If you have a PC you probably will need a printer sometime.

Printers are probably my least-favorite piece of hardware. Often they just mean trouble, but a printer is an essential component in a computer system. My dislike of printers probably comes from the days of the dot-matrix printer (anyone remember those?), and the mainframe printer. I can still remember reports printed on 132 character wide reams of paper on a huge mainframe printer. I can’t say I feel much nostalgia for those days.

Anyway, to the present. Currently because of my fairly basic printing needs, I use a small monochrome laser printer. The HP LaserJet 1020 Laser Printer is a small footprint, low cost printer. Another highly-rated monochrome laser printer is the Lexmark E250dn, which adds a built-in Ethernet connector for sharing the printer over a network, as well as a built-in duplexer to help with double-sided printing.

If I had the desk space I would definitely consider a multi-function printer again, They cannot be beat for the sheer functionality. Being able to scan, fax and make copies as well as print with the same device is great. The Canon Pixma MP530 is a highly rated all-in-one printer, although it lacks networking support and media card slots.

Posted on May 17th, 2008 by mervyn