Printer
A printer is a device that takes a document or image from your computer and puts it on paper.
You send a file to the printer from your computer, phone, or tablet, and it produces a physical copy you can hold, file, or hand to someone. Printers come in several types, with inkjet and laser being the most common, and many modern printers can also scan and copy documents.
Printer, explained at three levels
At home
A printer takes what is on your screen — like a document, photo, or form — and puts it on a physical piece of paper. You click 'Print' on your computer, and the printer produces a paper copy. Some printers also work as scanners and copiers, letting you turn a paper document back into a digital file or make duplicate copies.
At work
In an office, printers are used for contracts, reports, mailing labels, and any document that needs a physical copy. Network printers are shared by multiple people in an office, so anyone can send documents to the same machine. Understanding basic printer settings — like choosing color versus black-and-white, selecting paper size, and printing double-sided — helps avoid waste and keeps printing costs down.
At home
Inkjet printers spray tiny droplets of liquid ink onto paper and are well-suited for printing photos and color documents at lower volumes. Laser printers use a heated roller to fuse powdered toner onto paper and are faster and more cost-effective for high-volume black-and-white printing. The cost per page — which accounts for ink or toner expenses — is often more important than the upfront price when choosing between the two.
At work
Enterprise print management involves selecting the right mix of devices, deploying print servers or cloud printing solutions, and controlling costs through print quotas and policies. Managed print services (MPS) outsource the maintenance, supply ordering, and monitoring of an organization's printer fleet to a vendor. Security features like pull-printing — where a print job is held until the user authenticates at the device — prevent sensitive documents from sitting unattended in output trays.
At home
Modern multifunction printers (MFPs) integrate print, scan, copy, and fax capabilities with embedded processors, local storage, and network interfaces running their own operating system. Print resolution is measured in dots per inch (DPI), with 600 DPI being standard for business documents and 1200+ DPI for detailed graphics. Print languages like PCL and PostScript determine how the computer communicates page layout instructions to the printer's rendering engine.
At work
At scale, organizations implement print infrastructure using solutions like Microsoft Universal Print, PaperCut, or vendor-specific fleet management tools for centralized driver deployment, access control, and usage reporting. Printer security is a serious consideration — multifunction devices have hard drives, network stacks, and firmware that must be patched and hardened like any other endpoint. Industry standards like IEEE 2600 and Common Criteria certifications guide secure printer configuration in environments handling sensitive or classified data.
Real-world examples
At home
Kayla needed to print return shipping labels for some online purchases but did not own a printer. After this happened a few more times, she bought an inexpensive inkjet printer and found she also used it for printing recipes, concert tickets, and her children's school permission slips. Having a printer at home turned out to be more useful than she expected.
At work
David, an office administrator, noticed the department was spending a lot on color printing that did not need to be in color. He configured the shared laser printer to default to black-and-white and set up a color printing policy that required employees to manually select color when needed. This small change reduced their toner costs by thirty percent over the next quarter.
How it compares
| Feature | Inkjet Printer | Laser Printer |
|---|---|---|
| Print method | Sprays liquid ink droplets onto paper | Fuses powdered toner onto paper with heat |
| Best for | Photo printing and low-volume color | High-volume document printing |
| Print speed | Slower, especially for multiple pages | Faster, especially for large jobs |
| Cost per page | Higher, especially for color ink | Lower, toner lasts longer per cartridge |
| Upfront cost | Generally lower | Generally higher |
| Photo quality | Excellent on photo paper | Good but not photo-grade |
| Maintenance | Ink can dry out if not used regularly | Toner does not dry out, more reliable for infrequent use |
Inkjet printers excel at photo printing and have a lower upfront cost, while laser printers are faster, cheaper per page, and better suited for high-volume document printing.
For analysts
When gathering requirements for workflows that produce printed output — such as invoices, labels, or reports — document the expected print volume, color requirements, and paper sizes needed. Specify whether printing must happen locally, over the network, or through a cloud printing service. If the application generates printable documents, note the required output format (PDF is safest for consistent formatting across different printers).
History & origin
The first computer printers appeared in the 1950s and were large, noisy line printers used with mainframes. Inkjet and laser printers became affordable for personal use in the 1980s and 1990s, with Hewlett-Packard's LaserJet (1984) and DeskJet (1988) bringing printing into homes and small offices. Wireless and mobile printing capabilities became standard in the 2010s.