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Not that long ago, printers were glorified typewriters, and not very good ones at that. In fact, it took a very expensive printer to produce the same quality output as a standard IBM Selectric typewriter. That has changed in a big way.
In the office, printers have become indispensable business partners, faithfully churning out high-quality correspondence and reports at speeds no one would have thought possible a decade ago. Printers have also put the tools of a professional print shop in the hands of ordinary people. In many ways, they've leveled the playing field. With a good printer, you can produce proposals, newsletters, fliers and brochures that make your one-person operation look like a big corporation.
At home, printers have become just as important. You'll use them for everything from correspondence and writing checks to producing the PTA newsletter. Your kids will use them for their homework, and if they get their hands on one of the many creative art programs designed for youngsters, they'll see your printer as a wonderful outlet for their imagination.
Unlike typewriters, which strike a ribbon with fully formed characters, printers work this magic by putting little dots on a page. Those dots can be arranged to form text characters, lines, fill patterns and even photographs -- all on the same sheet of paper.
If the written word is important to you, today's printers can produce a greater variety of typefaces than a professional print shop could a few years ago. Most printers come with a variety of fonts built into their RAM, and those fonts can be scaled up or down in size without losing quality.
Your printer will also download software-based typefaces automatically from your computer. Most operating systems -- including Windows, OS/2 and the Mac OS -- come with a half-dozen or more basic fonts. Virtually any graphics program will install dozens more on your system, and if that isn't enough, your local software retailer can sell you disks with dozens of decorative typefaces for a few dollars.
By laying down dots in a different way, your printer can produce graphic images. Better printers can produce finer, more detailed images with fewer jagged edges than those printed by less-capable machines.
Color printers can add visual impact to almost any job. They mix colors from cartridges containing cyan, magenta, yellow and black ink using the same principle artists use when they mix paints of different colors on their palettes.
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