PC Hardware A Beginner’s Guide

Chapter 17: Printers^411

Dot Matrix Printers

It may be premature to say that dot matrix printers are obsolete, but they have been re-

placed by the inkjet printer as the printer of choice for home and small office systems. Not

solongago,thedotmatrixprinter,liketheoneinFigure17-9,wasbyfarthemostpopular

printer for PC systems. Compared to its predecessors, daisy wheel printers and adapted

electric typewriters, it was faster, relatively quieter, included more fonts and print sizes,

and offered flexibility for cut-sheet paper or continuous-feed paper and forms. For these

same reasons, dot matrix printers are still in use in many offices.

Dot matrix printers for PCs have two standard sizes: narrow and wide. A narrow

width printer is usually limited to 80 columns and is typically used only for correspon-

dence or forms. A wider dot matrix printer has a 132-column width and can be used as a

general printer. However, dot matrix print heads have been adapted into several spe-

cial-purpose printers as well.

Compared to inkjet and laser printers, dot matrix printers are slow and noisy. How-

ever, in environments where printing on multipart or continuous-feed preprinted forms

ismoreimportantthantheprinter’snoiseorspeed,dotmatrixprinterscontinuetothrive.

For this reason, you will commonly see dot matrix printers in pharmacies, receiving

docks, warehouses, and other administrative offices. Other common uses for dot matrix

printers include mailing labels, cash registers, and automatic teller machines (ATM).

Printing on a Dot Matrix Printer

After the user chooses an application to print a document, the application communicates

with the operating system to create a data file that contains the print commands and

Figure 17-8. A comparison of font point sizes