Download Printers - mrgupta

All-in-1 / A+ Certification Exm Gde, 6th Ed. / Meyers / 6311-3
CompTIA A+ Certification All-in-One Exam Guide
870
Figure 20-5
Detail of the inkjet
printhead
The ink is stored in special small containers called ink cartridges. Older inkjet printers had two cartridges: one for black ink and another for colored ink. The color cartridge had separate compartments for cyan (blue), magenta (red), and yellow ink, to
print colors using a method known as CMYK (you’ll read more about CMYK later in
this chapter). If your color cartridge ran out of one of the colors, you had to purchase a
whole new color cartridge or deal with a messy refill kit.
Printer manufacturers began to separate the ink colors into three separate cartridges,
so that printers came with four cartridges: one for each color and a fourth for black (Figure 20-6). This not only was more cost-effective for the user, but it also resulted in higher
quality printouts. Today you can find color inkjet printers with six, eight, or more color
cartridges. In addition to the basic CMYK inks, the other cartridges provide for green,
blue, gray, light cyan, dark cyan, and more. Typically, the more ink cartridges a printer
uses, the higher the quality of the printed image—and the higher the cost of the printer.
Figure 20-6
Inkjet ink cartridges
The two key features of an inkjet printer are the print resolution—that is, the density
of ink, which affects print quality—and the print speed. Resolution is measured in dots
per inch (dpi); higher numbers mean that the ink dots on the page are closer together,
ch20.indd 870
11/26/2006 11:21:40 AM