Printers and Scanners

Before there were high quality color scanners and color laser printers, there was the venerable dot-matrix printer.  If you’re not old enough to remember this, then skip ahead while I reminisce.  As long as computers have been around, the need for hard copies of data have been around as well.  In the early days, this was accomplished with a dot-matrix printer, which was essentially a high-resolution typewriter with a functioning ink ribbon and strangely perforated paper.  You know what I’m talking about.  That paper with the detachable sides with all the holes in them?  Dot-matrix printers were good at the time, but they were noisy, messy, and required frequent replacement of the ink ribbon.

The next generation of personal printers was the inkjet.  Inkjet printers used an ink cartridge with nozzles at the bottom that could spray out little droplets of ink with a resolution up to 300 dots per square inch (DPI). 

During this time, the laser printer was developed for the ultimate high-end user (usually corporations) who required high quality, fast printing, and long lifetimes.  The laser printer worked up to 1200 DPI.  It wasn’t until recently that laser printers came down in price to be somewhat attainable by the personal computer user.

To top things off, color printers first came out for laser printers and inkjets at ridiculously high prices.  Nowadays, a color inkjet printer is the norm, though color laser printers are usually reserved for companies.