Yes, I have personally seen since 1973 when I first began usingcomputers a nearly unbelievable number of different types ofcomputer printers (including many different types of 3D printers,that can actually print usable physical objects).Looking at the history of computer printers there have beenorders of magnitude more different types of printers than I haveseen myself. Even just considering printer speed and nothing else,the various mechanism that I have heard of range from as slow as 10characters per second to as fast as tens of thousands of pages perminute! The types of "ink" used by different types of printers hasincluded: inked cloth ribbon, one time plastic film ribbon, liquid,solid electric spark vaporized (I personally have one of theseprinters the design was not produced for very long as it had someproblems), photographic paper, thermal paper, xerographic toner,etc. There were some photographic paper printers that exposed thefilm directly using electron beams instead of light!To summarize there are different types of computer printers bothbecause different printer users have different requirements anddifferent printer makers have different ideas and access to patentsthat they use to design the printer around. Some types of printersucceed wildly in the market, while others are utter flops.