Back in the day, traveling with a printer either meant that you were going around with something the size of a small desk in a moving truck (and providing printer support on site to a business), or you were traveling with an ink jet, or you were traveling with a thermal printer, like grocery stores use for printing receipts.
All of these printers had their drawbacks. For instance, thermal printers needed their own special type of paper and the results were often strange. Ink jets gave you good results, but changes in temperature, humidity or set up could have you spending hours cleaning the heads. Similarly, ink jet printing could get very pricey very quickly. These were all problems that you might have had to deal with.
Or, you’d get a ‘laptop’ printer which needed to be babied, and had an average service life between failures of about three months. None of these were particularly great solutions; they tended to make people cranky and make IT departments unhappy at supporting them.
Happily enough, all the recent changes in technology did not leave printers behind. Desktop printers shrunk from 70-pound monsters down to 20 pounds and smaller. Ink jet and lasers printers have shrunk and ink jets have gotten much more stable as to how they can deal with their environment.
The real gem in this lineup is the shrinking laser printer, however. They were initially produced for college students who had little space and these small personal printers worked out quite nicely, produce pages in the rage of 12 per minute. They had good durability cycles and they could be packed up tidily at the end of the semester.
Cost per page on consumables for a laser is about 7 cents per black and white page with 10% coverage – typical reports (or papers) won’t strain them. For some of the more robust photo printers, the cost per page is upwards of a dollar, but it is kind of neat to be able to print out hard copies of your photos on your vacation while you’re there.
When we say that these things are small – we mean it. The HP 1006 Personal LaserJet is tiny – it’s a bit bigger than a toaster. It gets thrown into the demo kit when we go to trade shows, so that we can print sales reports and data sheets on the fly for customers. It measures about 14″ wide by 8″ deep by 9″ tall, and it folds up readily into its box.
While it has a pass through tray, we’ve found that it’s a pain to use, and so hardly ever use it. However, the ease of connection, the general utility and the low cost of the consumables (the type 35A standard print cartridge) means that it’s a clear winner when it comes to portable business printing.
The market for small small mobile printers is still in its infant stage and you will need to be careful before purchasing a portable printer. If you’re in a hurry read our review of the Hewlett Packard h47wbt mobile printer. It has received raving reviews from a lot of people.