Hewlett Packard is one of the few computer companies out there that can trace its roots back to before the computer was invented. In fact the first HP product was produced in a garage bringing new meaning to the term garage mechanic. The company has shown a remarkable ability to innovate and not only keep up with but lead the way in technology advances. The history of HP printers though doesn’t start until the 1980’s.

In 1984 HP  revolutionized the printer market with the introduction of inkjet printers.  These machines were singularly responsible for changing the entire printer market. Inkjet printers replaced the noisier and less precise dot matrix printers. They paved the way for home use printers.

In 1988 HP introduced the deskjet printer. It became the standard for printers for years to come.

In the 1990’s HP focused more on its inkjet technology. It moved beyond black and white printing to full color printing. For the first time businesses could print quality documents in house, significantly cutting expenses for businesses around the world.

By the late 90’s HP was still innovating. They introduced the first all in one printer. This innovation helped lower business costs even more as now printers could take on the role of copy machines as well leading to more office integration.

In the 2000’s the company further cemented its role as a world leader in printers with the introduction of multiple full color high quality printer lines. These printers could use six different ink jets and 4800 dpi quality.

Hewlett Packard has come a long way from a single simple garage.  They’ve consistently innovated the field of printing. Who knows what their next products will be. With this kind of history behind it you can be sure that if you purchase an HP printer you’re getting a quality product with years of research behind it.

While Lexmark printers seem like they’ve been around for ages in fact they weren’t created until 1991. The company was originally a subsidiary of IBM. They offered Lexmark for public sale in 1994 and the company took off after that. It’s become one of the biggest sellers of printers in the world.

Lexmark is a recognizable brand name. What’s less commonly known though is that the company is a major printer producer for other computer companies.  For instance Lexmark makes Dell printers. Their primary business model is of a third party manufacturer rather than as a direct sales company.

Lexmark has always been a leader in innovation. They produced the first inkjet printer that was available for under $100 and built the first production stand alone photo quality printer.

Lexmark has a wide product range from ink jet printers to more commercial grade toner based systems. It even offers dot matrix and photo reproduction options. A Lexmark printer can be scaled to fit any home or business need. You can go from the smallest single page printer up to commercial all in one machines.

Lexmark is truly a world wide company with offices in major developed countries and roughly 13,000 employees. It’s based out of Lexington Kentucky.  With the level of sales Lexmark generates it’s a Fortune 500 company.

Printers have come a long way from the lowly single function tractor feed dot matrix job that took up an entire corner of a room. Now any home can turn into a small office for under $500. Lexmark is one of the companies leading the way in this evolution. Their printer lines can fit any home or personal need. This is a company that’s come a long way from when it was just a research and development project at IBM. If you’re looking for a printer then Lexmark probably has a product suited for you.

Choosing a printer for your home or office can be a daunting choice when you consider how many different printer options are available for any sized home, office and budget.

What you choose should be based solely on what your needs are. For instance if you take a lot of digital pictures you’ll want a printer that can handle heavy-duty high quality printing. If you have an office that needs to print large volumes of material then you’ll want a printer that shoots out pages at high speed.  All in one printers combine the function of a printer, scanner and copier all together, the perfect solution for a home based business. Canon makes a great line of printer, the Pixma series. Here’s a brief guide to what the top selling Canon Pixma printers are and why.

Canon Pixma MX700:

This is a standard office printer. It can do everything, print, scan and copy. It pumps out paper quickly. It’s the perfect choice for a small office. It can be added to a network for multiple computer printer sharing.  One of the nice features of this printer is it has a preview screen so you can see exactly what the print will look like before using up paper and ink.

Canon Pixma Pro9000 :

The Pixma Pro900 is a great choice for the photo hobbyist. It uses a dye ink instead of a pigment-based ink. Dye ink is less expensive but still produces great pictures. While this printer isn’t the best choice for large format commercial work it’s great for printing out family snapshots and vacation pictures.

Canon Pixma MP210

The Pixma MP210 is the budget option in the Pixma line. It has most of the features of the higher end units but at a fraction of the price. The print quality is great but it is a bit slower than the other Pixma models.

In this guide, we’ll take a look at some of the most common reasons why people want printers and the best one to go for, in each case.

General ‘home’ user

This sounds like it would be an easy category but in fact, it is one of the most complicated. Home users need a printer that is extremely versatile. It should be able to print everything from the kids’ homework to photographs and most probably needs to fit into a reasonable budget. The best choice would be color inkjet that is designed to be a ‘jack of all trades’. These are often called ‘small office’ or ‘home office’ printers. Their only downside is that in order to fit into the low budget category, they tend to be a little on the slow side.

OR

Get two printers. You could go for a basic, low end laser printer for text documents and a color inkjet for photos and graphics.

Aspiring novelist?

If you’ve been slaving away on your masterpiece and now need to print it out to send to prospective publishers, you’ll need a fast printer that will give you beautifully crisp, easily readable text. Your best buy would be a laser printer. They can sometimes be more expensive than inkjets but are cheaper to run and maintain.

OR

You could go for an inkjet so that you also have the option to have colour. If you choose this option, be aware that the cheaper ones can be slow, so go for the best you can afford to gain that extra speed.

Enthusiastic photographer

Any inkjet printer can print color photographs but for really professional results, you’ll want one that specializes in doing so. Check out what kinds of paper it will print with. See which tools it has for color management. If you’re only going to buy one printer, your best choice may be an inkjet because it can also handle text well.

If you want truly dynamic photos, read up on the printers and find one that uses thermal dye-transfer. This advanced technology is also called dye sublimation. The printer uses heat to change the physical state of solid ink so that it infuses paper which has a special coating. The inks then return to solid as they get cooler.

If you’re into digital photography, you could choose to buy a snapshot printer which is compatible with your camera. Or, you could go for a multi-functional printer. These have recently improved and many now have integral scanners, memory cards and LCD’s that you can use to preview pictures before printing.

Budding Entrepreneur

If you run your own small business or often work from home, a multifunction printer would be a good buy for you. These are also called AIO’s, which stands for ‘all in ones’. This printer may be inkjet or laser but will also have a scanner, copier and fax machine. These are great because they save both money and space – both of which are often in short supply if you are working from home.

The inkjet models are generally slightly cheaper but if your budget stretches to it, go for one that allows ‘stand alone’ faxing and also has an automatic document feeder. This allows you to put a stack of documents into the feeder tray and go off to do other things while the machine faxes or copies the lot!

OR

If you already have a fax, scanner or copier, a color laser printer should suffice, unless you need to print a lot of graphics in which case, go for an inkjet.

Team worker

If your business is expanding and you are going from a sole trader to a small team – or if you work as part of a team in a big organization, then you need a workgroup printer. These laser printers are especially designed to tackle multiple printing jobs. They have faster internal processors, a larger amount of memory and can print out more than twenty pages every minute. These printers are at the higher end of the market and their network capabilities, large volume toner cartridges, higher paper input and output trays are all reflected in their price.

OR

If your team doesn’t need to do much printing, you may be able to manage with a business inkjet but do check out if it is able to support network printing.

High Flier

If you are a jet-setter in the truest sense of the word and really do have to carry your office around with you, you’ll be happy to know that portable printers are now available. They may be either battery operated or charged up in your car. Most weigh between two and five pounds so are easy to carry whilst travelling and easy to pack. Some newer models have support so that you can print from a mobile phone by using a wireless connection.

OR

The least expensive alternative is not to have a printer. If you’re constantly on the go, it’s not difficult to find a printer in any office. Most hotels and airports often have areas to use a wired or wireless network so you use their printer or can send text and graphic files to another user to print.

Review and compare

Spend some time on sites that carry reviews or comparisons to see what consumers have to say. You may love the sound of a model but what do people who now own one think of it? You may also find yourself looking again at ones that you had discarded on the back of five star reviews. This is time well spent and will help you to find the printer that perfectly meets your needs.

There are so many printers available now, that choosing one can feel very overwhelming. They vary in their level of technology, size and of course, price.

So how do you decide which one to go for? It’s easier if you choose the printer that’s right for you. First decide what you want it for and what your budget is. Those two factors alone will start to narrow down the enormous choices.

Inkjet or laser?

As a general rule, inkjet printers are great for photographs and high resolution printing – which simply means they are better when a high level of detail is required in the finished print out.

Laser printers are better at producing text only documents but even then, their speed varies so don’t forget to check it out if it’s important to you. If you have high volumes of text to print, you don’t want to be feeding each sheet in by hand and tied to the printer all morning.

Top Selling Laser Printers

1.  Brother HL-4040cdn Color Laser Printer with Duplex and Networking

• Up to 21ppm color and monochrome printing
• Built-in duplex printing
• Up to 2400 x 600 dpi resolution
• Print directly from a USB flash memory drive or PictBridge-enabled camera
• High capacity replacement toner cartridges

2. HP LaserJet 4050 Printer

• 1,200-dpi resolution
• NEC 4310 133-MHz RISC microprocessor
• Prints 17 pages per minute
• On-printer help system
• 8 MB memory

3. Brother MFC-8420 Laser Multifunction

• Faxes, prints, copies, and scans
• 2,400 x 600 dpi resolution for printing, copying, and scanning
• Copy and print speeds up to 17 pages per minute
• 33.6 Kbps fax modem; 2 seconds per page transmit time
• Parallel and USB 2.0 interfaces, PC and Mac compatible

Top Selling Ink Jet Printers

1. HP Officejet J6480 All-in-One Printer

• Includes: HP Officejet J6480 AIO, CD with software, Fax and wireless starting guide, Set-up poster, Power cord, HP 74 Black Cartridge (210 page yield), HP 75 Tri-Color Cartridge (155 page yield), 1-Year limited warranty
• Black printing speed – Up to 31 ppm
• Color printing speed – Up to 25 ppm
• Black print resolution – Up to 1200 rendered dpi black (when printing from a computer)
• Color print resolution – Up to 4800 x 1200 optimized dpi color (when printing from a computer and 1200 input dpi)

2. Canon PIXMA MX860 Wireless All-In-One Photo Printer

• Fully-Integrated 35-sheet Auto Document Feeder for rapid built-in two-sided document copying and scanning
• Built in auto duplex copying
• Dual color Gamut Technology optimizes the original so that copies remain true
• Various security features including password protected PDFs
• 5 ink tanks only replace the tank that runs out

3. HP Officejet 6310 All-in-One Printer

• Robust and affordable all-in-one printer, fax, scanner, and copier
• Crisp and clear 1,200 dpi black and white print quality; 4,800×1,200 dpi full-color print quality
• Prints or copies up to 30 pages per minute
• Windows and Mac compatible
• 1-year limited manufacturer’s warranty

Ink tanks

Something to be aware of when choosing a printer is the cost of the inks that will be used. Some printers use one tank for all colors. Others use separate tanks for separate colors – which is useful, but do be prepared to stock up on the black tanks if you print a lot of text.

There are now shops and online companies who offer to fill empty ink tanks for you, so if you have one near you, this may be a viable option – but do check if the printer that you have fallen in love with has refillable tanks.

It’s really worth taking a little time over this and the cost of inks is considerable, will add to your outgoing expenses and may need to be factored into the cost of anything you are producing to sell.