[nabs-l] Printers

[Joseph C. Lininger]

Steve,
I'll address both points.

First, price. If you consider the number of pages you get from a toner 
cartridge for a laser printer vs that of an ink cartridge for an ink jet 
printer, here's what you find. the toner might cost a bit more, but the 
number of pages per sheet is much lower. for ink jet, it is typically 10 
to 20 cents per page, where as for laser you can get it to where it's 
less than a penny per page if you have a high yield toner cartridge and 
you can get it at a good price. Even if you end up with 2 to 5 cents per 
page, however, which is also not uncommon, you still end up getting a 
better price for toner than for ink.

As for the quality, where ink jet is sometimes better is when you are 
printing color photos. I think a lot of that opinion comes from the fact 
that a color laser costs quite a bit more than a color ink jet. If you 
use a laser comparable in price to a color ink jet, it's almost 
certainly a black and white printer. Laser printers also have the 
problem that you can't put normal transparencies and such through them 
because of the heat; you need special laser printing ones. I'm not sure 
how high end color laser printers and high end ink jets compare when 
printing photos. Standard printings, like research papers and such are 
almost always better looking with laser.
Joe