Computer print

A computer print, or more commonly a printer, produces a hard copy (permanent human-readable text and/or graphics) of documents stored in electronic form, usually on physical print media such as paper or transparencies. Many printers are primarily used as computer peripherals, and are attached by a printer cable to a computer which serves as a document source. Other printers, commonly known as network printers, have built-in network interfaces (typically wireless or Ethernet), and can serve as a hardcopy device for any user on the network.In addition, many modern printers can directly interface to electronic media such as memory sticks or memory cards, or to image capture devices such as digital cameras, scanners; some printers are combined with a scanners and/or fax machines in a single unit.A printer which is combined with a scanner can essentially function as a photocopier.Printers are designed for low-volume, short-turnaround print jobs; requiring virtually no setup time to achieve a hard copy of a given document. However, printers are generally slow devices (30 pages per minute is considered fast; and many consumer printers are far slower than that), and the cost-per-page is relatively high.In contrast, the printing press (which serves much the same function), is designed and optimized for high-volume print jobs such as newspaper print runs--printing presses are capable of hundreds of pages per minute or more, and have an incremental cost-per-page which is a fraction of that of printers.