Comparing Printers

Below is a chart comparing printer types. The cost and quality measures are relative to each other.

Printer Technology	Price of Machine	Price of Supplies (for example, ink and paper)	Quality of Text Printouts	Quality of Image Printouts	Speed	Typical Usage
Ink (black/white)	$	##	**	*	medium	Home
Ink (color)	$	###	***	***	slow	Home
Dye-Sublimation	$$$$$	####	**	****	slow-medium	Photo labs
Laser (black/white)	$$-$$$$	#	****	*	fast-very fast	Small Office/Home Office
Laser (color)	$$$-$$$$$	##	***	** - ***	medium-fast	Office (for example, marketing department)

Table 1 Comparison of printers

In general, you should select a printer based on your usage. For a home office, a laser printer will offer the lowest cost per page (cpp) of all printers, making them economical in the long run, but with a large up front cost for the equipment. But, if you will not be printing many pages at home, you might want to consider getting an ink-jet printer.

2.3.1 Disk Controller Interfaces

• IDE Interface

• EIDE Master/Slave

There are many common interfaces to connect a storage device to a computer. We have discussed Universal Serial Bus (USB) and FireWire in section 2.2.1 Connecting Peripherals. Another common interface not yet discussed is Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE). An IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics) is the interface that enables data to transfer between storage devices and the chipset. IDE is designed specifically as disk interface whereas USB and FireWire can interface with other devices besides storage devices such as digital cameras and printers.

Below is a diagram illustrating the disk controller, the IDE interface, and the storage devices with respect to other components in a computer system. Note that the functionality of the disk controller is often integrated into the chipset.

Figure 1 Disk controller interface and storage devices

Ide Interface

An IDE interface provides a standard way for storage devices to connect to a computer. The controller for the IDE is usually integrated into the disk or CD/DVD drive, and the controller directs how the hard drive stores and accesses data. Before IDE was developed, controllers and hard drives were separate and were not standardized. This meant a controller from one manufacturer might not work with a hard drive from another manufacturer. Having separate controllers and hard drives also resulted in poor signal quality and decreased performance. Therefore, IDE was created as a way to standardize the use of hard drives in computers by combining the controller and the hard drive.

In 1984, IBM introduced the AT computer with a hard drive had a combined drive and controller. A ribbon cable from the drive/controller combination is used to connect to the system unit, creating the AT Attachment (ATA) interface.

Soon, other vendors started offering IDE drives based on the ATA standard developed by IBM. Thus, IDE became the term that covered the entire range of integrated drive/controller devices. Because almost all IDE drives are ATA-based, the two terms are used interchangeably.