Computer-Teacher

Author: James Kara Murat

Nearly all the printer manufacturers design special machines for small office use. These machines differ slightly from personal or home printers and large office printers in all of their features and specifications. There are multiple specifications that are characteristic of a printer meant for small office use. In order to select an appropriate color laser printer for your small office, you must always keep ten points in mind.

Firstly, a small office printer should have a reasonable printing speed. The typical printing speed for office printers is 22 ppm. In general, it can vary from 20 ppm to 35 ppm. Machines with lesser speeds are meant for personal use and not for offices. Secondly, it should possess a sufficiently large media capacity. It is better to have more than one trays to ensure a media capacity of at least 150 sheets. The paper capacity up to 600 sheets is appropriate.

Thirdly, while choosing a laser printer for a small office, you must make sure that the machine can be shared by a group of users and is not meant for individual use. This is specified by its type in the product description. Only if the printer type is specified as ‘workgroup’, can it be used in small offices. Fourthly, you should make sure that the machine you select has a sufficiently high duty cycle ranging from 20,000 to 25,000 pages.

The fifth thing that the machine should have sufficiently large cartridges to prevent interruptions during the tasks. This tenth point is of immense importance in rendering a machine suitable for office use.

The sixth important feature that your small office printer must possess is small size and less weight. The machine must be compact and should weigh no more than 5 kg. However if it is a multifunction machine, it may weigh as much as 16.5 kg.

The seventh quality you should look for in a machine for your small office is the ability to work without creating noise. Quiet operation is necessary for a small office computer. The eighth point you must remember while selecting a color laser printer is that it should have a high resolution. It must have a printing resolution of 1200 dpi into 600 dpi or 1200 dpi into 1200 dpi. The ninth important quality that makes a machine eligible for use in small offices is that it should be able to print on large size media including the legal size.

Last but not the least, your machine should be able to print onto multiple media types. It should be able to print on plain paper, cards, envelopes, labels and transparencies. None of these points should be ignored in order to make an ideal purchase. Office machines are costly and should be chosen with ultimate care.

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Author: James Kara Murat

Understanding printer terminology helps one to search for, select and operate printers in a better and effective way. One of these important printer terms is DPI which stands for Dots per inch. It is a quantity used to define the resolution of printer images. The higher the DPI, the greater will be the details with which the image is displayed. The term used to measure the printing speed is known as PPM. PPM stands for pages per minute and defines the number of pages printed by a machine in one minute.

Another important term used to define the performance of a printer is bit depth. It defines the number of various color tones linked with a dot. A bit depth of 1 implies 2 colors, a depth of 8 implies 256 colors and that of 24 implies 16.7 million colors. Color balance is a term used to describe the print quality. It is a measure of an image color cast. Duty cycle is the number of printed pages a printer can produce as an output.

AIO and MFP stand for All in one and Multifunction Printer respectively. These terms refer to machines that are a combination of printer, copier and scanner. An inkjet printer terminology is CYMK which defines the inkjet colors. In CYMK, C stands for cyan, Y stands for yellow, M stands for magenta and K stands for black. A term used as an alternative for printer brand name is OEM ink cartridges or printers which stands for Original Equipment Manufacturer.

Different terms used to explain types of printing are duplex printing, 4×6 printing, 6 ink printing, 7 ink printing and 8 ink printing. Of these, duplex printing refers to two sided printing whereby the printer itself reverses the page after one of the sides has been printed. 4×6 printing produces photograph of snapshot size, while 6, 7 and 8 ink printing technologies employ multiple inks to produce high quality, clear and bright results.

Anti aliasing is an important technology whereby a printer applies mathematical formulae to improve the resolution of character edges.Letter Quality refers to a printer that is able to produce text similar to that produced by a type writer. Near letter quality refers to dot matrix printers which produce text almost similar to that produced by a letter quality printer.

Paper capacity indicates the maximum number of printer papers or other media a printer tray is able to contain. Print zone refers to the part of the sheet on which the printer is supposed to print.

Borderless printing is a terminology used to define a technique whereby photos are produced by a printer with no blank spaces at the edges of the page. Brightness refers to the lightness or darkness of the printed image. A pixel refers to one of the thousand dots of which a digital photograph is made of.

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Author: Roberto Sedyci

Computing on the move has been a focus area for a lot of Information Technology Companies for years. The idea of being able to work while on the road is extremely fascinating. A notebook, also known as a laptop, which may also be understood as a mobile computer has been the solution for these portable computer related tasks.

History

It is a little hard to determine which is the first notebook or portable computer ever made. The Osborne 1 is considered by most historians to be the first true portable computer or notebook. This was produced by Adam Osborne in the year 1981. It featured a 5 inch screen, modem port, floppy drives, few bundled software programs and a battery pack. The total weight of the notebook was about 11 kgs. Gradually after this Epson, Radio Shack, IBM, Apple Computer etc. all came out with a portable computer. IBM`s IBM PC convertible introduced in 1986 was a true laptop computer. This computer ushered in the laptop area. Since these early models, notebooks have seen tremendous development.

Features and Functioning

Notebooks have the identical major components as Desktop PCs: microprocessor, RAM, operating system, input/output ports, hard disk drives, speakers and sound cards, and speakers. However, all laptops have power management features to extend battery life, or conserve battery power when battery is low. A notebook differs from a desktop PC in terms of power supply, display, and the type of input devices it uses. Notebook processors usually have multiple sleeps, meaning slow down modes which help in increasing battery life and can also run on low voltage. Hard disk in the notebook also functions in the same way as it does in Desktop. These are slower in speed and have lesser capacity.

In addition to hard disks, notebooks also have options for removable disk storage system such as Floppy Discs, CDs and DVDs. A notebook also has various input/output ports that enable you to connect to various peripherals. Most notebook computers today feature built-in modems and Ethernet for external connectivity. Infrared ports for wireless connectivity are also becoming very popular. One of the most critical components in a notebook is its battery as it works on battery power for usage while on move. Battery life offered is different for each device as it depends on the configuration and power management features implemented. All notebook computers come with an in-built LCD screen for display output. For Input, notebooks are featured with built-in keyboards for text inputs. As far as pointing devices are concerned, notebooks use one of the three-Trackball, Pointing stick, Touchpad.

Advantages & Disadvantages of Notebook

The most important advantage of a notebook is its portability. One can work with ease anytime and everywhere. Also, access to wireless networking in public places is making notebooks more and more useful. The counting of disadvantages for a notebook always starts with its high cost. Not only the initial cost, its parts are also expensive and are not interchangeable. Notebooks have a lesser storage capacity and its processor usually works at a lower speed when on battery power. Notebooks are also prone to theft due to its portability.

Future Directions

With falling prices and acceptance of new technologies, we can expect to see a significant increase in demand of notebooks. Vendors are also working on the design of the notebook to make it stronger so that it can withstand jerks and shocks. New technologies are being integrated into the notebooks to prevent failure and data loss. Mostly used by corporate firms, professionals and businessmen, vendors are now targeting students and home users as well because of increasing affordability of these devices.

So the emergence of this new usage category is definitely on the cards. This means there is a huge potential for notebooks in the coming future and the price cuts offered with technological improvements are sure to fuel growth.

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