Printers...well, they print! Pictures and text. Some can print CD or DVD labels. Some seem to print only when they feel like it!

How do they do it? They accept instructions (commands) from the computer's CPU and the printer sends back information to the computer to let it know how far through the printing job it is. There are several kinds of printers.

Most common now are ink-jet printers which squirt tiny amounts of ink onto paper -sometimes ordinary paper and sometimes photographic paper.

Laser printers use a combination of laser and electrostatic charge (like the charge your sweater gets when you pull it off especially in the dry air of winter) to basically "cook" powdered ink called toner, in the shape of words, on paper.

There are specialty printers too, like the dot-matrix printer which uses from 9 to 24 pins sort of like an old fashioned typewriter. Pins strike through an inked ribbon in the pattern of a letter or part of a letter, and leave the ink on the page. These were the first type that consumers could afford. They aren't used much anymore but one thing they can do is print two or three pages at a time. Some stores and work shops use them- if you get a two or three coloured form from a business, it is likely made with a dot-matrix printer. There are some really special dot-matrix printers which have thousands of little pins that strike the entire face of a piece of paper at one time so it can print an entire page in about half a second. The problem with these types is that the printing really doesn't look very good.