| BubbleJet |
Canon's trademarked name for its own inkjet printing technology. |
| Dot Matrix |
Prints by hammering small 'needles' through a typewriter-style ribbon. This type of printer is noisy and only really used where continuous-sheet paper or multi-part forms are required. |
| Ink Cartridge |
A plastic container holding ink, inserted into an inkjet printer. Some cartridges may incorporate the nozzles that will put the ink on the page but they are often just refills that slot into a reusable head. |
| Inkjet |
Type of printer which squirts tiny dots of ink onto the page to form text and images. Almost all inkjet printers print in colour as well as black and white. |
| Laser |
A type of printer that produces high-quality text and graphics using a laser beam. The beam builds up characters and images as tiny dots on a rotating drum. The drum then attracts ink powder (toner) to these dots. This is then transferred and heat-fused to paper. |
| LPT (Line Printer) |
Nowadays more commonly called a parallel port, this a connector at the back of a PC originally developed to connect a printer to the computer. All sorts of devices, like Zip drives and scanners, now make use of this port. A second parallel port will be called LPT2. |
| Parallel Cable |
Usually used to connect a PC to a printer, but can also be used to link two PCs together. Parallel cables allow data to be swapped between computers at a higher speed than serial cables. |
| Parallel Port |
A single socket on the back of a PC typically used for connecting a printer or a low-cost scanner. |
| Photo Cartridge |
Specialist cartridge of inks designed for printing photographic images. There are often six colours of ink compared to the four used in a normal inkjet print. |
| Piezo |
A system for inkjet printing, developed by Epson. The print head contains tiny crystals which change shape when an electric current is passed through them, forcing the ink onto the page. |
| Print Head |
The part of the printer that actually prints onto the paper. In the case of an inkjet printer, this is the part that squirts ink, in strips, onto the page. In a dot-matrix printer it's the part that hammers a row of pins through the ink ribbon |
| Printer Cartridge |
The internal printer mechanism which moves back and forth and to which the cartridge attaches. |
| Reservoir |
In an inkjet printer, the part that actually holds the ink. In many inkjets, the reservoir is combined with the print head itself to create a single disposable unit, while others have replaceable reservoirs. |
| Resolution |
The amount of detail shown in an image, whether on screen or printed. For printers and scanners, resolution is measured in dots per inch (dpi); the number of drops of ink or toner that can be printed in a square inch. |
| Sheet Feeder |
A part of most printers and some scanners. It holds a number of sheets of paper and feeds them into the mechanism automatically, one by one. |
| Toner |
The dust-like powdered ink used by laser printers and copiers. Most types of toner are carcinogenic. |
