How to Choose Your Desktop Printer

Some people get very worried when they realize that they will have to make a choice about purchasing some sort of high priced electronics product. If you handle the process of shopping well, however, do not let your shopping experience be something that stresses you out. Instead, you can enjoy the adventure of comparing prices!

If you are a person who is always concerned about making your purchase, the information in this article will help demystify the entire process of choosing a desktop printer and will make things easier on you.

The two biggest decisions to make when it comes to a printer are, do you want an inkjet or laser printer and will you be printing in color or just black and white.

After those big decisions, the rest are just details. You will be able to choose the correct printer for you by figuring out what functions you are interested in and what price you are willing to pay.

For example, if you need a color printer, what color documents will you be printing? Charts and graphs or photos? Photo quality printers are really only for people who plan on printing lots of photographs.

A photo quality printer is not necessary to print typical color report documents for work and school.

Laser printers are better for printing documents for long retention. Laser printers have gotten to be much more reasonably priced. You can find color laser printers for $500 less in most cases.

Documents printed on inkjet printers do not last as long as laser printed documents.

Printer Types

A wide variety of desktop printers have flooded this already highly competitive market. Amongst all these, there are two major kinds of printers.

Some desktop printers are color, black/white, and photo printers. These printers can also print by means of a laser jet, a desk jet, or an ink jet system.

As long as the appropriate installation wizards and drivers are available, most printers can function well with any computer. Back when desktop printers first became available to the average consumer in the marketplace, they were often big, heavy, and costly.

Times have changed, however, and modern desktop printers have gotten much smaller. Now, desktop printers are infinitely more portable and, as a result, practical.

Desktop printers have also become quite affordable. In many cases, computer manufacturers are willing to include a desktop printer as a bundled sale with a new computer for a greatly discounted price. The size, print quality, print speed, reliability, and specific model of a desktop printer will affect its price.

The more things a printer can do, the more it will generally cost. As technology has advanced in recent years, desktop printers have been made that can do much more than simply print documents.

Certain printers can actually print, fax, scan, and copy. While shopping for a printer, remember that the constant influx of new models makes printers obsolete in a short period of time.

Before you buy a printer, make sure that you will be able to purchase the software and hardware you will need to make it function properly.

Richard McLagan has been writing about various topics on the internet for over 10 years. His latest website project is about chain saw sharpening, cordless chain saw and other related topics.

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Make a USB-Powered Desktop Fan

On a hot summer day, a cool breeze blowing on your face can feel refreshing, rejuvenating. But heck, the office ceiling fan is on the other side of the room... as is the window. What to do?

If you (or the IT guy) have got an old computer case lying in a closet, you can salvage the case fan and turn it into a personal USB-powered desk fan. When it's not blowing air onto your face, you can use it to cool your mad-hot typing fingers.

And if you don't have any old PC cases, you can pick up a case fan for as cheap as $6. As for the other parts -- you've probably got them all lying around your house or the office, too.

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An old (or new) case fan, preferably 5V or 9V, but 12V can work too USB cable Soldering iron Solder Wire cutters Electrical tape Scissors (optional)

Near one end of the USB (the one you intend to plug into the fan, not the computer), cut the cord. You can toss the end you just cut off. If you want to make the USB cable shorter so it better fits on your desk, you can trim some of the cable from the middle.

Strip the plastic insulation off (about an inch or more) to reveal the wires within. Isolate or cut off any white or green wires -- we don't need those. Strip the red and black wires.

If your case fan is new, it may have a three-pin connector at the end of its wires. You can tin the ledes from the USB cable (coat the bare wire with a thin layer of solder, which aids connectivity) and then connect black wire to black wire, red wire to red wire, through the connector. Don't worry about the ground wire on the fan (it's usually yellow). In fact, you can just snip it off.

If you salvaged your case fan from an old computer or don't have a connector, just solder the USB cable directly to the fan's power wires -- solder the black wires together and the red wires together. You can cover the exposed solder points with electrical tape.

Just plug the USB cable into any computer USB port to turn it on.

USB cables deliver 5V, so a 5V fan is best. But 5V fans are uncommon in modern PCs, and you'll probably only find one if you're salvaging a fan from an ancient desktop. You can sometimes find lower-voltage fans in laptop PCs, but otherwise, you're probably stuck with a 9V or, most commonly, a 12V fan.

If you're using a 12V fan, it will still work, but the fan will just spin with a very low RPM. Ours worked, but blew only gently (probably not at its full 4500 RPM potential).

You can fix that by adding a switching regulator to your setup, a pretty simple circuit that will boost the voltage from 5 to 12V. This is a component that you'll have to solder together yourself, but it's a simple circuit and you can find everything you need in your local electronics supply store.

If you'd like your fan to blow at an angle (up at your gorgeous face, perhaps?), you can also use a coat hanger or similar thick wire to create a stand for your fan.

This page was last modified 19:54, 8 July 2011 by howto_admin.

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