Which Soho Printer? Part 1 of 3
Posted on January 15, 2010
Tony Stockill asked:
Most people buying a new printer today are looking at a choice between a Laser Printer and an Inkjet Printer, although there are more types out there, more of this later.
SOHO refers to “Small Office Home Office”, an almost arbitrary category, since there are big overlaps with other “categories” of users at both ends of this definition.
For instance, a home user who is a hobbyist, with an interest in photography will want a color printer capable of printing on photo paper, with reasonable resolution, to match his digital SLR. The printer he would need certainly falls in the SOHO category.
Similarly, a large company with many employees might have a large office staff, all of whom would have a PC, and many of whom would need a printer. Many printers in this situation would be networked together, so that they could be controlled from a central point for job switching and maintenance purposes. The network feature is now standard in this type of printer, but they are the same printers which are used by the “small office” with perhaps 2 or 3 printers, shared by maybe 6 people.
Within the categories of “inkjet” and “laser” printers, there are many variations of features, which we can check out to decide what type is suitable for our purpose. Before we look at these two main categories, it is a good idea to look at what we will be printing. Most users, these days want to be able to print in color, so we will take a quick look at how the color is achieved.
The standard is that four colors of ink are held in the printer, commonly known as CMYK or Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black. Why K for black? It stands for “key” as the other colors are keyed to the black level. This system is known as the “Additive Process”, that is the primary colors are added to one another, in different proportions, to produce all the other colors. Black is theoretically not necessary, as the three primaries together should produce black, however, the density of colors required and the unknown “whiteness” of the paper make it much more economical to use black as well. Of course the majority of text is in black, so that is another good reason. Or to put it another way, it is cheaper, printer price is important, see http://printerprice.com where we discuss this further.
This color system is in contrast to the more familiar RGB, or Red Green Blue system used in your TV and computer monitor. RGB is a “Subtractive Process”, that is, the proportion of colors is altered to produce all the other colors by subtracting from or reducing, say the intensity of the red. Once again we can have a “black problem” early LCD screens had a problem completely removing all the light to produce black. This was noticeably poorer than contemporary plasma screens, but has now been fixed. Why this is important, is that in order to print out an image seen on your screen in RGB, the data must be converted to CMYK in order to supply the printer with the correct information. Maybe you’ve noticed the printout is not always the same as the image on the screen?
In part 2 we see how the two main types of printer handle this color system
Most people buying a new printer today are looking at a choice between a Laser Printer and an Inkjet Printer, although there are more types out there, more of this later.
SOHO refers to “Small Office Home Office”, an almost arbitrary category, since there are big overlaps with other “categories” of users at both ends of this definition.
For instance, a home user who is a hobbyist, with an interest in photography will want a color printer capable of printing on photo paper, with reasonable resolution, to match his digital SLR. The printer he would need certainly falls in the SOHO category.
Similarly, a large company with many employees might have a large office staff, all of whom would have a PC, and many of whom would need a printer. Many printers in this situation would be networked together, so that they could be controlled from a central point for job switching and maintenance purposes. The network feature is now standard in this type of printer, but they are the same printers which are used by the “small office” with perhaps 2 or 3 printers, shared by maybe 6 people.
Within the categories of “inkjet” and “laser” printers, there are many variations of features, which we can check out to decide what type is suitable for our purpose. Before we look at these two main categories, it is a good idea to look at what we will be printing. Most users, these days want to be able to print in color, so we will take a quick look at how the color is achieved.
The standard is that four colors of ink are held in the printer, commonly known as CMYK or Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black. Why K for black? It stands for “key” as the other colors are keyed to the black level. This system is known as the “Additive Process”, that is the primary colors are added to one another, in different proportions, to produce all the other colors. Black is theoretically not necessary, as the three primaries together should produce black, however, the density of colors required and the unknown “whiteness” of the paper make it much more economical to use black as well. Of course the majority of text is in black, so that is another good reason. Or to put it another way, it is cheaper, printer price is important, see http://printerprice.com where we discuss this further.
This color system is in contrast to the more familiar RGB, or Red Green Blue system used in your TV and computer monitor. RGB is a “Subtractive Process”, that is, the proportion of colors is altered to produce all the other colors by subtracting from or reducing, say the intensity of the red. Once again we can have a “black problem” early LCD screens had a problem completely removing all the light to produce black. This was noticeably poorer than contemporary plasma screens, but has now been fixed. Why this is important, is that in order to print out an image seen on your screen in RGB, the data must be converted to CMYK in order to supply the printer with the correct information. Maybe you’ve noticed the printout is not always the same as the image on the screen?
In part 2 we see how the two main types of printer handle this color system
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