Speed has not yet caught up to laser with ink jet showing speeds of 7 to 12 pages per minute or ppm. This toner dust adheres to the drum which then picks up a piece of charged paper and transfers that toner to the paper while retaining the scribed pattern. The paper is then put through hot rollers that fuse the plastic poweder image to the paper with the heat. The high quality raised print is the best image produced by printers today and rivals the highest quality offset printers for quality and durability. One drawback is that certain plastics can leach the print off the paper surface which is not the case with an inkjet printer.
Laser printers are generally faster than inkjet, and their resolution is better.
Color lasers are coming down in price but still may be too pricey for many buyers. Special applications include the ability to use digital cameras to take pictures which can be printed as part of the text in a report in full color and with very high quality results. Many printers do not come with a compatible cable attached like a monitor so you must buy a cable when you buy the computer to make it work unless you already have one. The parrallel interface is much faster than a serial one on a computer since it sends multiple bits of data through in parallel rather than one bit at a time like a serial interface. The new technology requires that printers and computers talk so cables must support bidirectional technology so that the computer and the printer can send and recieve information over the same cable.