Ink Jet Printers
Using a principle coined in 1867, ink jet printers are the predominant printer type employed in business, scholastic, office, and home use in the world today. Ink jet printers have the advantage over their peers in terms of no warm up time and much lower cost per page against, say, laser printers. Ink jet printers are efficient, inexpensive, reasonably fast, quiet, and have surprisingly good quality output.

The best ink jet printer definitely depends on your needs. There are four predominant manufacturers of ink jet printers in the world. Three of these, Epson, Hewlett-Packard, and Canon can be credited with the substantial increase in quality for the modern inkjet. There is a fourth, Lexmark, who, along with the other listed three accounts for a majority of the world wide inkjet printer sales.

There are a few types of inkjet which may help you decide on which inkjet suits you best.

Thermal ink jet printers make magic with a series of tiny, electrically heated chambers. Images are produced when a pulse of current is run through the heat. Steam forms a bubble which, in turn, shoots the ink onto the paper; the ink’s tension pulls another charge through the ink reservoir. Print heads produced in thermal ink jet printers are at a substantial cost reduction than other ink jet technologies.

Most commercial Piezoelectric ink jet printers are produced by Epson. While this type is more expensive, the process is essentially the same as thermal ink jet save the use of piezoelectric instead of heat. This electric charge, once applied, allows the shape change to force the fluid from the nozzle. Piezoelectric inkjet is also the type used in most commercial and industrial ink jet printers.

One last type of ink jet is the Continuous ink jet which was patented in 1867. In use commercially since 1951, the use of a high pressure pump dictates the velocity of ink produced. While not very popular on home models, this is still used in some circumstances.

The best inkjet printers are the cheapest inkjet printers. Thermal ink jet printers are, far and away, the cheapest. They offer cartridges that are refillable, inexpensive, and plentifully available and they don’t involve any heavy duty recycling.

Inkjet printers have been in existence a long time. With the advances in ink jet technologies and the advances in making them cheaper, quieter, more efficient, with less cleanup and far less mess, ink jet printers stand above all their peers in many categories.