printer

victorias_dad

I don't know if this is in the right place but here goes My daughter is at university and of course she has laptops and a printer but she has been told that her essays have to be printed on a laser printer as opposed to an inkjet one, so the question is what is the difference between a normal printed page as opposed to a laser printed page.

gazzak_2

Quality. A laser printer using toner will always, (in my opinion), be better quality than the standard ink jets. I wonder if some students with dodgy inkjets sometimes gave in work with missing lines or colours due to dried up ink heads?

Otherwise I can't see any reason that the University is asking for this, unless they have an in-house print shop with professional type laser printers that needs the custom?

victorias_dad

I think you may be right about the print shop gazzak

yangptangkipperbang

Print it on your ink jet, then get it photocopied - cheaper than buying a new laser printer...........

andrewjf

That seems like an unnecessary restriction. Inkjets provide more than adequate quality (provided the cartridges and print heads are ok of course).
Back when I was at Uni all we had were a few dot matrix printers, and that was acceptable. There was an in-house print shop which cost money, but nobody used that.

tyllwyd

I wonder if its anything to do with the stability of the ink once it is on the paper - maybe the ink on inkjet printed pages are more likely to run if they get wet, or fade more easily?

But if it is an issue, perhaps it would be worth her investing in a cheap laser printer. I've had a brother HL-5240 for a few years, and it's been very reliable (its replaced now with HL-544D)
http://www.printerland.co.uk/Brother-HL-5440D-P123386.aspx

neilwoods

Lasers are not that expensive any more, i have 2 lasers, 1 mono & 1 colour, both cost me less than £90 (in total) to buy. Granted the toner is more expensive to buy in 1 go, but considering you can get 1500 (possible) prints per set, then is good value.

But as said above, sounds like wan't the students to use there in house printers at a price

Sooler

Check with the university that the laser printing requirement is correct, and not just a tutors whim.

macman

That's a ridiculous ruling. Surely all that is required is that the output is legible?
9 people out of 10 couldn't tell a decent inkjet from a laser printer anyway.