The MFP is a multifunction device, a copier, Xerox (in fact, Xerox is just a company). Actually combines the advantages of a printer and a scanner.
