Types of Printer

Personal computer printers can be distinguished as impact or non-impact printers.

Early impact printers worked something like an automatic typewriter, with a key striking an inked impression on paper for each printed character.

The dot-matrix printer was a popular low-cost personal computer printer. It's an impact printer that strikes the paper a line at a time. The best-known non-impact printers are the inkjet printer, of which several makes of low-cost color printers are an example, and the laser printer.

The inkjet sprays ink from an ink cartridge at very close range to the paper as it rolls by.

The laser printer uses a laser beam reflected from a mirror to attract ink (called toner) to selected paper areas as a sheet rolls over a drum.