Laser Printers

Since their introduction in the mid-1980's, laser printers have become indispensable office tools for businesses ranging from the smallest home-based operation to the largest corporations. Unlike traditional inkjet printers, which put an image on papers with tiny jets of ink, laser printers use a laser beam to produce an image on a drum. The light of the laser beam changes the electrical charge on the drum wherever it hits. The drum is then rolled through a reservoir of toner, which is picked up by the charged portions of the drum and transferred by a combination of heat and pressure onto the paper.

Although inkjet printers are generally adequate for use with personal computers, laser printers have many advantages for office and business computers. Laser printers are quieter, faster, printing up to fifty pages per minute, and produce shaper, higher resolution printouts because of their higher dpi (dot per inch) rating. Unlike pages printed with an inkjet printer, which can take a few minutes to dry and are in danger of smearing before they do, laser-printed pages are immediately ready for use.

By Kerry Given