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Printer is the most popular and widely used output device that produces hard copy on paper.

Printers are designed for low-volume, short-turnaround print jobs.
The world's first computer printer was a 19th-century mechanically driven apparatus invented by Charles Babbage for his Difference Engine.

Local Printers:

These printers are attached to standalone computer which serve only the user of that computer.

Network Printers:

These printers have built-in network cards. They are connected to a network which can serve any user on the network.

Photo Printers:

These printers are specifically designed to print high quality digital photos on paper.
Some photo printers do not need a computer for printing. They include slots for memory cards used by many digital cameras. Instead of connecting the printer to a computer, the user can simply remove memory card from the camera and plug it into the photo printer.

Image Quality

Image quality also known as print resolution, is usually measured in dpi (dots per inch).

Speed of a Printer

Printer’s speed is measured in the number of pages of text the computer can print each minute. Pages per minute is abbreviated as ppm.

Printer Driver

A printer driver is a piece of software that converts the data to be printed to the form specific to a printer.
The purpose of printer drivers is to allow applications to do printing without being aware of the technical details of each printer model.
Printers have been supplied with drivers for the most popular applications.

Print Spooling

Spool is an acronym for simultaneous peripheral operations on-line. It refers to putting jobs in a buffer where a device can access them when it is needed.
In print spooling, documents to be printed are loaded into a buffer (usually an area on a disk), and then the printer pulls them off the buffer at its own rate. As a result, the user is free to perform other operations on the computer while the printing takes place in the background.
Spooling also lets users place a number of print jobs in a queue instead of waiting for each one to finish before specifying the next one.