How to Buy a Laser Printer

Series Summary

Computers are complex machines built upon very simple principles. They perform arithmetical operations millions of times over to transform digital information into usable human data. A personal computer's job is to help a user create, manipulate, deliver, receive, or delete media content. This is a simple, sterile definition that sounds uninteresting on the surface. Nevertheless, these fundamental functions mimic human ability in some surprising ways. Therefore, the computer is increasingly becoming an engine of the imagination and a platform for living the digital life. In this free video series on computer hardware accessories, a computer technician will explain how to choose and buy each hardware component. First, he discusses buying a laser printer, computer speakers, scanners and choosing the right amount of computer RAM. Next, learn about buying the right computer monitor, computer, choosing a computer brand name and buying sound and video cards. Finally, he talks about how to buy laptop and desktop computers, wireless modems, broadband routers and a graphics card for video editing.

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Chris Bryce from superservice.com. We're going to talk about how to buy a laser printer. There's a couple different things to consider in buying a laser printer. The first is whether you're going to be buying a color laser printer or a black and white laser printer. Some people will choose to go with the color because its not too much more expensive than the black and white, but there's a few things to consider in making your choice whether it be color or black and white lasers. If you go into a retail outlet and you're looking at the different printers that they have, the first thing to look at is the speed of the print. Sometimes the printers themselves will have a warm up time so every time you go to print, there may be a one to two minute warm up, sometimes as much as seven minutes depending on the printer brand. So that's the first thing to look at is what the warm up time is. Some of them are very quick and warm up in only seconds or maybe under a minute. After you've looked at the warm up speed, the next thing to look at the pages per minute speed. If you're going to be doing a lot of printing, this might be very important to you, especially if you're going with a color laser. The color lasers tend to be anywhere from 3 pages per minute up to 16 or 20 pages per minute. If you go with the lesser expensive ones, you're going to be taking a long time to print those items out, especially if you have say 100 items to print out. Its going to take quite a while to go through. On the black and white printers, they range from anywhere from about 8 to 10 pages per minute all the way up to sometimes 40 pages per minute. Once you've determined the speeds of the printer and the value versus the speed, then the thing to look at is the toner. A lot of the printers coming out now might seem appealing on price, but they might be saving 20 or 30 dollars off of another model, but the big thing to look at is why that price is lower. On the toner that comes with the printers, sometimes they only come with a starter toner which will only allow you to print about 100 pages before you have to go out and buy a new toner package. Toner for laser printers can be very expensive ranging from 30 to 80 dollars for black and white units all the way up to several hundred dollars for the color lasers. So if you've only got a starter toner, you might want to watch out for that and go ahead and spend a little bit more money on the next model that has a full toner kit in it that will allow you to print 2 to 4 thousand pages before having to replace your toner. Those are the main things to look at when you're buying a laser printer."