In addition, many modern printers can directly interface to electronic media such as memory sticks or memory cards, or to image detain devices such as digital cameras, scanners; some printers are combined with a scanners and/or fax machines in a single unit. Printers that include non-printing features are sometimes called Multi-Function Printers (MFP) or Multi-Function Devices (MFD).
A printer which is combined with a scanner can function as a photocopier if so designed. Most MFPs include printing, scanning, and copying among their features. Printers are designed for low-volume, short-turnaround print jobs; requiring practically no setup time to achieve a hard copy of a given document. However, printers are generally slow devices (30 pages per minute is considered fast; and many consumer printers are far slower than that), and the cost-per-page is relatively high.
In contrast, the printing press (which serves much the same function), is designed and optimized for high-volume print jobs such as newspaper print runs--printing presses are capable of hundreds of pages per minute or more, and have an incremental cost-per-page which is a portion of that of printers. The printing press remains the machine of choice for high-volume, proficient publishing. However, as printers have improved in quality and performance, many jobs which used to be done by proficient print shops are now done by users on local printers; see desktop publishing. The world's first computer printer was a 19th century involuntarily driven apparatus invented by Charles Babbage for his Difference Engine.