are intended for low-volume printing jobs, which necessitate very less time to get a hard copy of a given document. Printers are sluggish devices and the cost per page is reasonably soaring. Because of improving quality and performance of printers, many jobs that were used to be done by professionals in print shops are now being done by people on their local printers.

Most of the new printers come with USB cable, which serves as a document source. Many printers are principally used as local peripherals, and are attached by a printer cable. Printers that have built-in network interfaces and can serve as a device for hardcopy for any user on the network are commonly known as network printers. Printers are often designed to keep up both local and network connected users at the same time.

Modern printers can directly connect through electronic media such as memory sticks or memory cards, or to devices such as digital cameras, scanners with the help of USB cables and Bluetooth. Printers that include non-printing features are sometimes called Multifunction Printers (MFP) or All-In-One (AIO) printers. Most MFPs include printing, scanning, copying and the facility of fax among their features.

In the early years, the speed of printers was measured in units of characters per second. However, in modern era speed of printers is measured in pages per minute (ppm). The speed of printing 30 pages per minute is considered as a fast speed but there are many inexpensive printers whose speed is far slower than this. Laser printer is the fastest printer which also comes in different variants of its speed. However, its speed is faster than all other printers.

There are various types of printers such as monochrome printer, which can only produce an image consisting of one colour, usually black. A color printer, which can produce images of multiple colors. A photo printer, which can produce images of high resolution with multiple colours.

The world's first computer printer was 19th century mechanically driven equipment invented by Charles Babbage. Now there are many companies, which are providing low-priced printers with admirable performances and features. Such companies are Canon, HP, LG and Toshiba etc. to name few.