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If inkjet printers could produce reliable high quality output at an ink-printer cost then they would dominate the market. It seems plausible that inkjet printers could replace photocopiers, and even match the operating speed of offset lithographic machines whilst giving page-by-page flexibility. For the present, however, the operating costs of inkjet printers are much higher than those for laser printers and the laser engine makers seem confident of retaining their lead.
The inkjet printer applies ink to paper in a very controlled manner, without the intervention of any sort of mechanical plate or needle. The process is nearly silent, and ought to be very reliable because it involves no great mechanical action. The problem is to make print-heads reliable and ink cheap without involving users in messy procedures.
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Inkjet printers don't work very rapidly - which is often a requirement in business ("time is money")

At the moment inkjet manufacturers are mainly competing for the "SOHO" (Small Office /Home Office) market. this means they need to make a cheap print chassis, because users will focus on immediate purchase price - which they can see, rather than running cost, which is not easy to determine.

performance of a printer is directly related to it's mechanics, particularly the physics and chemistry of the image transfer mechanism.
 

Printers are one of the most common computer accessories. Wherever there is a computer there is usually a printer. Home printers are usually based on a technology called "inkjet" with "photorealistic colour" being a selling point. Workplace printers are often laser printers and may not have a colour capability - neat, clean text at a low cost is more likely to be top priority.

People often have rather ambiguous feelings about computer printers. A print-out from computer files often carries an air of authority

Paper creates a psychological problem because we suspect its environmentally wasteful, those clean white sheets imply a wasteland of treestumps and billowing clouds of steam from a pulp mill somewhere.

Paper also creates a whole raft of problems. Printing things out to read them then throwing them straight in the bin seems impossibly wasteful, but keeping them implies bulging filing cabinets full of reports and loads of time wasted filing stuff that duplicates what ought to be in the computer.

One problem, of course, is that we don't fully trust computers. There can't be many people who have never lost a vital bit of work in some computer filing disaster - it used to be the hard disk that wasn't backed up, these days it tends to be the unreadable CD. And even if you're confident that the hardware is backed up can you be really sure of finding files? A typical organisation has thousands of computer files, many of them idiosynchratically organised, some used daily but many kept because they might be useful. It may be no easier to find the paper but perhaps there's less chance of innadvertently discarding it at the click of a mouse button?

Paper is very useful. Print out a draft report and it suddenly becomes easy to spot a whole range of spelling, grammar and semantic mistakes that weren't evident on the screen. Circulate the agenda or minutes of a meeting as e-mail and watch as the participants turn up with it printed out.

Paper's usefulness can be quantified, at least in part.

A piece of A4 paper measures 298 x 210 x 0.1 mm approximately. Quite densely printed with an ordinary "10 point" font it will hold about 55 lines each 80 characters long - so its 4,400 characters of text.

The cost per page (using an HP 4Si mono laserprinter) is about 1.7 UK pence, not including the capital cost of the printer which is about 10 years old so it's effectively written off.

A 19" LCD monitor screen measures 378 x 300 x 40 mm approximately. It will just about display two A4 pages side by side -so the reading experience is roughly the same as an open report. The screen is a lot thicker and heavier than the paper - which will also conveniently fold down the middle. The screen has the advantage of being self-illuminated, but the disadvatage of being not very portable.
 
 

One way to quantify