Deciding which printer to purchase can be overwhelming. There are so many brand names and factors to consider. While a printer may be cheap on the initial purchase, is the cost of ink cartridges going to make it more trouble than it’s worth? How about how often the cartridges have to be replaced? Is the printer is even reliable? What can you find information about all of this? Thankfully a consumer no longer needs to rely on the information provided by a sales person at the store to get a truthful inkjet printer review.

There are several sites out there, including eOpinions, Consumer Research, Cnet, and ZDNet which offer consumer inkjet printer reviews and a numerous amount of other items. These sites allow someone to put down the pros and cons of a product, as well as provide a description of experiences. However, keep in mind that these reviews may not paint a completely accurate picture of a product. While some individuals do go out and post reviews about products they love, it is more likely that people are going to review products they have problems about. For some reason, human nature tends to only been vocal about the worse of a product than spreading the good news about a useful one.

When considering these reviews before buying a printer, pay attention to what it is the consumer is stating as a negative and then consider if that is something that is going to be a problem for you. Some reviewers will give a bad rating for a product because they felt the company’s customer service is poor, but dealing with the customer service may be something you never have to deal with. Also they may rate it poor in the inkjet printer review simply because a USB cable was missing (which is standard practice now) or the sales rep at the store was rude. These negative points don’t really affect the actual printer. Other poor reviews can be given because a computer doesn’t work well with Macintosh computers or with a Windows 2000 operating system.

Another great source for a inkjet printer review is magazines, which also can be found online, like PCMag, PCWorld, or MacWorld. These are more thorough reviews where technology professions test out all the features of a printer and then write an objective viewpoint of how each one functions. They also discuss the printer’s operating software, and if it has any additional features or capabilities. For instance, if a printer does photos, then the reviewers will discuss the quality of photos and the different sizes as well as if the printer offers any other options like bring able to print directly from a media card or from a sheet of thumbnail prints.

Sandwich Plates

Given the advances that technology has been making over the last thirty years or so it is amazing that the Inkjet printer is just now becoming a “ho-hum” sort of item. The inkjet printer has been around since the early 1980’s but needed a few fine tuning advances to make it more affordable to the average user. Since that time in the 1990’s, when the advances necessary for mass marketing were found, inkjet cartridges have become the norm. But the question of how inkjet printers actually work, and is it a good thing remains. Of course the answers to these questions are yes, no and maybe.

Two choices

The basic concept behind the inkjet printer lies in the concepts of how printers work. Right at the “ya…so” level we find an answer of; a printer puts printer ink onto a piece of paper or other material. In our case we are talking about getting ink from ink cartridges onto paper in a finely defined color.

Thermal bubble – This first choice came largely from the bubble jet era and works by generating a certain amount of heat in the printer ink cartridges. The heat causes a bubble to form which eventually collapses as the printer ink is forced through a nozzle due to the bubble formation. The collapse of the bubble then causes more printer ink to enter for the same process to begin again.

Piezoelectric – There is a significantly smaller penetration of this method due to patent rights but the general concept is the same if you are able to connect heat and vibration as thermal equivalents. In this method the printer ink is ejected by vibrating crystals within the jet nozzle as electricity is passed through the crystals. As the crystals vibrate they cause the printer ink to be ejected and replaced by more printer ink. In this particular method there are many more nozzles than in the thermal bubble method so image quality is significantly better. Unfortunately, with the rights issue in place this quality is in limited release which makes the thermal bubble method more preferred.

Costs

The costs of inkjet ink cartridges can, unfortunately, be rather high. In this case the user must look to the cost of the unit if there is to be any noticeable difference in Inkjet cartridges bought. Lower cost machines do have a tendency to have lower cost ink cartridges but quality of the copy is poor. Looking in the other direction, higher cost printers will give you high quality prints but ends up costing you more than the printer in ink cartridges over time.

How inkjet printers work and the quality/cost issues appear to have penetrated the average consumers psyche in the first years of the 21st century. Using an analogy for Americans it is sort of like buying a Chevy (car), You know what you are getting, it is basic and it will last. For an item that has essentially become a commodity this is not such a bad thing. Until the next advance is made, this has been about 30 years in coming.

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