Printer components
Replaceable cartridges: When selecting a printer, you'll want to consider convenience factors such as replaceable cartridges , so you can spend less time changing and replacing — and more time printing! With lasers, you usually have to replace a toner/drum cartridge when the printer runs out of ink. With ink jets, you replace ink tanks when they're depleted. Both of these types of cartridges vary in rated pages and price so be sure to include cartridge details in your pre-purchase research. Some of these replaceable modules contain both ink and the print head nozzles; some just the ink. Separate ink tanks are usually cheaper to replace than those combined with print heads. Ink jets also vary in their cartridge configurations--some use a single four-color cartridge that includes black, some use a tri-color cartridge and a separate black one, and still others use totally separate tanks for each color. Some inkjets use as many as six different ink cartridges, with a special cartridge for photo quality.
Printer cables: To get your new printer up and running, you'll need a printer cable. Most printers do not come with cables included. Cables are fairly inexpensive, however, just be mindful of the type of connections you need (serial, parallel, USB, etc.). Make sure you have the proper cable to connect your printer and computer and that it's long enough to suit your setup.
Memory: The type and amount of memory used by the printer or your PC will affect the speed of printing, so make sure you have enough memory on your PC and/or printer. Some printers don't need memory, because all of the processing is done on the computer. Graphics and high-resolution printing require more memory to process and print than text. Laser printers uses their own memory to print. Some printers use additional memory for features that will speed up printing such as the ability to process one page while printing another, or private printing, which holds a page in memory until you physically go to the printer and punch in an ID number. If a printer supports a memory upgrade, find out what the additional memory will be using.
Paper for printing. Each type of printing paper possesses the following characteristics: surface texture, brightness, color, whiteness (if you specify a white sheet), opacity, weight, caliper, size, and so on.
Uncoated and coated paper have different surface textures. In the papermaking process, uncoated stock has been compressed between metal rollers (calendared) only to a limited degree, yielding vellum, antique, wove, and smooth surfaces (from rough to smooth, depending on the amount of calendaring). Coated paper varies from roughest (matte) to smoother (dull) to smoothest (gloss), also depending on the amount of calendaring. Papermaking machines can even impress such textures as "linen" and "canvas" on paper. The smoother the paper, the better the "holdout" (the better the ink sits up on the surface of the paper rather than being absorbed into the fibers).
Brightness refers to the amount of light a sheet reflects (0 to 100 percent, with a crisp white sheet often exceeding 90 percent). Whiteness refers to the color of the reflected light (either yellow-white or blue-white, i.e., warm or cool). Brightness and whiteness affect readability (too much light tires your eyes when reading long blocks of text) and the crispness of photos (too little light reflected back makes photos seem dark or muddy).
Paper color can changes the color of the ink, so always request printed samples. Off-whites, referred to as cream, ivory, etc., are a good option for some jobs, but the names differ from paper mill to paper mill, and the appearance will change among paper batches produced at different times.
Opacity determines show-through. A sheet with high opacity will prevent solids, screens, and halftones from being visible through the opposite side of the sheet, which could otherwise be quite distracting. Colored sheets are usually more opaque than white sheets. This quality is rated on a 1 to 100 scale. Most sheets fall in the 80 to high 90 range.
Weight is based on the size of 500 sheets (a ream) of paper. . This is just a convention for precisely describing different grades of paper, such as bond, offset, etc. Another scale is in points (thousandths of an inch). You might, for instance, specify a cover for a perfect-bound book as a 10 pt. sheet.
Caliper is the thickness of paper when measured with a micrometer. It is related to bulk, which is a relative measure of the thickness as related to the basis weight of a sheet. For instance, 75# Hi-Bulk is thick enough to pass US Postal regulations for reply card thickness (7 pt.). Another sheet of this weight might have been further calendared and its fibers compressed more, yielding a thinner sheet. Lower bulk reduces opacity. Higher bulk will increase the overall thickness of a book. Therefore, it helps to know a paper's measure in pages per inch (caliper).
