Posted by GuestPoster in Technology | 0 Comments
Amazing Advancements In Printer Technology
It is very amazing how the printing technology has come a long way since the dot matrix. I used to remember when I was just using the Epson LX-80. If I remember it correctly, it prints a set of dotted lines to represent a picture. Kind of like forming a letter using the pieces of a checkerboard. It also had this loud printing noise of course. It uses a tape, which is sprayed or dipped in black ink, and it is placed in between the paper and the needle. Kind of like your modern day typewriter. It took a long time to print one page. I am not sure if it even took more than 1 minute to print a whole page.
Then comes the inkjet printers, which are still in use today. Before, the resolution is very low. It is a lot less compared to the ones we have today. Then we have the LaserJet printers. I do not exactly know yet how it actually works. Compared to inkjets, which just mixes up the color and spray it on the page, the LaserJet has a more advanced technology to it.
It is also very fascinating how they package printers differently just as how they package cell phones. There is always one feature missing. But if you want that feature badly, there is always that one offered which costs a lot higher.
Then again, different users have different preferences, different needs. Maybe it would be the same for users in a household. However, for offices, it is a different story.
You can see some models packaged with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, USB, and PictBridge. I could not imagine a household having that kind of printer. Well, it could be possible if you owned a large house and you travelled a lot.
The fastest printers have around 200 pages per minute according to what I have read on the internet. That is 200 monochrome (black and white) pages. I still have not seen one of those at work. I work in an office where the printer can print a page in 3 seconds. Considering that I have started writing about printers, I am now curious about the specifications of the one we have in the office.
It is very bulky, half the size of a washing machine. It holds three trays of paper, but it is always empty. I think it defeats the purpose why we bought that printer. I am still a bit amazed whenever the paper jammed in that printer. On the LCD, it instructs the user to just lift the top lid, open the back lid, and then close it. Viola, it is running again. Imagine a car that breaks down and on the screen display on your dashboard, an advice that says, “Just pop the hood and close it. You’re good to go!” Now I would definitely buy that car.
Back to printers, since this is a free topic, I would like to concentrate on the points or advancements that sometimes make me stop and say “amazing!” There is this printer in our local digital photo shops wherein you just insert your USB drive and it shows the contents of your drive. Not only that, it also has theses slots for different kinds of memory cards: from the SD card to the Micro SD to the Memory Stick Pro from Sony. The same scenario, just plug it in and you can chose which ones to print. I am not sure if Kodak came up with this but their machine is the first one that I saw with this feature.
I recently attended a wedding where as part of the giveaway, we posed in front of a backdrop and there is a camera booth in front of us. It takes a few pictures of us and we were given the picture immediately. It is really a very good innovation for some businesses. I think it has also the same concept as one of those picture booths, just pop in a few tokens and have pictures taken and it prints out the pictures. I am actually amazed by the fact that the printer is integrated with different kinds of input devices. Before, printers were just connected to the computer and that is where you print it. Today, there are printers made for different purposes.
We also have one of those printers back at home in the province, those all-in-one package printers. It has the scanner, photocopier, printer and fax machine. I never really got to know it better since I left home at that time when they bought it. I am assuming that it also has a speakerphone since I heard my sister speaking to it once. I am not sure if she was talking to someone on the phone/printer or talking to herself.
In the office, where we have those printers that is half as big as a washing machine, we also have those ones bigger than a washing machine. I used to always ask my friend from the accounting to accompany me from planning, as she is the only one who has the password for using the printer. I use it most of the time for scanning documents and just occasionally for printing.
Related posts: