Samsung and HP dominate the portable laser printer market; Samsung with its ML-1630 Monochrome Laser Printer and HP with P1005 or P1006 LaserJet printers. The Samsung model boasts a chic, low profile, easy for packing into cases and carrying with the business traveler, but at 14 pounds, you’d better have a case with wheels. The HP LaserJet models weigh slightly less than the Samsung offering, weighing in around 10 pounds, but they’re taller than the Samsung model and aren’t as convenient if you’re working with limited space. The Samsung portable laser printer provides a front-feed paper path, so you can stack objects on top of it, including your laptop.
Friday, May 8, 2009
Who makes the best portable laser printer?
Samsung and HP dominate the portable laser printer market; Samsung with its ML-1630 Monochrome Laser Printer and HP with P1005 or P1006 LaserJet printers. The Samsung model boasts a chic, low profile, easy for packing into cases and carrying with the business traveler, but at 14 pounds, you’d better have a case with wheels. The HP LaserJet models weigh slightly less than the Samsung offering, weighing in around 10 pounds, but they’re taller than the Samsung model and aren’t as convenient if you’re working with limited space. The Samsung portable laser printer provides a front-feed paper path, so you can stack objects on top of it, including your laptop.
Who needs a portable laser printer?
Business travelers are the primary audience for portable laser printers. They often find themselves needing to run prints on the road, and a portable laser printer could be exactly what the doctor ordered. While an increasing number of well-appointed hotels offer print centers for business travelers, it can be a bad idea to trust your print needs to a questionable hotel printer at eleven at night with an important presentation coming up the next day. What happens if the printer is out of commission, or if you have a technical problem communicating with the printer? Portable laser printers can eliminate all of these questions by providing a printer wherever you go.
Portable laser printer features vary.
The features that you’re likely to encounter on portable laser printers vary, but not as much as you might initially expect. As print technology improves, smaller printers don’t necessarily equal sacrifices in quality or functionality. In fact, portable laser printers are often quieter than their large office counterparts and are designed to require less space than workgroup laser printers.
You might sacrifice a little speed and you won’t find the workgroup or all-in-one functionality, but for the most part, portable laser printers boast similar features to the large stationary versions. Current portable laser printer technology doesn’t support scan, copy or fax functionality, as the scan lamp and technology drastically increases the size of the unit. However, you’ll find that portable laser printers are similar in almost all other aspects of technology.
What is a Portable Laser Printer?
Portable print technology isn’t a new concept, but portable laser printers are still relatively new and far between on the marketplace. How is a portable laser printer different from its larger stationary cousin, and do you need one?
Portable laser printers: Portable is a relative term.
Many computer geeks argue that portable laser printers haven’t truly arrived, but that they’re not far off. While manufacturers advertise “portable laser printers,” the truth is that even these portable models are large and unwieldy, typically weighing in at 10-15 pounds. The mechanics involved in the technology of a laser printer make a truly portable laser printer unlikely. If a portable laser printer the size of a few laptops stacked together and slightly heavier isn’t a daunting prospect, then portable laser printers may provide what you seek.
The Truth About A Portable Laser Printer
Having seen the title of this article, those of you in the know may already be thinking; what, did those clever computer scientists find a way to make a laser printer small enough to be considered portable? Unfortunately the answer is no, there is no such thing as a portablelaser printer , and we are going to consider the reasons why. First, let's take a basic look at how laser printers work.
Laser printers work on a page by page basis. The data that makes up the page is sent to the printer and the page does not start printing until the entire document is in the laser printer's memory. A laser scans across the surface of a drum that rotates, and flashes on and off to make a dot on the drum that has a different polarity to the rest of the drum. This dot attracts the toner to it-toner being a combination of powdered plastic and a colorant.
The drum is rolled across a piece of paper, transferring the toner to the paper. The combined paper and toner is then heated to approximately two hundred degrees Fahrenheit inside the laser printer, bonding the toner to the paper. This temperature alone requires a certain amount of space within the case, and space is at a premium with a portable printer.
Inkjet printers are far simpler and involve much smaller components. A liquid ink is passed out of the cartridge by varying methods that result in the ink being passed out, through a print head and onto the paper. The data is a continuous stream and printing can pause while waiting for more data, unlike with a laser printer.
Because of the way that the two machines work, they are sized very differently. Laser printers are large, and heavy machines that require large amounts of power to run the lasers and the produce the high heat needed to bond the toner to the paper-too much to be provided by a portable battery. Inkjets do not contain an imaging drum-instead producing the images through the print heads. The power required is much smaller, and hence is able to be supplied by a battery.
For this reason it is inkjet printers that are able to be made small enough to be portable. The lightest portable inkjet is just 2lb in weight, but the smallest laser printer currently is 10lb and 14 inches wide, by 9 deep. The size would be undesirable in a portable, the weight of a laser printer would be even less portable and there is another drawback.
Most laser printers are black and white only. Few are color and are hugely expensive. Portable printer users are most commonly business people, and being restricted to the monotone of a laser printer would not be good.
In the future perhaps technology will increase to the point that portable laser printers are possible, but for today, the only portable printer is an inkjet.
You can find out more about a Portable Laser Printer as well as much more information on everything to do with laser printers and accessories at LaserPrinterInfo.com
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