Like so many great inventions, the laser printer started as an experiment in someone's kitchen— Chester Floyd Carlson's kitchen, to be exact.
And to be accurate as well as exact (because exactness and accuracy aren't necessarily the same thing), that is not quite correct. Carlson was working out the principles of what he called "electrophotography." That, in turn, led to the first photocopiers, which were produced in 1949 by a small company called Haloid. Haloid called the process "xerography," taken from the Greek words for "dry" and "writing," and later renamed itself Xerox.
Carlson died in 1968, having donated $100 million to charity and, more importantly, changed the world. A nicely done summary is "Xerography: The Invention That No One Ever Wanted". A more thorough biography is at Rochester.
So what does electrophotography have to do with anything? Read on. As I read computer columns, magazines, and trade papers, I often wonder who the heck is interested in most of the stuff they cover. And why they don't write about the things that interest me. Or when they do write about things that interest me, why is it that they so rarely understand exactly what it is about these things that I really want to know? I don't mind if they cover more than I want to know, as long as my main interests are included. And beyond my main interests, about which there may be little new to say, what about the nuances that make an important difference?
Because I've been struggling with them recently, I have printers on my mind. Every so often there will be a round-up review of a dozen or more printers, pointing up the advantages/disadvantages of each. There may also be a chart comparing the units' facilities, pros, and cons. The bigger mags will even award a score and an "editor's choice."
That's all well and good. But where do they discuss the relative merits of kinds or classes of printers? As I travel around visiting clients, for example, almost all of them use inkjet printers of one kind or another, from the $30 cheapo to the several hundred buck multifunction printer/scanner/fax/copier/oven-cleaner.
Not one in 100 home users that I know uses a laser printer, and I'm hanged if I understand this predilection for the slow, sloppy and expensive-to-run inkjet technology.
When HP introduced its first DeskJet, I ran to buy one for about $400. It was miles ahead of the impact/dot-matrix units that had been the standard for so long. Laser printers then sold for $1500 - $3000, way beyond my budget, and the DeskJet's output was darn near indistinguishable from a laser. However, when I had to print presentation graphics and newsletters, the slowpoke production, plus time to dry the wet ink, forced me to spend hours on jobs that should have taken minutes. I often had to work through the night to print out a project to take along on a 7:00 AM flight.
Enter the Laser
Eventually I found an HP LaserJet IIP for "only" $1075— including a toner cartridge!— and snapped it up. It changed my life, and continued to serve me well for the next 10 years without a serious glitch. That HP was built like a tank— a steel body, with real controls right on the top. Built to last and built for ease of use, unlike today's printers of all sorts that use so-called "modern" technology, i.e., software control rather than human control. When something went wrong with the HP, it was (usually) fixable by any relatively intelligent user. It didn't require a software engineer to kick-start it, just a gentle physical shove or cycle through its control panel.
Newer laser printers are nowhere near so sturdily built, but I'll come back to that shortly. I'm willing to bet that less than 10% of the readers of this column use a laser at home. The question is: Why? Is it the need to print in color? Color lasers remain a luxury item, at least for individuals, and frankly, the technology ain't there yet. For color, inkjets are the best option. But how often does one really need color?
Lasers Are Cheaper, Better
Inkjet printers today all print in color and cost peanuts. At least, the printers themselves are inexpensive, but the cost of consumables— ink cartridges— is very high on a per-page basis. A black ink cartridge, for example, that costs around $30 typically yields 600 pages. Some of the cheaper inkjets use a combo color/ black cartridge that will be used up much faster than that. Replacement cartridges for a typical low-end inkjet printer like the Lexmark 1100 or Z22 may cost as much as the printer itself. As such, printers are often further discounted or even given away with a new PC purchase, the cartridges costing more than the printer. In some cases one could buy a new printer every time the ink runs out for the same price as a new cartridge. Or less. It's the old marketing ploy— give away the razor, profit on the razor blades.
Inkjet cartridges tend to dry out if not used regularly, so may require frequent replacement. Changing ink cartridges is not only expensive, it's a time-consuming hassle. A laser printer can churn out pages faster, cleaner, crisper at a typical cost of three cents (or more) cheaper per page than an inkjet. I can usually make do with one or maybe two toner cartridges per year. Average cost is about $60 per cartridge for new ones, or $45 for remanufactured ones (which are just as good). A typical laser toner cartridge will print about 2500 pages, compared to an inkjet's 600. If my arithmetic is right, laser costs are under 2 cents per page, compared to about 5 cents for inkjets. Over a three-year period a laser printer can save you hundreds of dollars, more than enough to pay for its higher initial cost.
(If you're concerned about buying remanufactured laser cartridges from an unknown source, the major office supply stores now also sell them, at competitive prices.)
How Does All This Stuff Work?
Let it be noted, before I get deluged with e-mail decrying my ignorance, that not all printers designated as "laser printers" really use lasers. Some use LEDs or LCDs, for example. Which is one reason I began with all that stuff about Chester Carlson and his invention of electrophotography. Another reason is that laser printers work very much the same as photocopiers, differing largely in the light source, i.e., a laser instead of the bright light of a copier. The light or laser creates an electrostatic image onto a charged photoreceptor, which then attracts toner in the shape of an electrostatic charge. Canon developed the specific technology, which was introduced by Hewlett-Packard in the first laser printers in 1984.
The point is not the particular technology implemented, but that (generally speaking) laser-style printers, with or without "real" lasers, act and operate the same as far as their use and costs are concerned. How Stuff Works has a good explanation of how a laser printer works. And a similarly straightforward and useful exposition on inkjets. Not to discriminate against those who have a bubblejet. See this page for an overview of how the LED technology works. It touts the LED as superior, which is debatable, but the explanation is interesting.
Though I complain above about there being few such things available, M. David Stone recently did a good guide to printers in PC Magazine. (Look down the left margin for product guides and select printers.)
Curses, Foiled Again!
Now having said all that, making it abundantly clear that I prefer laser printers to inkjets, let me also admit that for the last week I have spent many hours cursing Hewlett-Packard and all laser printers and their progeny unto five generations. I specifically cursed my HP 5L, which decided to taunt me with the mother of all paper jams. Unlike my trusty, but now departed, HP IIP, with Man of Steel sturdiness, Captain Marvel character and a spiritual simplicity of operation, the 5L is mostly... plastic. With plastic innards to snag the unwary.
Most paper jams are mere trifles, annoyances resolved by gentlemanly pulls or ladylike tugs. But this time the laser devil rose up in all its dreaded gore and crumpled the paper under the fuser assembly. I made the situation worse by pulling too hard on the paper, thus succeeding in shredding it so that there was almost nothing reachable to grab.
Hot Fusion vs. Cold Fusion
The fuser is the hot spot that melts the goo onto the paper. But even when cold it is an infernal nuisance to deal with. The only way to dislodge the torn bits of paper that get wedged under the fuser is to remove the fuser entirely. At first I thought it would be a mere nuisance, in the way that all computer tinkering is— frustrating for a bit, tedious always, but when it comes right down to it, entirely doable in a more or less logical way.
To remove the fuser one must, of course, disassemble the printer. A straightforward task, one would think. One would be wrong. For nowhere in the HP manual is there anything resembling a diagram of which is connected to what, how or where.
Fortunately, I was prepared for that, having on hand in case of just such an emergency, a photocopy of a technical manual ordinarily available only to the anointed ones— HP technicians and their robber baron cousins. (I have twice had occasion to take a laser printer in for repair, and twice been ripped off.) Unfortunately, the copy was not too clear. And the places it designated to "remove 2 screws and remove the assembly" didn't seem to match anything on my 5L.
When I finally found and removed those elusive screws the fuser cover should have just lifted out. But as with so many computer things, "should have" doesn't translate to "does" in the real world. Unless that cranky plastic cover is removed there's no way to reach the jammed paper shreds, or to remove the remaining three modules to lay the shreds bare. And no amount of twisting, turning, pulling, or wiggling would move the cover.
A Moral For Our Time
If you're getting bored by these details, hold on. There's a moral to this story that may serve you well when you finally move up to a laser printer. I was ready at this point to spend $400 on a new HP 1200, which, I am reliably informed, has a more intelligent paper-handling system than the 5L/6L series. But the very thought of admitting defeat, not to mention dipping into my wallet, spurred me on.
I managed to lift one side of the fuser cover, keeping it elevated an inch or so with the knuckles of one hand, simultaneously grabbing the paper remnants with the fingers of both hands. Then I ever so gently nudged the shreds towards me, a fraction of a millimeter. I felt it "give." If it could give one millimeter it could give two. A few minutes of this slogging and voila!— or as the semi-literates who post similar success stories on the net like to say, "Viola!"
But one tiny shred remained, and just one is plug-ugly enough to gum up the works. It was time to turn to a low-tech tool. No, not a hammer. Tweezers.
Not for the first time in my life did I experience "tweezer joy," the triumph of low tech over high tech. The last paper bit emerged in the tweezers' grip. Having placed each set of screws in separate shot glasses, each labeled with the diagram numbers, putting the printer back together was a minor challenge. I only wound up with one leftover part, which forced me to undo the back cover again.
I saved myself $400 and learned a great deal about laser printers in the process. There are some morals to be learned from my experience: When a printer jams, take a kinder, gentler approach to begin with. Rather than ripping the paper out in one go, tease it out a bit at a time. In 12 years of using laser printers, I only had to disassemble a machine once. (Once is more than enough, of course.) I still have no doubt that lasers are far superior in every way (except color) to inkjets. But most important, never forget the wise words of The Computer Guru of Ottawa, Illinois, Doug Allen, "Never underestimate what can be done by a determined person with tweezers."
