Red Hat ENTERPRISE LINUX 4 - INTRODUCTION TO SYSTEM ADMINISTRATION Administration Manual

Also see for ENTERPRISE LINUX 4 - DEVELOPER TOOLS GUIDE: Installation guide Installation guide Tuning guide Installation guide Manual

Contents

Chapter 7. Printers and Printing 1397.4.1. Color Laser PrintersColor laser printers aim to combine the best features of laser and inkjet technology into a multi-purpose printer package. The technology is based on traditional monochrome laser printing, but usesadditional components to create color images and documents. Instead of using black toner only, colorlaser printers use a CMYK toner combination. The print drum either rotates each color and lays thetoner down one color at a time, or lays all four colors down onto a plate and then passes the paperthrough the drum, transferring the complete image onto the paper. Color laser printers also employfuser oil along with the heated fusing rolls, which further bonds the color toner to the paper and cangive varying degrees of gloss to the finished image.Because of their increased features, color laser printers are typically twice (or several times) as expen-sive as monochrome laser printers. In calculating the total cost of ownership with respect to printingresources, some administrators may wish to separate monochrome (text) and color (image) functional-ity to a dedicated monochrome laser printer and a dedicated color laser (or inkjet) printer, respectively.7.4.2. Laser Printer ConsumablesDepending on the type of laser printer deployed, consumable costs are usually proportional to the vol-ume of printing. Toner comes in cartridges that are usually replaced outright; however, some modelscome with refillable cartridges. Color laser printers require one toner cartridge for each of the fourcolors. Additionally, color laser printers require fuser oils to bond toner onto paper and waste tonerbottles to capture toner spillover. These added supplies raise the consumables cost of color laser print-ers; however, it is worth noting that such consumables, on average, last about 6000 pages, which ismuch greater than comparable inkjet or impact consumable lifespans. Paper type is less of an issue inlaser printers, which means bulk purchases of regular xerographic or photocopy paper are acceptablefor most print jobs. However, if you plan to print high-quality images, you should opt for glossy paperfor a professional finish.7.5. Other Printer TypesThere are other types of printers available, mostly special-purpose printers for professional graphicsor publishing organizations. These printers are not for general purpose use, however. Because they arerelegated to niche uses, their prices (both one-time and recurring consumables costs) tend to be higherrelative to more mainstream units.Thermal Wax PrintersThese printers are used mostly for business presentation transparencies and for color proofing(creating test documents and images for close quality inspection before sending off master docu-ments to be printed on industrial four-color offset printers). Thermal wax printers use sheet-sized,belt driven CMYK ribbons and specially-coated paper or transparencies. The printhead containsheating elements that melt each wax color onto the paper as it is rolled through the printer.Dye-Sublimation PrintersUsed in organizations such as service bureaus — where professional quality documents, pam-phlets, and presentations are more important than consumables costs — dye-sublimation (ordye-sub) printers are the workhorses of quality CMYK printing. The concepts behind dye-subprinters are similar to thermal wax printers except for the use of diffusive plastic dye film insteadof colored wax. The printhead heats the colored film and vaporizes the image onto speciallycoated paper.