• Printers

• Scanners

• Question & Answer
Question & Answer

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 Printers
• A device that prints text or illustrations on paper. There are many different types of printers. In terms of the
technology utilized, printers fall into the following categories:
• Daisy‐Wheel: Similar to a ball‐head typewriter, this type of printer has a plastic or metal wheel on which the
shape of each character stands out in relief. A hammer presses the wheel against a ribbon, which in turn makes
an ink stain in the shape of the character on the paper. Daisy‐wheel printers produce letter‐quality print but
cannot print graphics.
• Dot‐Matrix: Creates characters by striking pins against an ink ribbon. Each pin makes a dot, and combinations
of dots form characters and illustrations.
• Ink‐jet: Sprays ink at a sheet of paper. Ink‐jet printers produce high‐quality text and graphics. laser: Uses the
same technology as copy machines. Laser printers produce very high quality text and graphics.
• LCD & LED : Similar to a laser printer, but uses liquid crystals or light‐emitting diodes rather than a laser to
produce an image on the drum.
• Line Printer (Page Printers): Contains a chain of characters or pins that print an entire line at one time. Line
printers are very fast, but produce low‐quality print.
• Thermal Printer: An inexpensive printer that works by pushing heated pins against heat
heat‐sensitive
sensitive paper.
Thermal printers are widely used in calculators and fax machines. Printers are also classified by the following
characteristics: 3
 Printers
• Printers are also classified by the following characteristics:

• Quality of type: The output produced by printers is said to be either letter quality (as good as a typewriter),
near letter quality, or draft quality.
– O l daisy‐wheel,
Only d i h l ink‐jet,
i k j and
d laser
l printers
i produce
d l
letter‐quality
li type.

– Some dot‐matrix printers claim letter‐quality print, but if you look closely, you can see the difference.

• Speed: Measured in characters per second (cps) or pages per minute (ppm), the speed of printers varies widely.
– Daisy‐wheel printers tend to be the slowest, printing about 30 cps. Line printers are fastest (up to 3,000 lines per minute).

– Dot‐matrix printers can print up to 500 cps, and laser printers range from about 4 to 20 text pages per minute.

• Impact or Non‐Impact: Impact printers include all printers that work by striking an ink ribbon. Daisy‐wheel,
dot‐matrix, and line printers are impact printers. Non‐impact printers include laser printers and ink‐jet
printers.
– The important difference between impact and non‐impact printers is that impact printers are much noisier.

• Graphics: Some printers (daisy‐wheel and line printers) can print only text. Other printers can print both text
and graphics.

• Fonts : Some p
printers,, notablyy dot‐matrix p
printers,, are limited to one or a few fonts. In contrast,, laser and ink‐
jet printers are capable of printing an almost unlimited variety of fonts. Daisy‐wheel printers can also print
different fonts, but you need to change the daisy wheel, making it difficult to mix fonts in the same document.
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 Printers

Daisy‐Wheel
Daisy Wheel Printer
Printer

Dot Matrix Printer
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Printers

Laser Printer

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 Printer Communications Types
Communication Types

• When we say “communication types,” we’re actually talking about the hardware technologies involved
in getting the printed information from the computer to the printer. There are four major types: serial,
parallel, Universal Serial Bus (USB), and network.

Serial

• When computers send data serially,

serially they send it one bit at a time,
time one after another.
another The bits “stand
stand in
line” like people at a movie theater, waiting to get in. Just as with modems, you must set the
communication parameters (baud, parity, start and stop bits) on both entities—in this case the
computer and its printer(s)—before communication can take place. Most of these cables are long.
Parallel
• When a printer uses parallel communication, it is receiving data eight bits at a time over eight separate
wires (one for each bit). Parallel communication is the most popular way of communicating from
computer to printer, mainly because it’s faster than serial.

• A parallel cable consists of a male DB‐25 connector that connects to the computer and a male 36‐pin
Centronics connector that connects to the printer. Most of the cables are shorter than 10 feet long.
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 Printer Communications Types
Universal Serial Bus (USB)
( )
• It is actually the most popular interface for just about every peripheral. The convenience for printers is that it
has a higher transfer rate than either serial or parallel and it automatically recognizes new devices.
Network
• Some of the newer printers (primarily laser and LED printers) have a special interface that allows them to be
hooked directly to a network. These printers have a network interface card (NIC) and ROM‐based software
that allow them to communicate with networks, servers, and workstations. The type of network interface used
on the printer depends on the type of network the printer is being attached to.
Infrared
• With the explosion of Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), the need grew for printing under the constraints they
provide. The biggest hurdle faced by PDA owners who need to print is the lack of any kind of universal
interface. Most interfaces were too big and bulky to be used on handheld computers like PDAs.
• The solution was to incorporate the standardized technology used on some remote controls: infrared
transmissions. Infrared transmissions are simply wireless transmissions that use radiation in the infrared range
of the electromagnetic spectrum. Many laser printers (and some computers) come with infrared
transmitter/receivers (transceivers) so that they can communicate with the infrared ports on many handhelds.
Thi allows
This ll th user off a PDA,
the PDA handheld,
h dh ld or laptop
l t to t print
i t to
t that
th t printer
i t byb pointing
i ti the
th device
d i att the
th printer
i t
and initiating the print process.
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 Print Media
Print Media

• The print media is what you put through the printer to print on. There are two major types of print
media: paper and transparencies. Of the two types, paper is by far the most commonly used.

Paper
• Aspects of paper that can be measured

– Quality of the paper.

– Basis Weight

– Caliper (or thickness) of an individual sheet of paper.

Transparencies
• Transparencies are still used for presentations made with overhead projectors, even with the explosion
of programs like PowerPoint and peripherals like LCD computer displays, both of which let you show a
whole roomful of people exactly what
what’ss on your computer screen.
screen

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 Print Consumables
Print Consumables

• Besides print media, there are other things in the printer that run out and need to be replenished
(refill). These items are the print consumables. Most consumables are used to form the images on the
print media. There are two main types of consumables in printers today: INK and TONER. Toner is used
primarily in laser printers. Most other printers use ink.

Ink

• Ink is a liquid that is used to “stain” the paper. There are several different colors of ink used in printers,
but the majority use some shade of black or blue.
blue Both dot‐matrix
dot matrix printers and bubble‐jet
bubble jet printers use
ink, but with different methods.

Toner

• The final type of consumable is toner. Each model of laser printer uses a specific toner cartridge. The
different types of toner cartridges were covered in the discussions of the different types of printers. All
we would add here is to check the printer’s manual to see which toner cartridge it needs.
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 Scanners
• A device that can read text or illustrations printed on paper and translate the information into a form the computer

can use. A scanner works by digitizing an image ‐‐ dividing it into a grid of boxes and representing each box with either

a zero or a one, depending on whether the box is filled in. (For color and gray scaling, the same principle applies, but

each box is then represented by up to 24 bits.) The resulting matrix of bits, called a bit map, can then be stored in a file,

displayed on a screen, and manipulated by programs.

• Optical scanners do not distinguish text from illustrations; they represent all images as bit maps. Therefore, you

cannot directly edit text that has been scanned. To edit text read by an optical scanner, you need an optical character

recognition (OCR ) system to translate the image into ASCII characters. Most optical scanners sold today come with

OCR packages.
packages

• Scanners differ from one another in the following respects:

• Scanning Technology: Most scanners use charge‐coupled device (CCD) arrays, which consist of tightly packed rows of

light receptors that can detect variations in light intensity and frequency. The quality of the CCD array is probably the

single most important factor affecting the quality of the scanner. Industry‐strength drum scanners use a different

technology
gy that relies on a p
photomultiplier
p tube ((PMT),
) but this type
yp of scanner is much more expensive
p than the more

common CCD ‐based scanners.

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 Scanners
• Resolution: The denser the bit map, the higher the resolution. Typically, scanners support resolutions of from
72 to 600 dpi.

• Bit Depth: The number of bits used to represent each pixel. The greater the bit depth, the more colors or
grayscales
l can be
b represented.
t d For
F example,
l a 24‐bit
24 bit color
l scanner can representt 2 to
t the
th 24th power (16.7
(16 7
million) colors. Note, however, that a large color range is useless if the CCD arrays are capable of detecting only
a small number of distinct colors.

• Size And Shape: Some scanners are small hand‐held devices that you move across the paper. These hand‐held
scanners are often called half‐page scanners because they can only scan 2 to 5 inches at a time. Hand‐held
scanners are adequate for small pictures and photos, but they are difficult to use if you need to scan an entire
page of text or graphics. Larger scanners include machines into which you can feed sheets of paper. These are
called sheet‐fed scanners. Sheet‐fed scanners are excellent for loose sheets of paper, but they are unable to
handle bound documents.

• A second type of large scanner, called a flatbed scanner, is like a photocopy machine. It consists of a board on
which you lay books, magazines, and other documents that you want to scan.

• O h d scanners (also
Overhead ( l called
ll d copyboard
b d scanners)) look
l k somewhat
h t like
lik overhead
h d projectors.
j t Y place
You l
documents face‐up on a scanning bed, and a small overhead tower moves across the page.
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 What is Negative Scanners
• A negative scanner is, in a way, a bridge between the worlds of film and digital photography. Many longtime photographers are hesitant to
abandon their wound film canisters and dark rooms for cold, lifeless storage cards and computers, but the benefits of going digital are
numerous. Digital cameras have become fairly affordable, and they eliminate the need to purchase roll after roll of film. Images can be
stored on a computer or on a CD; they can be printed out at any time; and they can be e‐mailed to friends and family with the click of a
mouse.
• Skilled photographers, though, are still able to produce higher quality images using film cameras. Film cameras offer more control over all
the variables that go into taking a photograph, and digital cameras have struggled to match that quality for a comparable price. But
regardless of the type of camera, working on a computer has all but replaced working in a dark room. Thanks to the negative scanner,
photographs taken on film can be easily imported into a computer,
computer where they can be digitally manipulated and processed.
processed
• A negative scanner is piece of computer hardware that can read a film negative and reproduce it on the computer as a developed image.
The negative scanner helps conserve the time and energy required to develop photographs in a dark room, and it gives the photographer
more control over the way photos are processed than, say, the local supermarket. After placing the negative into the negative scanner, the
photographer can use a program such as Adobe Photoshop to import the images. One can then use the software to crop the photo, adjust
lighting and color or add any number of effects to the image. It can be done within seconds and it can always be undone, meaning fewer
headaches over minor mistakes.
• Like anything
y g else, the negative
g scanner has been made available at manyy different p
pricingg levels. There is the lower‐priced,
p consumer‐
friendly type of negative scanner, which often can also process slides. These are particularly useful for people with boxes of old,
deteriorating negatives that can be preserved better digitally. There is also the higher‐end and much more expensive type of negative
scanner, which is more commonly used for professional publications like newspapers and magazines.
• A negative scanner can be especially beneficial for newspapers,
newspapers many of which have hundreds and thousands of old photographs archived
on negatives. Since just about all major newspapers have made the switch to digital photography and turned their dark rooms into storage
rooms, negative scanners are the only way to reprint any of these older photos in future issues.
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Q & A

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