Printer, which produces hard copy of documents or data stored in electronic form, is an almost inseparable part of a computer. A printer usually produces human readable copy of text or/and graphics, which can be termed as hard copy. A number of printers are primarily connected by a printer cable and are mostly utilized as local peripherals. In most modern printers a USB cable is attached to the computer that works as he source of documents. There are some printers known as network printers that have inbuilt network interfaces (usually wireless or Ethernet) and can work as a hard copy device for any user on the network. Individual printers are sometimes formatted to support both network connected and local user simultaneously.
There are few modern printers, which can be directly interfaced to electronic media such as memory card or memory stick and to image captured devices such as scanner or digital camera. Some Multifunction Printers (MFP) are combined with a number of non printing features like fax machine or/and scanner and can also be used as photocopiers. These are also known as Multi Function Devices (MFD) or All In On (AIO) printers. There is Virtual Printer, which is not connected to physical computer printer, but its API and user interface looks like a printer driver.
Printers are usually slow devices. A high-speed printer can usually produce 30 pages/minute. Printers are formatted to serve short turnaround, low volume print jobs that do not required any set up time to produce hard copies of documents. Comparing to the speed the cost / page is quite high. For any high volume, professional publishing people still need to go for printing press. However performance and quality of printer is improving day by day and a number of jobs like Desktop Publishing (DTP) previously done by professional print houses are now performed by local printers or users.
Scanner is a device that is used to print any object, text, hand writing and scan images and transform them into digital images. In modern scanner Contact Image Sensor (CIS) or a Charge-Couple Device (CCD) is used as image sensor whereas in old drum scanner a photo multiplier is used as image sensor. Rotary Scanner is an example of drum scanner used for scanning high-speed documents with the help of CCD array, not photo multiplier. There are some other types of scanners like planetary scanner tat takes photographs of documents and books and #D scanners to produce 3 dimensional model of any object.
Another types of scanners are digital camera scanners designed on the idea of reprographic cameras. In spite of some disadvantages compared to scanners like reflection, shadow, distortion digital camera has become an alternative option to traditional scanners due to its portability, speed, and gentle digitizing of thick document without damaging the spine of the book. To compete with such facilities modern day scanners are combined with both 3D scanner and digital camera to photo realistic, full color 3D model of object.
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