Printers
You can print out information that is in the computer onto paper. By printing you create what is known as a 'hard copy'.
There are different kinds of printers which vary in their speed and print quality. The two main types of printer are impact and non-impact.
Impact Printers
Impact Printers use a print head containing a number of metal pins which strike an inked ribbon placed between the print head and the paper. Some print heads have only 9 pins to make the dots to build up a character; some have 24 pins which produce a better resolution
Non-impact printers are much quieter than impact printers as their printing heads do not strike the paper.
Most non-impact printers produce dot-matrix patterns.
Several different technologies have been used to provide a variety of printers.
The main types of non-impact printer are
