Is your printer old and worn out? Have you been thinking about upgrading your printer? Good printers with a scanner for home or small office are starting around $100. For a few dollars more you can get some amazing features.
Just the other day, I was listening one of my favorite tech podcast when I heard them mention 3D printing. This got me thinking about the possibilities for printing things in 3D. Auto shops could print replacement parts for our cars. We would not have to go to the toy store. We could just print out new toys for out kids. What about printing out a last minute Christmas present?
Science fiction? 3D printing could turn a lot of what we saw in the Star Trek movies and television shows a reality. After all look at the our cell phones and tablets. They are far lighter and more streamline than the ones shown in the first Star Trek TV shows of the 1960′s.
Enough with the latest and greatest in the near future. Let us look at what is here today. Printing on simple paper or even photo paper. The best place to start looking a printers is the local office supply store. That is where most small to medium size business owner head to buy their printers. I head down to my local Staples store to survey what printers they have on hand.
The latest leap in printer technology is printers no longer have to be connected to a computer or to the network with a cable. You can get a good range printers that connect via WiFi (local wireless network). A growing number of printers just need an internet connection and get emailed documents or pictures to your printer. This is call ePrint.
When it comes to finding out what performance I can expect from what printer, I heard over to PCMag.com and Cnet.com. These folks are the people who see and test electronics and tech day in and day out. They see what works and what does not work. They live breathe computers, printers, and cell phones. They test the products they write about it. In fact many of them have what they write about in their home and/or office.
The printers you find in a home or small office can be broken down into three basic categories.
- General Printing -These printers include most inkjet printers. They can print documents well, and photos fairly well. In all fairness because they are general purpose printers, they are not meant to printing text, graphics, or photos with any exceptional high degree of quality. These printer usually come with the ability to scan documents and pictures.
- Photo Printers – Just what the category title states, these printers are made to print photo. The quality of the print is high. You will find a certain range of these printers that comes with slots to insert SD cards and print straight from the card.
- Document Printers - Printers that print documents print usually in just black and white. These printers generally made to print a large number of pages.
Most home and small office printers use inject cartage’s for putting the ink on the paper. Add a few dollars more to the selling price and you can get a laser printer. A few years back laser printers that would lay down other than black ink was quite expensive. Now you can get them around the $200.
http://www.pcmag.com/reviews/printers#fbid=fGFiIns4tXR
