Printers are all-important part of our lifes, they are used so widely, so it’s not surprising that the demand is so high, and price too. Another good way to save on printer cartridges is to buy them online. There are numerous stores over the Internet selling printer cartridges and supplies, like refill kits. These shops are always in competition for customers, so they are always lowering their prices. Moreover, buying printer cartridges online is convenient and fast. Your printer cartriges will be delivered straight your door.

But buying new printer cartridges everytime the are empty is very expensive, so many people are using refill option. There are numerous companies offering such service. It’s very profitable business, so you can even buy already refilled cartridges over Internet with good discounts. You can also purchase a refill kit, which usually include ink, flush and some instructions on how to refill your printer cartridges. It’s not a hard task and you can easily do it yourself, or, as we said above, buy refilled cartriges online and save even though.

Laser printers use a laser beam to print documents of superior quality. First, the image is produced on a photosensitive drum with the help of a laser beam, and then it’s transfered onto ordinary paper using a usual printing process.

The major advantages of laser printers are printring quality, economy and speed. Laser can move extremely fast, much more faster than an ink jet. Moreover, laser moves in a single line, so it’s more precise, and spilling ink! Hower, laser printers are still more expensive than their inkjet brother, but you’ll definitely save on toner, because it’s cheaper and long lasting. This is why laser printers are usually used in offices.

Unfortunately, laser printers are more expensive than mechanical ones. Plus the maintenance required by laser printers can be very expensive too. Anyway, the quality and speed of these printers make them must-have in big offices or even at home, if you have to print a lot.

So, if laser printers are best-buy, but the expensive one, you should bear in mind some common things. Always look at printer’s speed and printing capability (24 pages per minute monochrome and more), the standard resolution is 600 dpi (dots per inch) and more. Check out the complectaion, ask for some special offers and promotions. Make sure printer is compatible with your computer and have all required ports (USB, ethernet). The top brands of laser printers are Hewlett Packard, Lexmark and Xerox.

One other reason for their ultimate popularity covers in inkjet printers’ dimensions: they are very light and small. Moreover, inkjet printers can make extremely high quality print jobs.

Hower, inkjet printers are rather expensive in usage. The price for ink can easily overgrow the cost of an inkjet printer itself. Nevertheless, there are some secrets, which might allow you to save some money while using an inkjet printer.

The first tip is to buy compatible inkjet cartridges. This compatible ink commonly provides the same quality as name brand inkjet cartridges, but at a really reasonable price. Moreover, you can buy inkjet cartridge refill kits. These kits include ink, flush and instruction how to fill different types of cartridges.

Another great way to save big on your inkjet cartridges is to buy them online. You can buy them practically in every store, that offers inkjet printers. The prices are usually bargain, because internet stores don’t spend money for rent and others costs. Online stores are also really convenient since you can compare prices, review brands, consider compatible inkjet cartridges and inkjet refills all in one place.

Laser printers are much more expensive, than their inkjet brothers. Especially color ones. Monthly ink costs can equal a cost of a couple of inkjet printers. Plus, laser printers are almost always huge and inconvinient.

So, regarding to inkjet printers’ features, hight quality capability, ergonomic design, reasonable price and low usage costs there is no more secret why they are so popular!

Inkjet photo printers perform printing by spraying special ink onto the photo paper. There are different color schemes, but the most common one is RGB (reg-green-blue). But nowadays many manufacturers added some special colors like cyan or magenta to make their photo printers print better quality images. The quality also depends on resultion, but most of printers have resultion more than 2000dpi, and with such resolution you can vividly see all details of the image.

There are some well-known brands like Kodak, HP, Canon and Epson. These manufacturers produce best quality photo printers. A top quality inkjet photo printer costs over $140.

When you are considering a photo printer, make sure it fits all your needs. You might need one that does all kinds of printing and is used for printing photos occasionally or one that’s built to print hundreds photos every day. You could need a photo printer that is compatible with your computer, so that you are able to work over your pictures, or one that prints directly from a camera. Don’t forget to find out how much you will spend on ink, paper, toner.

The top-rated photo printers are  Canon Pixma iP8500 Photo Printer, Epson Stylus Pro 4000 and the Sony PictureStation DPP-FP30 to name a few. If you’re planning to spent less than $100, then look for Lexmark P4350 All-In-One, Samsung ML-2010 or HP PSC 1510 All-in-One. Check out the range of printers available in your store and choose the one that fits you well inprice, running costs, and features.

1. Printing needs

a. Before buying a printer answer the followeing queations:
b. Do you need a monochrome office priner or a color one?
c. How many pages you’re planning to print every month?
d. What is the priority - quality or quantity?
e. Do you need a printer that is shared by a working group or do you need for home users?
f. What is your budget?
Once you’ve answered all these question you can step up next. The price and technical features of your future office printer depend on these answers.

2. Printer types

There are inkjet and laser printers. The inkjet printers are much cheaper, but they have a small capacity of printouts, plus the cartridges are quite expensive. The speed is good, and the quality is spectacular, but if you need to print thouthands of pages better look for laser office printers. So if you’re planning to print thouthands of monochrome pages - laser printer suits your needs better. These office printers usually have capacity of a couple thousands of pages, they are fast, big and expensive. But they definitely worth their money, especially in big offices.

3. Resolution

The clarity and quality of printouts depends on printer resolution. Top office printers has a resolution of many thousands dpi (dots per inch). But typical monochrome office printers have resolution of 1200×600 dpi or so. With such resolution even the smallest fonts are clearly visible.
Color printers have bigger resolution to perform better quality for colorous images.

4. Speed

The speed of a printer is measured in ppm (pages per minute). Typical inkjet office printers have a speed of 6-20 ppm depending on selected printing quality. Laser office printers are much faster you can get about 30ppm for monochrome documents and even more.

5. Connectivity and compatibility

Always check that your printer is compatible with your system. If you’re planning to use it like an network station, check that you have all required software and hardware. Always check that printer has a USB port, Ethernet port (optional) and LAN port if you’re planning to use office printer in your network.

6. Compare Prices

Review different stores and compare prices before buying an office printer. Calculate the gross expenditure, which includes cost of the printer, the cost of packing and shipping cost. If all the costs meet your budget you can buy your printer. The prices for laser office printer are in range of $200 to $10000 for big all-functional machines.

This Hewlett Packard printer technology is based on Scalable Printing technology and it has resultion of1200×1200 dpi for monochrome and 4800×1200 dpi for color prints. The printer has inbuilt 384MHz processor and 128 MB memory.

Printing speed for black and white and color of this Hewlett Packard printer in normal mode is claimed at 19 ppm, However, first printout takes about 15 seconds, and it’s a good result for a non-laser printer. Recommended monthly prinouts starts at 1200 pages, so this printer is suitable for only quite large companies.

This Hewlett Packard printer comes with a USB 2.0 port and an 10/100TX Ethernet port for network printing. Moreover, PictBridge port is also built-in. But this model can be enhanced with Wi-fi support.

The standard version of HP Officejet Pro 8500 costs about $320. The model with Wi-Fi enabled is around $390. But this price is reasoable because of this printer’s workability and quality.

1. DELL 3000cn

This model always stands on top of numerous printer review. DELL 3000cn is a compact, 25 ppm monochrome, 5 ppm laser color printer with a resolution of 2400×600 dpi. This printer measures are approximately 16.7×16.5×17 inches and it weighs about 53 pounds. It has spectacular color laser output quality. DELL 3000cn is compatible with Windows, Mac and Linux systems. Even the smallest characters are easily readable due to the excellent resolutin. Its starter toner print cartridge has capacity of 2000 pages for black and white and 1000 pages for color printouts. Perfect quality and reasonable price - this is what make this printer one of the best solutions.

2. Oki printing solutions C3400n

This printer has speed of 20 black and white pages printed per minute and 16 color pages printed every minute. Resolution is just 1200×600 dpi. This laser color printer has about 4 print cartridges with a capacity of 1000 pages each, so it’s 4000 pages in common. The price is affordable, quality is good enogh, speed is good and place this printer onto the second place.

3. Brother HL 2700CN

This color laser printer is mainly used if office. It has speed of 31 black and white pages per minute and color of 8 pages per minute. This model comes with starter toner print cartridges with a capacity of 5000 pages for monochrome and 3000 pages for three colors (colorous printouts). This color laser printer has both parallel and USB 2.0 and even 10/100TX networking ports.

4. Samsung CLP500

This model’s speed is  20 ppm monochrome amd 5 ppm in color. This color laser printer comes at an affordable price. Color resolution is 1200×600 dpi, print quality is good enough and it certainly worth it’s money. The Samsung CLP500 default cartridge has a print capacity of 600 sheets, has a 64 MB inbuilt memory, plus both parallel and USB 2.0 ports. But the bad thing about this printer is its bulky appearance (it measures 20×18.5×16 inches) and heavy weight of approximately 80 pounds. It’s best suit for office usage and mostly working with monochrome printouts.

4. Lexmark C510

This small office laser color printer performs excellent quality color printouts. This printer has lots of useful features for a considerable price, so it’s ideal silution for small business. The printer comes in three models, has a monochrome speed of 30 ppm, 8 ppm color speed and it seems much faster than any other color laser printer.