Wireless inkjet printers are special network printers connected to your home or office network through wireless protocols. Sometimes wireless is used in a wider sense of the word addressing a printer as wireless even though it doesn’t feature 802.11 standard of network connection. Such printers take commands through bluetooth or IrDA ports.

Network printers are known to make setting up easier and printing more cost efficient. Standard printers require at least a computer to get documents printed and sharing these printers on a local network usually takes time, some computer savvy attitude and lots of patience. I’ve found myself in a situation more than once where the printer didn’t want to work through such a shared connection even though the setup was successful, the printer was installed and I had all the authority to print on it.

Network printers however take either an RJ45, ethernet, plug and an IP address to join to the LAN and that’s basically it. Some simple extra steps outlined by a verbose manual and you can print from anywhere on the network granted you have the correct authority set by the system administrator to do so.
Wireless printers are even easier to get to work, as they don’t even need a cable to hop on to the network.

Inkjet printers are really cheap and cost efficient as they use disposable ink cartridges to produce pages. There are two techniques of putting ink on the paper, first uses the dilation ink shows to excess heat. When ink is heated it expands and exceeds the volume of the head and is projected at the media. The other way of doing it is keeping liquid ink in the head at all times and let a piezo crystal push it out. Both methods work with microscopic ink droplets and project them at the paper in the thousandth fraction of a second.

Wireless network printers are a convenient way to save time and money. Since network printers don’t need an extra computer to connect to while shared on the network they’re always ready to print and there is no need for the computer to be switched on which saves a lot on electric bills. By using 100 watts as the default power consumption of an average computer and assuming it is available 50% of the time, same as switching it off for the night, you can save about $60 to $80 a year just by using a network printer instead, which makes return of investment of picking a wireless network printer over a standard model about half a year.

If we further iterate that one more durable central printer instead of different models scattered around the house or office helps lower long term management costs. It helps lower the risk head clogging because of infrequent use, makes ordering cartridge supplement easier and there is no need to feed 3 different printers with paper.

There are dozens of different models and brands so picking the best or most cost effective printer is not easy, though Canon has been a leading brand on this market so by checking out their portfolio you’ll definitely find one or two interesting printers to look at in detail.