Ink-Jet Printer

Ink Jet printers work by firing small bubbles of ink from a series of jets. The dots formed when the ink hits the paper build up the image. Ink Jet printers are faster than a dot matrix printer, and the quality of the image formed is much better although it can depend on the paper used. If the paper is not absorbent then the ink will smear. Ink jet printers have a resolution of 300 dots per inch although in practice if the ink smears, the final result is not this good. The inks are water based and will run if the paper gets wet.

Good quality colour is available with many monochrome printers having a colour upgrade option. Colour printing is more economical when there is a separate black cartridge, otherwise black has to be produced by mixing all three colours. Since colour cartridges are more expensive than black this adds to the cost.

A monochrome ink-jet printer does not cost much more than a dot matrix to buy, but the running costs are much greater. The ink cartridges are expensive and it may be necessary to buy special high quality absorbent paper to obtain the best results.

Ink jet printers are non-impact and are therefore quiet in operation. They are an option when high quality output is required, but the total amount of output does not justify the cost of a laser printer. Most ink jet printers use cut sheet stationery some can be adapted to take continuous stationery. Like the dot matrix printer, they produce text one character at a time.

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