The guide to laser printers.
Jan 27 '01
The Bottom Line Always know what kind of work you will be doing before you select a laser printer. Choose the printer designed to do the job.
In my job as a salesman and computer service technician, I have used and serviced a lot of different printers. Some very small such as receipt printers and others very large like midrange line printers. The printers that I like the most are laser printers. They seem to be most reliable and you can put them most any where. Even the larger laser printers will fit most office environments. Even though laser printers can either be black and white or color and black and white, I will be only referring to the black and white models in the review.
Laser printers are a very unique type of printer, they don't use ink like dot matrix printers or ink jet printers. They use a material called toner, and the toner is placed on the paper by use of electric charge. The toner is mixed with a magnetic material inside the toner cartridge and using the electric charge, the toner is then transferred to the paper and then the piece of paper with toner is passed through a device that heats the toner and by use of a pressure roller and the heat it fuses the toner to page and the then the piece of paper is then transferred out of the fusing unit and transported to the out put tray by use of rollers.
That was the very basic theory of how a laser printer works, the fact is there are several manufacturers of laser printers and they use different methods of transporting the paper through the printer. In all laser printers rollers are use to pull the paper from the paper trays and direct the paper throughout the printing cycle. These rollers for the most part are made of rubber and are either attached to plastic or metal shafts.
Many shapes and sizes:
Since there are several different manufacturers of laser printers, you will find as many different shapes and sizes. Each manufacturer wants their printer to be unique and capture the eye of the customer buying them. The size of the printer also is a major factor when printers are being designed, how to make the printer as compact as possible and still do the job it was designed for. You will find laser printers in all kinds of shapes from very small desk top models all the way up to super deluxe floor models. Each one designed for a very specific task or designed for multiple functions.
Desktop models:
The latest trend for desktop laser printers is a space saving design, which feeds the paper from a vertical paper tray and feeds the paper from the top and feeds it either out the front or in an output tray also on top of the printer. The most noticeable feature of these printers is they are not very deep, but they are noticeably taller.
With this compact design there is a built in flaw that makes this type of printer very limited in it's uses. Since it feeds the paper from a top mounted paper tray there is no way to increase it's paper capacity. So if you are using it to print out letters or an occasional invoice or very small print jobs, then these are nice little printer's.
The other desktop models which were designed for larger print jobs used paper trays mounted underneath the printer. So with these printers you lost the space saving feature of the compact laser printer, to allow for larger paper capacity.
Paper Handling:
In this section I will discuss the standard and the many optional paper handling features that are available for most laser printers.
Manual paper feed: this will allow you to print on either larger size paper then the standard paper trays or envelopes.
250 sheet letter size tray: with this feature you can print standard letter size 8 1/2 x 11 paper, with the 250 sheets of paper you can print larger jobs without having to load more paper. Some models of printers will allow you to stack to 250 sheet paper trays underneath the printer to give you a larger capacity, and these trays can be programed within the printer to continue to feed from the next tray so if the top one runs out it will continue to feed from the bottom tray.
500 sheet paper trays: these paper trays are optional features on most model laser printers. Just as the name implies they hold 500 sheets of 8 1/2 x 11 paper and feeds it just like the 250 sheet tray. This feature is usually installed by placing the printer directly on top of the paper drawer and the printer automatically senses the new paper drawer and it is ready to be used.
2000 sheet super capacity paper drawer: With this feature installed a table top model printer is now transformed into a floor model. The 2000 sheet paper feature has a motorized table which raises as the paper is fed into the printer.
500 sheet multipurpose tray: with this feature you can select from usually four different paper sizes up to 8 1/2 by 14 legal size paper.
Duplex unit: This is a feature that is used to print on both sides of the page without having to reload the paper by hand. Some models of printers come standard with this feature and others it is an optional feature. The draw back to the duplex feature it will normal cut your print speed in half while it is printing on the back side of the page.
Print speed: Laser printers are rated by how many pages per minute they will print, the speeds usually range between 8 pages per minute up to 40 pages per minute. The small desk top models and the compact desk top models generally print between 8-10 pages per minute. So for small print jobs like letters, these would make the perfect printer.
For medium size print jobs there are several printers to choose from that print between 12-18 pages per minute. Combined with the faster print speed and the additional paper trays these printers will make the perfect choice for a small business or a medium size workgroup.
For larger businesses or department size printing needs you can select from printers that print between 20-40 pages per minute. These printers are generally very rugged and can handle the heavier work load of a large business. These are the size of printers you will generally find with the 2000 sheet super capacity paper feature.
Print Quality:
This refers to the clarity of the print, and how crisp the text will appear on the page. The print is measured in dpi or dots per inch, the larger the numbers or the more dots you squeeze into a smaller space the better the image or text will look. The two standard measurements are 600 x600 and 1200 x 1200, of course the 1200 dpi being the best quality.
Workload or Duty Cycle:
The last thing I will talk about is something I feel is very important, but it is often over looked to save money. A laser printer is classified in different categories based on print speed and by duty cycle. Duty cycle refers to how many pages per month a laser printer can print without causing undo wear on the mechanical parts. As I stated in the opening of this review, laser printers use rubber rollers to pull the paper out of the paper trays and also to feed the paper throughout the printer. If you exceed the recommended duty cycle of the printer, the rubber rollers can become worn to fast and then they will loose their ability to pick up paper or move the paper through the printer and cause paper jams. Duty cycles of laser printers generally range between 5,000 and 150,000 + pages per month.
The list of manufacturers of laser printers is very extensive, so I will list only the major ones and a couple of examples of their printers.
HP LaserJet 1100, 2100, 4050, 8100
Lexmark Optra T 312, T410, T612, T616
IBM Network 12, Network 17, Info Print 21 , Info Print 32, 40
Okidata Okipage 8, 12, 24
I would recommend the manufacturers of laser printers in that order.
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