Though the apparent differences in laser and inkjet printers appear to be diminishing, the means by which they achieve their results are markedly different.
Laser printers, as their name implies, use a focused beam of light to fuse toner (a carbon and polymer powder mixture) into paper to create the images they leave behind. They are in essence high tech forms of wood burning that have been used to create images and characters with wood for centuries.
Inkjet printers on the other hand create images on paper by forcing highly pressurized colored liquid ink through tiny nozzles, sometimes multiple nozzles, through the air and onto the paper.
Both techniques sound remarkable simple, but it’s deceptive because both of them are only possible because of highly skilled and specialized engineers that have worked diligently for years to overcome some of the difficulties inherent in both techniques.
Laser printers could not have been developed obviously without the invention of lasers, but it was more than that, because the first laser printers tried to simply burn images directly onto the paper. The problem was controlling the burn and the accompanying smell. Toner was added because it was a known commodity, with carbon having been used as a marking device for hundreds of years and because it could be fused with paper without burning it. Polymers were added later to improve the crispness of the characters produced.
Inkjet printers on the other hand in the early stages of development suffered from misguided and sometimes clogged nozzles and then from the static electricity that was produced.
Fortunately all of these problems have been resolved and the purchase price for both has come down so much in recent years that now most people don’t think twice about adding a printer once they’ve bought a computer.
But, for all the advances in inkjet technology, it still lags behind laser technology in terms of how well it can print both graphics and characters, and is thus still the first choice for business use.
Inkjet printers on the other hand, because of their lower price, dominate home market sales and quite often come as part of a package deal with new computer sales.
One final difference between the two printers is that when the paper comes out of the printer on a laser printer the images are set; whereas with the inkjet the ink may still be wet and thus can be smeared if anything (such as fingers) brushes against it, and thus people must use caution when removing their copy from the printer.
