In short, plotter was an old term coined for those printers which utilized special plotter pens to plot color onto paper. They were quite popular/mainstream with SME’s in the 1980s, being the first printer which could print in color, although according to Wikipedia they were around long before this.
The plotter pens themselves used to physically move around on the paper, drawing continuous lines, point to point. They were predominently used by the building related industries in Dubai for architectural plans/engineering drawings etc but there were small plotters available for office use as well (the build size of these were approximately the size of a normal HP Deskjet today). Plotting however was laboriously slow compared to printing expectations today – typically you’d have to wait 5 minutes or so for a small A4 plot.
The term “plotter” stuck because the pens were essentially plotting across the paper to make the print. However, the word “plotter” is no longer used by HP today as their machines no longer print in the same way that they used to (due to a change in technology and printer design). For example, rather than pens drawing across the page, the current Designjets essentially release droplets of ink onto the page instead.
As anything, these Designjets or plotters tend to brake from time to time. But fortunately when the problems occur you can rely on numerous plotter repair services and plotter maintenance in Dubai.
HP now prefer to go by the name of “Designjets” and “large format” printers – but they also get called “wide format” printers within the printing industry too. Essentially when people talk about plotters they’re not talking about the small Laserjets found in most offices, but just those printers which print the larger A3/A2/A1/A0 size prints and – in short – anything with “HP Designjet” in front of the name (if you’re analysing HP products).
