Office Productivity

New High-Volume Copier Guide

2008-10-22T15:33:00.002-04:00

Better Buys for Business has released its High-Volume Copier & Multifunctional Guide. This guide, which covers black-and-white copiers over 50 pages per minute, includes a range of high-powered office and light production multifunctionals. The guide contains reviews and specifications for over 100 models from 15 companies from Canon to Xerox. The top models in each category have been given 2009 Editor’s Choice Awards.

Toshiba adds new high-end color copiers

2008-09-26T13:30:00.001-04:00

Toshiba, which once trailed the pack in terms of innovative high-end color, is now capable of compete ting with the best. The new e-STUDIO5520c, 6520c and 6520c expand on the power of the -STUDIO5500c, Toshiba’s first made-in-house stab at high-speed color and light production. Unlike the 5500c, however, these models come with printing and scanning standard, not an option.

The e-STUDIO5520c, which runs at 55ppm in both color and black-and-white, has a list price of $24,999. The 6520c (65ppm in color and black) comes in at $30,999. The 6230c is priced at $32,999. These prices are all significantly lower than that of the 5500c.

These machines have a maximum of 3,400 sheets of input, and can handle paper up to 140lb. index in weight. There’s a choice between a simple finisher and a booklet maker. Other features are state of the art. Dual-line faxing is an option. Toshiba has taken a great step with these new speedy and flexible models.

Ricoh introduced new production color printer

2008-09-16T13:54:00.001-04:00

Ricoh recently announced the Ricoh Pro C900, a new entry in the high-end color production printing market. Note that this machine is definitely intended for high-volume production and would be found either in a centralized in-plant printing department or in a corporation or in a commercial print-for-pay shop. The Pro C900 shares some basic features with Ricoh’s black-and-white Pro C905EX copier-multifunctionals, especially in terms of the paper supply and output features/ The VC900 can hold thick stock up to 110lb. cover (165lb. index), with dimensions up to 13" x 19.2" in size. An EFI Fiery Print Controller is standard,

The Pro C900 can hold up to 11,000 pages in its input trays. On the output side, there are a 10,000-shet stacker, several finishers, a booklet maker, a ring binder, and GBC punch unit.

Built on proven technology, this looks like a promising addition to the growing roll of production-oriented color printers on the market.

2008 Scan-to-File Guide

2008-09-15T13:59:00.003-04:00

Better Buys for Business has just published its 2008 Scan-to-File Guide. This volume includes reviews and specifications for current document scanners ranging from 20ppm to 129ppm. Products from 15 vendors are covered, ranging from Avision to Xerox. It also contains a glossary, a buyer's guide, and a discussion of the requiremenets needed for document scanning.

Check your lease payments

2008-09-10T10:16:00.002-04:00

A recent case in North Carolina might make you want to recheck your equipment leases. According to the story reported by WRAL, a Raleigh TV station, a local copier dealer has been arrested for using fake copier leases to defraud its clients.

The fraud came out when one customer (a restaurant franchisee) found that it was being billed for a lease on a copier it did not own. Subsequent investigation has turned up at least two more victims of the ploy, and there may be more than a dozen. As the head of the defrauded company said, “"We had not heard of any lease. Our owner's signature and my signature had been put on this document, (and they were) not our signatures.” The police have been tracking down stored (unused) copiers and forged documents.

We doubt that this kind of fraud is common, but it’s not hard to see how it works. The parts of most companies that handle the bills are rarely in close communication with the department that manages office equipment like printers and copiers. In addition, leasing agreements are often so complicated that they get less careful scrutiny than other expenditures. Few end user companies have even a centralized list of what they own and what they lease.

So this might be a good time to do an equipment inventory, re-check your leases, and evaluate exactly how much you are paying for printing and copying. You probably won’t find out-and-out fraud, but you may find confusion, underuse, and a reason to work with the dealer to renegotiate.

Epson moving fast into business-class ink jets

2008-09-03T09:47:00.001-04:00

Up until now, Epson ink jet printers and all-in-ones were, like most of their competitors, of limited use to businesses. Once you looked past the rated draft speed to a “normal” resolution (around 600dpi) speed, the speed fell off disappointingly, often to under 5ppm. In addition, color ink has been expensive, often far more than laser toner. These printers, well suited to occasional printing and well equipped for printing digital photos, just weren’t suitable for a real business.

But Epson is rapidly changing that perception. It has come out with two new series of ink jet printers and MFPs that offer from good to excellent speed, more moderate printing costs, and (in some cases) more than minimal hardware features.

The WorkForce series contains two printers, the Workforce 30 ($70) and 40 ($130). These low-cost machines offer decent speeds averaging well over 10ppm at normal resolution. The WorkForce 40 also includes both Ethernet and Wi-Fi networking. Both machines have good photo printing features as well.

Two all-in-one multifunctionals are also included in the WorkForce series. The WorkForce 500 ($180) and 600 ($200) can print, copy, scan, and fax, and have a 30-sheet document feeder in addition to a platen. The printing speeds are over 20ppm in normal resolution.

Even more robust are the printers in the B series, made up of the single-user t B-300 ($329) and the network-ready B-500Dn ($529). These machines print at over 30ppm in normal mode. They have fairly solid paper handling for ink jet printers with 650 sheets of input. They also do not come with extensive photo printing tools bundled in, indicating where Epson is headed with this series.

But most exciting is the cost per page. Epson is claiming a cost per-blsck page cost for the 500DN of under one cent, and a color cost around 3.5 cents. The B-300 costs are a bit higher, but still remarkable for a low-cost printer.

We have yet to get our hands on any of these machines, so we’ll be a little skeptical for now. And speed figures on ink jet printers are notoriously variable, based on ink coverage for each page, unlike laser printers, which have much more predictable speeds. But if the speeds and costs are anything near on the mark, Epson is going to make a big inroad into the growing market for low-cost color laser printers. Like HP and Ricoh (and others to follow), Epson is on the way to making ink jet technology a real contended in the office.

Citigroup: Cut the Color Copies

2008-09-02T14:49:00.004-04:00

In what may be a dismaying sign for the industry we cover here, Citigroup recently announced that its employees must cut back on color copying and printing.

The world’s largest bank, suffering billions in losses from the real estate market, has been doing some furious cost cutting. They’ve laid off a host of employees, tightened up expense accounts, taken away Blackberries, and (shudder) demanded that employees use only black-and-white for internal reports and presentations. In addition, duplex copying and printing will be enforced.

The memo sent out from the company includes the following item: “The use of color copying and printing dramatically increases our copying and printing costs. Color presentations are unnecessary for internal purposes; therefore going forward color copying and printing should only be used for client presentations. Also whenever possible, presentations should be printed double sided to reduce unnecessary paper usage. Over time, we will be removing color copiers and printers from the locations where they are not essential for purposes of preparing client presentations.”

The big copier and printer companies have to be concerned. Color pages are now the mainstay of these companies, and a slowdown (or even a reversal) of growth in this area is going to hit hard.

Every survey has shown that most of the growth in the industry has been in color, and the vendors have been eagerly pushing the importance of color in getting the message across. And everyone knows that once color gets established, it tends to get used for everything, from memos to spreadsheets. But with color pages costing between four to eight times more than equivalent black-and-white in most cases, corporations like Citigroup are starting to perceive that while a little color is a great thing, a lot of color is an expensive luxury.

We suspect that the big companies in our industry are going to have rethink their marketing approach or their pricing schemes.

Ricoh to buy IKON

2008-08-29T14:44:00.002-04:00

Ricoh, the Japanese copier company (on of the top three in the world) announced it would buy US office-machine dealer IKON Office Solutions. The deal is for $1.6 billion. IKON is the largest U.S. independent dealer (400 locations) and is currently a major reseller of Ricoh’s copiers and printers (it sells over 20% of them). IKON is also a major reseller for Ricoh rivals Canon, Hewlett-Packard, and Océ.

The buyout is the third in a series of purchases, where major copier companies have bought out independent US dealer chains. In April 2007 , Xerox announced the purchase of Global Imaging ($1.5 billion). In April 2008, Konica Minolta announced it would buy Danka Office Imaging ($240 million). If the IKON deal goes through, there will be no more major dealer chains, though there are still plenty of smaller dealers.

The structure of the copier/office equipment industry has been much like that of the auto industry, where only the largest customers bought directly from the manufacturers, That has changed in the copier industry over the years, as corporate sales divisions compete more and more with local dealers, especially at national accounts, the cream of the business. The IKON move is an emphatic acceleration of that process.

The interesting question is what Canon will do? IKON sells around 40% of Canon copiers currently. Canon seems to have lost a game of musical chairs, and it will be forced to build even more its own internal national sales efforts in the US. The squeeze is on for small and mid-size dealers.

Low-Volume Copier Guide

2008-07-08T13:32:00.001-04:00

,p>The 2008 Better Buys for Business Low-Volume Copier and Multifunctional Guide has now been published. This guide covers monochrome machines up to 22ppm in speed, from such manufacturers as Canon, Konica Minolta, Ricoh, and Xerox. This guide includes charts, reviws, a glossary, and an industry briefing. You can order it here.

Greener office equipment

2008-06-19T08:54:00.002-04:00

A group called the Green Electronics Council recently released a report on progress in making equipment, mostly PCs and monitors, less harmful to the environment. The report measures the sale of products rated highly by a system called EPEAT (Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool).

EPEAT was developed by the EPA. This system rates a growing number of products as gold, silver, and bronze in terms of their recyclability, reduced use of toxic materials, and lowered power use. All US Federal computer buys now must be of EPEAT-certified products.

EPEAT-certified PCs and laptops make up 22% of all computers worldwide. Since its inception in 2006, there has been a 150% growth in sales of certified computers. Prospects are good that the numbers will keep going up as companies and individuals become more aware of the environmental costs of disposing old office machines.

Among the benefits of using EPEAT products are:
* Reducing use of primary materials by 75.5 million metric tons
* Reducing use of toxic materials (especially lead) by 3,220 metric tons
* Making significant reductions in mercury use
* Reducing disposal of hazardous waste by 124,000 metric tons
* Saving over 42 billion kilowatt hours of electricity.

2008 Better Buys High-Volume Printer and Digital Duplicator Guide released

2008-06-12T09:43:00.001-04:00

This guide, which covers black-and-white production printers with speeds from 50ppm to 150ppm as well as the very specialized category of digital duplicators is now available. More information is available here.

OKI upgrades its color printer line

2008-06-12T09:32:00.004-04:00

Over the past month, OKI Printing Solutions has revamped its A4 (letter/legal size)color laser printer line from top to bottom, offering a set of models that combine lower prices with enhanced performance.

The new models are:
* The C3600n, which prints at 16ppm in color and 20ppm in monochrome, with a street price of $399.
* The C5650 family, which prints at 22ppm in color and 26ppm in monochrome, with prices starting at $499.
* The C6050 family, which prints at 22ppm in color and 26ppm in monochrome, with prices starting at $499, Unlike the C3650n, it comes with PostScript.
* The C6150 family, which prints at 26ppm in color and 30ppm in monochrome, with prices starting at $699.
* The C710 family, which runs at 30ppm in color, 32ppm in monochrome, with prices starting at $1,099.

All of models come are Ethernet-ready, many have duplexing, and all come with OKI’s enhanced HD color toners and color management.

Xerox’s mobile print driver

2008-06-11T09:26:00.002-04:00

Xerox recently released a free piece of software for Windows laptops. Call the Mobile Express Driver, it allows mobile workers to find and use available PostScript printers at their current location. These printers include both Xerox and non-Xerox models. After the user plugs into a network (wired or wireless), using the print command causes a pop-up menu with all available printers from which the user can choose. This avoids the need to configure profiles for each new printer. The driver is available here.

Xerox now also offers a similar piece of software, the Global Print Driver, which allows Windows IT managers to quickly set up printer profiles for any users and supports both Xerox and non-Xerox printers, This could be a big time savings for It administrators, as it should cut down tedious and repetitious setup tasks every time a new printer of user is added to the network. It is available here.

Xerox offers new library-oriented models

2008-06-10T14:27:00.003-04:00

Xerox recently replaced its library-oriented 20ppm Digital Bookmark copier/printer with a set of four new machines, namely, the WorkCentre Bookmark 40 Copier and Copier/Printer and the WorkCentre Bookmark 55 Copier and Copier/Printer. Not only are these machines faster (at 40ppm and 55ppm), they also have new high-end features in common with Xerox’s latest WorkCentre machines.

There are several features that make these library-oriented. First, the platen has a beveled edge, designed to protect book spines, as you scan one page at a time without having to crush an open book on the platen to get a good copy. Second, the unit has also been designed to be wheelchair-accessible and easy to operate by novice users. In addition, there is an optional coin and bill vending unit and an ID-card reader.

The machines hold 1,200 sheets of ledger paper standard. You can add on a two-tray device that holds 3,600 letter pages. Single-position and multiposition finishers are available. So is a fax option.

The Copier/Printers include PCL and PostScript, a powerful processor, and a hard drive. They also support (optionally) scanning, including Xerox’s SmartSend scan workflow software. The Copier/Printer supports Xerox’ EIP (Extensible Interface Platform).

This specialized unit is aimed at a very specific market segment, primarily libraries. It’s a powerful machine with a good array of options.

Paperless or at least less paper

2008-06-09T10:06:00.004-04:00

BusinessWeek recently reported (“The New Push to Get Rid of Paper,” 5/30/08) on a renewed effort to approach the long-wished for “paperless office,” noting that the term is now 33 years old.

Of course offices are anything but paperless. As the article notes:“According to RISI, a research firm that tracks forest products, in 1975 the average U.S. office worker used 62 pounds of paper a year. By 1999, that figure peaked at 143 pounds, but in 2006 it was still at 127 pounds.”.

But things may be changing, thanks to a public that is getting more used to receiving and viewing things on the screen. The article cites PNC Bank, 15% of whose customers now get PDF files rather than paper for account statements, up from 0% a few years ago. 80% of company internal reports are now published electronically, not on paper.

Among the interesting points cited in the report:
* One analyst “estimates that companies will spend about $8 billion this year on paper alone.”
* One company thought it “had 150 fax machines, but a detailed search turned up 1,000, many of which were rarely used.”
* “Researchers at Xerox found that about half of the documents printed in a typical office are thrown away within 24 hours.”

Vista Angst

2008-05-01T10:00:00.002-04:00

“I have Vista on a notebook with 2 gigabytes of memory and a decent-size processor, and with Vista on there, it just doesn't work. It takes over 10 minutes just to open a Word document.” That’s a quote from a computer analyst in a current USA Today story about the continuing backlash of both corporate and home users (“Vista struggles to bust out as business customers snub it,” 4/29/08).

Another IT administrator, with over 14,000 computers under his supervision says “I wouldn't put on Vista if it was free.…In the past, there's always been an important reason to upgrade, but XP (the previous version of Windows) is perfectly acceptable.” Analysts have ranged from calling the release of Vista “a disaster” or “the biggest blunder ever” and “equivalent to the New Coke fiasco.” Apple has made Vista the butt of some very effective advertising.

The story reports that users across the country are reveling against adopting Vista, due to its slowness, balkiness, training and help-desk burden, and minimal payoff. In fact sales at Microsoft of Windows operating systems are down by 24% in the last quarter. Even the release of a service pack bug fix has been a big disappointment.

With Vista getting hammered from all sides, many customers are just sitting on their hands, waiting for the next version of Windows. Microsoft has announced that Windows XP will no longer be available after June 30. But there is major blowback from some of Microsoft’s biggest clients, and it’s hard to imagine that deadline will be tolerated by the IT community, which is already organizing petition drives.

For hardware and software vendors in the printer and copier business, the problem is that they now have to support both versions of the operating system in full. That involves not only upgrading and testing software to work with a wide variety of programs and new drivers, but also training dealers and having help-desk support available for hard-to-diagnose problems, in addition to offering solutions for Microsoft’s (as yet little used) XPS image workflow. Needless to say, none of this puts money in the pockets of these companies, and introduces as whole new set of headaches, headaches that may continue for years until Microsoft’s next version of Windows is due for release (and perhaps a whole new set of problems will arrive then.

Turning it off

2008-04-28T10:09:00.001-04:00

HP's UK branch has released a short online publication called “The HP Guide for Greener Printing” available here online.

Most of the advice is pretty obvious, with encouragement to print in duplex, send more documents electronically, and recycle paper.

On interesting point is made, however, about the effect of letting printers and copiers run when not in use. “All office equipment uses energy when switched on or in stand-by mode. In the UK alone, equipment left on standby is responsible for generating over 3 million tonnes of CO2 each year, according to the Energy Saving Trust.”

Of course, many copiers and some printers have sleep modes that are automatically triggered if left idle for a preset period (generally somewhere between five and 60 minutes) , or can be set to go off ready automatically during non-working hours. That’s part of the new EnergyStar criteria for newer machines, and many companies are complying. But many older desktop machines in particular do not offer any sleep feature. Having employees shut down desktop printers and MFPs at the end of the day may be a smart idea.

New HP color ledger MFPs

2008-04-25T10:28:00.002-04:00

Hewlett Packard recently introduced a new color laser printer-based multifunctionals group handling ledger-size paper. The LaserJet CM6030 models print at 30ppm in both color and black-and-white, while the CM6040 models print at 40ppm in color black-and-white. Street prices for these models range from $6,999 to $8,999.

These MFPs have a maximum capacity of 2,100 sheets. They also come with a 40 page document feeder. Automatic duplex and Ethernet connectivity are standard.. On the output side, these machines offer500 sheets of standard output, but they also have several optional finishers, a multiposition stapler unit and a five-tray finisher with saddle-stitching and booklet-making.

Scanning to email is standard, and faxing is standard on some versions, optional on others. Consumables are under one cent per page in black, under eight cents in color.

These new MFPs from HP look and act a lot like copier MFPs. The prices are lower than comparable-speed color copiers, but some of the options (including paper feed capacity) are not at the same level. Nevertheless, the CM6030 and CM6040 models a good solution for someone who needs the functionality of a fast color laser MFP, but does not need all the added bells and whistles.

Xerox Green Survey

2008-04-22T14:00:00.004-04:00

In time for Earth Day, a recent survey by Xerox asked US office workers about the "non-green” practices in their offices. According to Xerox, the biggest gripes about companies’ lack of environmental awareness were::

* mindless printing resulting in abandoned pages at the printer (40 percent)
* leaving lights on in unused offices (37 percent)
* lack of recycling bins (33 percent)
* excessive air conditioning or heating (29 percent)
* wasteful use of paper products, such as plates and cups (27 percent)
* co-workers who don't recycle (27 percent)
* co-workers who print single-sided instead of double-sided documents (24 percent).

The survey also noted that environmental awareness is often a function of age, where younger employees tend to be more green-oriented. It also noted that women tend to be more eco-conscious than men.

It’s interesting that many of these issues have to do with printing, an area where users themselves have some control over the waste.

Ricoh refreshes top-of-the-line color copier-MFPs

2008-04-21T08:57:00.002-04:00

Ricoh recently released two new color copiers that are among the speediest in the industry. The Aficio MP C6000 ($29,800) outputs at 55ppm in color and 60ppm in black, while the C7500 3($37,8000) operates at 70ppm in color and 75ppm in black In almost all respects the machines are identical.

These color copiers expand Ricoh’s presence at a level of the market that has few competitors. They replace a pair of slightly slower models, and add a few new enhancements.

The range of paper-handling accessories is also a strong point. You can have up to 7,400 sheets of input total. There is also a choice of three stapler-finishers, as well as an option Z-folder device and a cover inserter.

PostScript printing is standard, Strong scan-to capabilities are standard as well, and (unusual at this speed) a fax board is an option.

Color copiers are getting faster and ore productive with every passing year. Ricoh’s new models set a new standard that others will have to catch up to.

Konica Minolta buys Danka

2008-04-18T09:34:00.001-04:00

Konica Minolta announced it would buy copier dealer chain Danka Office Imaging by one of its suppliers,. The US company is a division of UK-based Danka Business Systems PLC, which is planning to dissolve. The deal was for $240 million.

Danka (which is 31 years old) was once a major power in the copier industry, with a wide network in North America and Europe. In 2006, it sold off its European operations to Ricoh for $210 million. Last year, the remainder of the business lost almost $30 million.

For Konica Minolta, the deal is part of a campaign for it to move up into the first tier of U/S? copier companies, to join rivals Canon, Ricoh, and Xerox. The move was also a reaction to Xerox's buyout of copier retail chain Global Imaging last year, as more and more the copier manufacturers swallow up the most profitable part of dealer layer that stands between them and the customer.

Study: Small businesses risk losing key documents

2008-04-04T10:54:00.002-04:00

A study commissioned by Epson Canada found that many small businesses are not storing documents vital to them and customers electronically. While most companies have hard copy versions of critical documents in file cabinets, the idea of systematically saving documents electronically (and with proper backup) has still not caught on.

According to the study as described in a CNW News Group release, “90 percent of those who do not store any documents in soft copy say they have not adopted an electronic system to store their important business documents because they believe it is not necessary to do so (50 percent) or they never thought about it (25 percent) or they think it's too expensive (15 percent). The remaining 10 percent admitted they didn't understand the importance of making soft copies of important business documents like contracts or invoices and storing them electronically.”

In addition, only 10 percent of those surveyed said that they store hard copies in a fireproof file cabinet onsite, and even fewer, 2 percent, saved hard copies offsite. All this is in spite of the fact that even small enterprises are more and more dependent on a growing number of critical documents.

This is in spite of the relative ease and low cost of storing files electronically and backing them up offsite. While most midsize companies with a real IT plan have made recoverable electronic document storage a priority, apparently the smallest companies have no recovery plan for a catastrophic incident like a fire or robbery.

New Canon production-oriented scanner

2008-04-02T13:24:00.002-04:00

The Canon imageFORMULA DR-X10C is a high-end color scanner that runs at 128ppm in black-and-white and color. The top of the impressive Canon scanner line, it is priced at $17,995. The scan speed is 128ppm in simplex and 256ipm n duplex, in both black-and-white and color. Canon rates this machine for a 60,000 scans-per-day duty cycle. The scanner includes some innovative features, including three ultrasonic double-feed sensors, a double feed back-out and retry function, new dust prevention features than promise clearer scans, and the ability to scan documents up to 22" x 34". These are on top of the strong Canon scanning features.

New Kyocera black-and-white printer

2008-03-17T09:55:00.001-04:00

Kyocera Mita America earlier this month announced a new and fast desktop laser printer, the FS-1300D. This compact monochrome machine is a single-user model with a USB connection standard, and an optional Ethernet interface.

The FS-1300D comes with a 50-sheet bypass tray and a 250 sheet of input tray standard. You can add up to two optional 250-sheet add-on trays. The exit tray holds 250 sheets. First-page-out time is 6 seconds, very good in its class. Automatic duplexing is standard. Versions of PCL and PostScript are also standard.

Innovations on this model include a color LED status panel and a status monitor that sends info to the user’s desktop,

The list price for the unit is $530. That’s not cheap, but Kyocera is not in the business of competing with the low-end. This model offers superior speed and paper capacity, plus a rugged 25,000 pages per month duty cycle.

A few industry trends

2008-03-14T11:02:00.000-04:00

Talking with Toshiba dealers at their conference last week, I heard the following:
▪ Color units represent between 50-70 percent of units installed. That is even more remarkable when you consider that Toshiba does not sell lo=end color single-function printers and that, as we have noted before, has not had, up until now, a full range of Toshiba-manufactured color copiers (The ones above 55ppm were relabeled Ricoh models.)
▪ Most buyers of color systems are upgrading from current black-and-white systems. Moreover, color devices are being placed through the whole range of customer types.
▪ While buyers are very insistent on demanding access controls and accounting software to regulate color use and cut down on unnecessary color printing, the truth is that, once the systems are installed, most customers don’t use these tools.
▪ Customers are getting more and more used to using copier-multifunctionals as fax machines.
▪ Dealers are well aware of the need to become “solutions providers,” that is, to accompany the sales of hardware with extensive software supports in such areas as document management, accounting, and workflow. Most have allocated technical staff and sales support to that end. But all report that it’s a tough sell, with long lead time and sometimes disappointing results. It’s one thing to get a single exec to sign off on a copier; it’s quite another to get a group of managers to agree on how and when documents will be stored digitally, how they will be protected and accessed. The sales cycle stretches out as the customers starts to redesign the way business is conducted. Yes, if carried out right, it can make you ever more indispensable to our customers, but it does involve a big investment in staffing and training with a long-term payback.

Toshiba rolls out new color copier/MFPs

2008-03-11T10:01:00.002-04:00

Toshiba announced last week a number of new models to be released over the next few quarters. At the top of the list is a set of new high-end color copier/MFPs. These models, which range from 55ppm in color and black-and-white to 65ppm in color and 75ppm in black-and-white, bring Toshiba into parity with key rivals.

The new models will replace Toshiba’s current high-end color line, which are relabeled Ricoh machines. Dealers for Toshiba were happy to get Toshiba-made products in this growing market segment, as they were reportedly losing sales to Ricoh, Lanier, and Savin dealers who could claim more expertise with their own machines.

At the same time, Toshiba announced a set of new mid-volume color copier/MFPs. These range from 23ppm to 45ppm in both color and black-and-white, and are upgrades from current Toshiba models.

The complete list of new color models:
▪ e-STUDIO 2330c (23ppm color, 28ppm black-and-white)
▪ e-STUDIO 2830c (28ppm color, 35ppm black-and-white)
▪ e-STUDIO 3530c (35ppm color, 45ppm black-and-white)
▪ e-STUDIO 4520c (45ppm color, 45ppm black-and-white)
▪ e-STUDIO 5520c (55ppm color, 55ppm black-and-white)
▪ e-STUDIO 6520c (65ppm color, 65ppm black-and-white)
▪ e-STUDIO 6530c (65ppm color, 75ppm black-and-white)

Kodak unveils a new desktop scanner

2008-02-29T09:57:00.001-05:00

This time, Kodak is releasing the ScanMate i1120, a multipurpose desktop scanner with strong document-scanning features. It has a list price of $495 and scans at 20ppm in both color and black-and-white.

The i1120 allows you to send a scanned file directly to email or to file. Kodak boasts of its easy-to-program and preconfigure scanning destinations with a one-touch interface Kodak calls “smart touch”. For example, you can program one key for sending expense reports as searchable grayscale PDF files to a specific server folder, or send a shipping order as a multipage color TIFF as an email attachment to the shipping department or to a client.

The ScanMate i1120 also has solid scan features, including blank page removal, image rotation, and dual stream scanning (for example, making a color TIFF for an email and a monochrome PDF for filing).

The longest document ever scanned!

2008-02-26T08:31:00.000-05:00

That’s a feat that scanner maker Böwe Bell & Howell is planning to undertake, one for the Guinness Book of Records. BBH, we are informed, will attempt to scan a document half a mile long using the Truper 3600 document scanner. The document will be the equivalent of around 2,800 letter-size sheets laid end-to-end.

It’s a fun stunt to publicize the existence of a “long document mode” on the BBH scanner. The feat will be performed at a healthcare IT industry convention. That’s the proper place, as long scans are usually from instrument readouts from devices like EKGs (though it must be said that half a mile is one hell of a stress test).

Oh well, it beats the usual flogging of speeds, feeds, and megahertz. Apparently, the Guinness people will be there to make sure no cheating is involved.

Canon releases high-speed color scanner

2008-02-21T10:07:00.000-05:00

Canon announced the release of its imageFORMULA DR-X10C Color Production Scanner. This high-end machine scans at a speed up to 128 pages per minute or (in duplex) 256 images per minute. It has a duty cycle of 60,000 pages.

This new machine builds in many of the hardware and software enhancements already developed for Canon scanners. These include such features as staple detection, page size detection, auto color detection, retry feeding, and strong ultrasonic double-feed detection. A new feature prevents dust from reducing the sharpness of the scans. It can scan documents up to 22" x 34" in size.

Canon releases new color copier

2008-02-19T14:20:00.001-05:00

Canon has just released a new color copier-multifunctional aimed at small-to-midsize workgroups. The Color imageRUNNER C2550 prints and copies in color at 23ppm and in black-and-white at 25 ppm.

The controller hosts an impressive 1.5GB of RAM and 80GB hard disk drive. The basic machine supports Canon’s UFR II host-based printing, but can be upgraded to PostScript and/or PCL. A multiposition internal finisher is available as well as a two-tray job separator. A 50-sheet two-sided document feeder (DADF) is also an option.

The list price for this compact new model is $8,000.

Cutting back on printing

2008-02-18T14:57:00.002-05:00

A recent InformationWeek article (“Biltmore Hotels Save Paper, Printing Costs Through Digitized Docs,” 2/12/08) reports on the attempt of the CIO of a hotel chain to cut back on steadily rising print costs. As the article points out “it's difficult to reduce paper and ink consumption when the effort flies in the face of people's office habits.”

The Biltmore chain has over 500 employees in its Florida headquarters. It had 41 printers and the number has been growing. So he:
▪ Reduced the printers to 9, while adding a few more copier-multifunctionals.
▪ Actively pushed two-sided printing and copying.
▪ Showed employees how to work with digital documents (PDFs) instead of printing everything out.
▪ Set up copiers so users had to swipe ID cards to use them and starting billing print costs back to departments.
▪ Limited use of color to certain employees with real need to use color.

The result is that the CIO “has cut what used to be a $3,400 budget for paper and ink cartridges by 75%.” He has also focused on getting departments to be far more digital in the way they handle documents. The HR department, for example, has now placed all records online, for example, and gotten rid of all of its filing cabinets.

None of this is any surprise, but it is a good indication that a strong push can transform old habits and save money and that such an effort can pay off.

Samsung releases new color printer

2008-02-13T11:10:00.003-05:00

Samsung, which has released a slew of new products over the past few months, has come out with yet another printer. The CLP-660ND is aimed at small-to-medium-workgroups prints in color and black-and-white at 25ppm. As its name implies, automatic duplexing and Ethernet connectivity are standard. Memory can be expanded to 260MB.

The cost is a moderate $700 and Samsung claims (though we can’t yet confirm) a low cost per page in its category.

Samsung has been active at getting new products on the market and seems to be gaining growing market share, as it extends its product line from desktop machines to more powerful machines.

OKI updates ledger-size color printer line

2008-02-11T09:16:00.000-05:00

OKI Printing Solutions just released the OKI Printing Solutions C9650 color LED printer family. These ledger-size printers, which print at 36ppm in color and 45ppm in black-and-white, replace the C9600 family, adding more power, more memory, and more finishing options. Street prices are in the $3,400–$4,100 range.

The OKI printers handle heavy stock, support the printing of banner pages, and offer booklet making. Costs per page are moderate, both in black and color. The speed is outstanding.

OKI has produced a solid stream of color printers, especially for large-workgroup and departmental use. These models look like another strong addition to the lineup.

HP makes (somewhat) greener ink jet cartridges

2008-02-08T10:32:00.001-05:00

HP announced that it would use recycled plastics to make its ink jet cartridges. Using a new technology called “closed loop plastic recycling,” the company will use plastics from sources of PET (polyethylene terephthalate) plastics, such as old ink cartridges and water bottles. The process, which involves shredding, is reported to use over 70% recycled materials in making the new cartridges.

HP already has a worldwide effort to take back used ink cartridges for its customers. The new process closes the circle, according to HP sources. It also says that over 200 million cartridges have been manufactured already using this process. The company is working on doing the same thing with laser cartridges.

This is a welcome step, a chance to reduce toxic industrial waste sent to landfills by a little. But HP could do even better: they could come up with an authorized way of refilling cartridges so they don’t have to be constantly remanufactured. They could also supply much larger ink reservoirs so that the cartridges don’t need to be constantly replaced.

These steps are unlikely; HP and other ink jet manufacturers have no desire to kill the cash cow that allows companies to charge $6,000 a gallon or more for ink, doled out a thimbleful at a time. The recycling is a laudable baby step in terms of green technology, but HP could do more.

Ricoh extends black-and-white copier line

2008-02-05T13:11:00.001-05:00

Ricoh this week introduced two new copier and copier/multifunctional families, the Aficio MP 4000 and MP 5000. These new models replace the year-old MP 3500 and MP 4500. In addition to boosting the speed by 5ppm, the new models families add a number of new or enhanced features.

Among those upgrades are more paper capacity, support for heavier weight paper, a big color touchscreen control panel, a larger document feeder, more memory, and improved first-page out time. The new models also include more advanced security features. List prices match those of the earlier models.

Ricoh is consciously upgrading its product line and adding new features. The issue is that their copiers and copier/multifunctionals are already good enough for most users. But the need to refresh its lineup and keep in step with key competitors means making what is already very good even a little bit better.

Vista: Gradually gaining traction

2008-02-04T11:44:00.000-05:00

Microsoft’s Window Vista application and its 2007 Office Productivity suite are slowly migrating into the office, according to a survey by CDW. Last February, only 12% of companies had plans in place to switch over to the new version of Windows, as users opted instead for the older, but faster and more reliable XP version. This February, according to the survey, around 35% of the companies surveyed had Vista migration efforts ongoing. Out of that 35% segment, only 13% had completed the move.

Similar numbers were making the move to the application software in Windows Productivity Suite 2007. Last February, only 7% of offices had upgraded. The survey indicates that 24% have now upgraded.

While there is still lots of controversy on the Internet and questions about Vista speed, feature bloat, and the change in user interface, many IT decision makers are starting to feel that the Microsoft products are stable enough and usable enough to give them the green light. Microsoft is, according to rumors, also working on a streamlined “Windows 7” version that will fix some of the objections to Vista – Microsoft is keeping mum, however.

Embedded Equitrac

2008-02-01T11:21:00.001-05:00

It’s no longer just the copier companies that are embedding 3rd party software solutions on their control panels. Hewlett-Packard and Equitrac announced that Equitrac’s job tracking and cost management software has now been embedded on a wide variety of HP’s high-en multifunctionals, from the 24ppm Color LaserJet 9500mfp to the 50ppm LaserJet 9050mfp.

The Equitrac software is integrated into the HP control panel, so that users can, for example, enter in a security code before sending or retrieving a job. It comes in two forms, an Express version and a high-end Office version (aimed at larger businesses). The software allows for user authentication and access control, job tracking, cost assignment, reporting, and enforcement of corporate print policies.

Of course, there are Equitrac versions integrated into most of the major copier lines now. What is interesting is how HP’s top MFPs are offering the same kind of enterprise solutions that were once a major differentiator between the copier-based multifunctionals and the printer-based ones. The line between copiers and printers gets narrower all the time.

2008 Office Laser Printer Guide

2008-01-31T14:16:00.000-05:00

Better Buys for Business has published its 2008 Office Laser Printer Guide, which covers monochrome (black-and-white) office laser printers to up to 55ppm. While monochrome printers are far less sexy than color machines, they are still the mainstay of most offices. Speeds keep increasing (now have several office machines at 55ppm) as sticker prices go down. At the same time, costs per page for the least expensive models continue to climb.

The 114-page guide covers vendors from Brother to Xerox, with product reviews, specifications, an industry briefing, and buyers’ tips. You can order it here.

Kodak on the mend?

2008-01-30T11:03:00.000-05:00

Eastman Kodak declared today that its net income showed a major upswing in the most recent quarter, thanks to increased digital sales. Kodak has long been on the decline, thanks to the rapid implosion of the analog photography business. Since 2004, it has shed over 27,000 jobs. But signs are good that the radical corporate restructuring is over and the digital strategies (including ink jet printers and color production printers) is starting to pay off.

Indeed, digital sales at Kodak surged 15%, even as analog sales mostly film) dropped 15%. According to a Wall Street Journal article, the company hopes to sell half a million ink jet printers in 2008. Other strong areas are in digital cameras sales and digital photo printing kiosks.

This is good news for Kodak, where digital now accounts for over three-quarters of revenue. But margins are still thin and the competition on all fronts (ink jets, cameras, high-end printing) is getting tougher all the time, as companies like HP, Canon, Sony, and Xerox are all on the move.

New heavy-duty Kodak production scanner

2008-01-29T15:46:00.000-05:00

Kodak recently introduced the i780 Scanner. This 120ppm machine scans in color, grayscale, and black-and-white and has a list price of $39,995. Among the excellent features on the i780 are ultrasonic double-feed detection, auto-color detection, autoimatic image orientation, auto cropping, and multistreaming output. The i780 is a speedy extension to Kodak’s comprehensive series of scanners.

The i780 holds up to 500 sheets in an elevator-type feeder. It is rated for a staggering 130,000 pages per day. Interface with a PC is through FireWire (IEEE 1394). It comes with Kodak’s Perfect Page imaging software.

HP gears up for variable data printing

2008-01-25T11:07:00.000-05:00

Hewlett-Packard this week announced the purchase of US-based company Exstream Software. Exstream makes software that streamlines the use of variable data printing. The price for buying the privately-held company was not announced.

Exstream was founded in 1998 and currently has some 300 employees. Its software allows companies to create personalized marketing documents and billing notices. Its key products are called Dialogue, Dialogue Live, and AFP Studio. These Web-based products would be part of HP’s Print 2.0 initiative.

While the products can be used with some of HP’s higher-end LaserJet color printers and MFPs as well as its Indigo printer line, the suspicion is that HP is working on a high-speed digital press product, where it will compete against Canon, Xerox, and Kodak. HP has already made it clear that it sees its greatest source of future growth in chipping away at the vast majority of printed pages that are still done on analog, conventional printing presses.

Toshiba refreshes black-and-white copier line

2008-01-24T13:53:00.000-05:00

Toshiba announced over the last few weeks a nearly total upgrade of its black-and-white copier/multifunctional line, from 20pppm to 86ppm. The upgraded models, all similar to current models, are signified with a “3” at the end of the model number. The new models are the e-STUDIO 203L, 223, 283, 353, 453, 523, 523T, 603, 803T, 723, 723T, and 853. Speeds correspond to the first two digits.

The major changes in the upgrades involve compatibility with Windows Vista XPS printing, enhanced security, and (in some cases) added memory capability. This is a baby step, enhancing slightly what is already a very good copier product line. The prices remain the same as those of their predecessors.

OKI survey on printing

2008-01-23T11:43:00.000-05:00

Small and medium businesses (SMBs) are paying a price for unmanaged printing costs. That’s according to a survey just released by OKI Data Americas. The company surveyed 700 IT professionals from SMBs across the U.S. and found very little in the way of serious cost controls in place. Such companies are far less in control of printing costs than larger companies, and the headache is growing. (Small businesses are defined as those with 1-99 employees, while medium businesses have 100-999 employees.)

The survey found that:
• Over half of SMBs expect to print either the same amount or more in the future as they do currently
• Seventy-seven percent of SMBs still prefer to review just about everything on paper rather than onscreen. Meaning they print out almost everything.
• SMBs report that fifteen percent of jobs printed are non-work related (as opposed to seven percent at large companies).

In general, few companies had any real control of how much was being printed, who was printing, on what devices, and at what cost. OKI proposes a printing needs assessment, extended use of administrative tools, and the education of users to avoid paper and toner waste.

New Xerox branding

2008-01-22T10:01:00.000-05:00

Xerox, which five years ago was close to the brink, has made an amazing recovery, thanks to an impressive stream of fine new products and a streamlined business model. But Xerox’s logo and branding have remained essentially unchanged for decades.

Now Xerox announced a new logo and with it a new brand strategy. As Richard Wergan, director of worldwide brand at Xerox, has said: "The new logo is meant to disrupt the mental model of Xerox as just a copier company."

The new logo has a more rounded, softer font, along with a graphic icon that, it appears, signifies Xerox’s global reach. Brand is an important part of the mix, and Xerox’s had stagnated, in spite of its record of innovation. As a BusinessWeek article (“Xerox Gets a Brand Makeover”, 1/7/08) notes:

Xerox, despite the ubiquity of its brand, operates at a brand-building disadvantage to rivals like Canon, Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), and Toshiba in that those brands have strong consumer franchises to buttress their business-to-business images. "The research shows that this gives our competitors an advantage in communicating innovation and modernity," says Wergan.

New Lexmark Color MFP

2008-01-18T10:21:00.000-05:00

Lexmark has added to its extensive color laser MFP line with a fast new networked machine that costs under $1,000. The Lexmark X560n prints at 31ppm in black-and-white and at 20ppm in color. It also supports copying, scanning, and fax. This machine handles up to 1,600 sheets of letter-sized input. It also has a 50-sheet ADF and supports PCL and PostScript.

Sub-$1,000 fully-featured color MFPs suitable for workgroups are yet another sign of how quickly the industry is evolving. A few years ago, there were few single-function printers that could print at 20ppm or faster in color, and the few that did exist could cost twice as much.

Ricoh adds new viscous ink MFPs

2008-01-15T13:15:00.000-05:00

Ricoh keeps coming out with new color printers and multifunctionals based on its GelSprinter technology. As Ricoh works on the technology, the printing speed keeps going up as costs stay reasonable. These look like good choices for small workgroups and home offices.

The GX3000S ($549 list), GX3000SF ($600 list) and the GX3050SFN ($849 list) offer printing, copying, scanning, and (except in the base model) faxing. They are aimed at desktop or small-workgroup use.

All there models print at 29ppm in color and black. Ethernet connectivity is optional on the GX3000S and GX3000SF and standard on the GX3050SFN. The printers are host-based, with the GX3050SFN also supporting PCL. There is a 20-sheet document feeder on all models. Scan-to-email, not always available on competitive models, is standard with networking.

Matsushita changes name to Panasonic

2008-01-10T13:19:00.000-05:00

Japanese conglomerate Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Japan’s second-largest technology company, has announced that it will change the company name to that of its most important commercial brand, Panasonic. The company manufactures copiers, printers, and scanners (along with product ranging from TVs to washing machines to vending machines) under the Panasonic name.

According to the company, the move stresses Matsushita’s current reality as an international company, not a narrowly Japanese one. According to an article on MarketWatch.com (“Matsushita rebrands as Panasonic, its best-known product brand”, 1/10/08): [Matsushita president] "Ohtsubo made it clear that the switch was related to perceptions of the company's brands. ‘Our brand value has unfortunately not developed as we hoped in recent years.’"

Toshiba SmartCard

2008-01-02T09:38:00.000-05:00

The move to access control for security and accounting in the copier industry keeps growing. Today, Toshiba’s business products division announced the availability of a new product called e-BRIDGE SmartCard for its e-STUDIO line of copiers. The product controls access to the copier through use of an identity card, including current commonly-used building access cards. The standard formats it supports are HID iClass and MIFARE Classic.

The product consists of a contactless card reader that attaches to a USB port on the copier console, along with Web-based software. The software can be customized for various levels of security, so that users can be limited to certain kinds of access to MFP features. It can be installed on an existing e-STUDIO product by a Toshiba dealer technician.

Do Not Mail

2007-12-26T11:20:00.000-05:00

In a move that may radically change both the direct mail and the printing industries, bills to create “Do Not Mail” laws have been filed in fifteen states. The movement is an extension of the Federal “Do Not Call” concept that pretty much put an end to consumer telemarketing.

One of the key motivators is concern for the environment. We’ve all received a truckload of catalogs and mail solicitations over the past two months, 90% has gone directly into the trash, or at least the recycle bin. According to one source, the U.S. Postal Service last year delivered some 213 billion pieces of mail, and well over half were unsolicited advertisements and bulk mail. Another source notes that every mail carrier in America has carried nearly 18 tons of junk mail this year.

Direct mail, which already has a low response rate, risks alienating customers who actually might want to buy the products the senders promote. As a recent BrandWeek opinion piece (“Really Pushing The Envelope”, 12/10/07) notes: “The fact is, today's green-conscious consumers expect the companies they patronize (and even ones they don't) to engage in some semblance of environmental stewardship. When the marketers of those companies mercilessly clog mailboxes with irrelevant and duplicate solicitations, what kind of message are consumers getting?”

It would be ironic if just as the technology for printing mass mailings becomes more affordable and available, key states start making it more difficult than ever to deliver those solicitations. The result has been that even the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), the trade group for junk mail, has been calling for significantly smaller but more finely targeted mailing campaigns to keep the backlash movement that threatens to wipe out all unsolicited mailings.

2008 Color Laser Printer Guide Available

2007-12-19T11:39:00.000-05:00

The Better Buys for Business Color Laser & Business Ink Jet Printer Guide for 2008 has been published. The guide contains information about over 180 models from 21 vendors, including reviews, specifications, and cost-per-page breakdowns. It also includes a glossary of relevant terms and a briefing on the printer industry, as well as our award picks for the best buys in each category.

Lawsuit claims HP, Staples colluded on cartridges

2007-12-18T12:04:00.000-05:00

A suit has been filed in US federal courts claiming that Hewlett-Packard and office superstore Staples broke antitrust law. The suit claims that HP paid Staples more than $100 million to carry only HP ink cartridges in its stores, and to avoid stocking lower-cost third-party refills. The plaintiff is asking that it be made a class-action suit on behalf of all printer owners.

Whatever the outcome of the lawsuit, it does put a focus on ink prices, a major part of the income of HP and rivals like Epson and Lexmark. It has been estimated that the real cost of ink refills can be as high as $8,000 a gallon. At those prices, there’s lots of room for third-party underselling. The result has been an all-out war, where the major printer developers have tried to limit the sales of unauthorized sellers. This lawsuit, whatever happens to it, is just another skirmish in the long war.

New GelSprinters

2007-12-17T11:12:00.000-05:00

Ricoh continues to release new models in its GelSprinter line, based on its unique “viscous ink” technology. That approach, while similar to conventional ink jet printing, is far faster (thanks to print head technology) than conventional ink jets. It also gives users the ability to print on both glossy paper and recycled paper.

The GelSprinter line doesn’t get a lot of press next to the standard color laser and Xerox’s solid ink lines, but it is finding a niche in the office market due to its low sticker price and moderate cost of operation (especially when compared to standard ink jet printers). Clearly, Ricoh has enough confidence in the line to keep issuing new models.

The new Ricoh GX2500 ($169) is aimed at desktop and small workgroup use. It prints at a real 28ppm in both black and color. Ethernet is optional.

The GX7000 ($749) is a ledger-size model that features duplex printing. Ethernet is an option.

Both models are relatively straightforward ones with few bells and whistles. It will be interesting to see how far Ricoh can take the technology and how well it can establish awareness of the brands and the technology in a crowded field of color business printers.

3D “printers” go mainstream

2007-12-14T10:31:00.001-05:00

A recent Wall Street Journal article (“How 3-D Printing Figures To Turn Web Worlds Real”, 12/12/07) reported on the changing world of 3D printing. The “printers” are in fact automatic model makers that take 3D designs generated on a computer and sculpt models based on the digital information. There are various technologies, including ink jet-like versions, but the result is a three-dimensional model in plaster or composite materials, including starch, paper, metals, or sand.

Until recently, these devices were used almost exclusively for high-end product modeling and prototyping for companies like automakers and aircraft manufacturers. They are also used in medical labs, engineering firms, and the industrial design departments of high-tech firms.

But the cost of these devices is coming down. While such machines used to cost $300,000 or more, they now run for around $20,000, and there are newer machines in the pipeline for $5,000 or less. This is spurring a new set of companies that target 3-D models at specific niche markets, such as architects, role-playing game enthusiasts, custom toy makers, and designers of keepsakes and souvenirs (custom doll-house furniture).

At $5,000, 3D printers start looking like Easy-Bake ovens for tech geeks. And the latest models will be almost desktop-size in dimensions. One application that is starting to appear is food sculpture, using chocolate, Cheez-Whiz, sugar, or dough. Think of favors for a birthday party or 3D bride and groom statuettes on a wedding cake. A brave new world of “printing” is just beginning.

Xerox opens solid ink factory

2007-12-13T09:25:00.000-05:00

Xerox sales of its solid ink office printers is doing so well that they’ve opened a new $24 million plant to make the crayon-like solid ink sticks. The new Oregon-based facility, according to Xerox, increases the company’s solid ink manufacturing capacity tenfold.

This seems to be a sign that Xerox’s campaign to push its color printers, especially its Phaser 8860 line, is doing well. The 8860 offers remarkably low costs per page for both color and black-and-white. Xerox also promotes the fact that the solid ink produces far less waste than toner-solutions, and that its lower heat requirements cut power use.

We’ve long thought that Xerox would extend the solid ink technology, one of the company’s biggest advantages, both up and down the product line, perhaps even into the copier market. The new plant may be an indication that’s what is in the cards, and the modern, high-capacity factory may allow Xerox to get decent margins, even with the lower cost per page.

HP expanding its wide-format lineup

2007-12-11T13:39:00.001-05:00

Hewlett-Packard announced the purchase of Israel-based wide-format printing company NUR Macroprinters in a $117 million deal. This follows the recent purchase of MacDermid ColorSpan, another maker of wide format printers, used especially in signage, backdrops, and billboards.

NUR makes continuous-feed color ink jet machines that can output images up to 17 feet wide, based on digital input. It can print on such media as canvas and vinyl, in addition to paper.

HP already had a strong position in the wide format area, and the two purchases only expanded that. HP has an announced intention of moving upward in the printing market from its strong base in home and office machines toward professional printing.

Used toner cartridge? Sit on it

2007-12-10T11:30:00.000-05:00

Here’s a creative new use for those spent toner and ink jet cartridges. It’s true that some vendors have a cartridge return program where they can re-use or recycle them, but many do not. It’s especially bad on the off-brand toner and ink market. What’s an eco-conscientious user to do?

Now a UK recycling company called Waycam has a new idea – they use a process that transforms cartridges into a plastic called TRI Wood, and then turn it into fence posts and garden furniture.

While the furniture aspect is a great stunt, the serious issue, as they acknowledge, is recycling the (highly toxic) used toner. It’s another step in the effort to keep more toxins out of landfills. This kind of thing is becoming increasingly a legal necessity in Europe, and it is something that should spread in the near future to the US.

Friday fun: Office Space

2007-12-07T09:08:00.000-05:00

The classic scene of printer "deconstruction" from everybody's favorite office movie. Of course, that was from the days when printers jammed all the time.

Avoiding unwanted e-mail

2007-12-06T11:18:00.000-05:00

A recent survey by market research firm Ipsos for e-mail consultant Habeas points out that end users are finding new ways to avoid spam and unwanted e-commerce e-mails. According to the study, over 50% of users maintain three different e-mail addresses. In addition, 81% do not forward e-mails from one address to another, keeping the mailboxes distinct. Half of the respondents with multiple e-mails said that they maintained multiple accounts to avoid unwanted e-mails.

As reported in an article in Network World “Consumers deal with ‘e-mail insecurity factor’”, 12/4/07) , the survey found that users “create one for work, another for friends, family and trusted brands, and one for signing up for online offers and lists.”

As companies depend more and more on e-mail marketing, customers are increasingly finding ways to avoid their urgent communications. As the CEO of Habeas is quoted as saying “It’s easy for an enterprise to run afoul of consumer willingness to engage in a dialogue.”

Over the last ten years, one of the big stories has been the growth of e-mail as a marketing strategy. Over the next ten, the avoidance of e-mail will become as big.

True Adobe PostScript

2007-12-05T15:58:00.000-05:00

Back in the late eighties, PostScript clones entered the market with a bang. An attempt to avoid Adobe’s then stiff licensing fees, there were many flavors of them, and for a while they all had various oddities, shortcomings, and downright bugs. Over the years, Adobe moved to Level 2 (1991) and finally PostScript 3 (1997). The clone makers hustled to catch up. But the stability of PostScript 3 since 1997 has meant that they’ve had a long time to fix bugs.

Generally speaking now, we don’t see any real difference between real PostScript clones and genuine Adobe PostScript, especially when we are talking about normal office printing. It’s been years since we’ve head of any office users complaining about problems caused by using, say, Brother's, Lexmark's, or Konica Minolta’s clones.

One area where it may make a difference is in high-end printing, and there is comes up in two issues. One is in color calibration, where vendors like EFI, say that the Adobe version it has better built-in tools for color control. This isn’t a particular issue for most office printing, where color need only be good enough. The second area in which some problems come up with users of Adobe’s In Design software, which makes use of some Postscript features that other programs hadn’t, and thus test a feature which may not be implemented in some printers. There are also reported problems with an Adobe product called Multiple Master fonts that sometimes don’t work correctly with some clones.

These are issues likely to be found by high-level designers, usually proofing files to be sent to the printing press. Our view: don’t worry about PostScript for everyday office use; do get true Adobe PostScript for printers used by professional designers.

Just released: Better Buys High-Volume Copier Guide

2007-12-04T13:33:00.000-05:00

Hot off the press is our High-Volume Copier & Multifunctional Guide, which covers black-and-white copier/multifunctionals with speeds from 50 to 150 pages per minute. The guide presents our Editor’s Choice selections of the best buys at various speed ranges, along with specifications and a discussion of industry trends and terms.

The big trend: the number of high-end copiers is increasing, with more vendors selling more models than ever. One key differentiator is workflow software, important for these machines that are often called on to output complex jobs. To order, here is the link.

“No Vista, please!”

2007-12-03T10:50:00.000-05:00

Microsoft’s Vista version of its Windows operating systems is having a hard time getting traction, as many corporate users are waiting to find out a reason why they should replace their PCs running Windows XP. According to one survey, only 13 percent of businesses have adopted Vista.

Microsoft has released its first service pack update for the Vista version of its Windows operating system, but according to neutral lab testing, Vista is still twice as slow as the most up-to-date version of Windows XP. Vista retail sales are over 50 percent lower than sales of XP.

Microsoft is also having a hard time convincing IT departments that the hassle of training users on a whole new interface and supported a new set of problems (including file incompatibility) is worth the effort. As a result, many companies are still buying replacement computers that still feature XP, and Microsoft has been forced to set back the eventual phase-out of XP until next summer.

In the printer world, that slowdown affects the urgency to support Microsoft’s new XPS printing protocol. So far, only Xerox and Konica Minolta, as far as we can tell, have announced XPS-capable printers. Sharp has announced that it is working with a third party to support it.

Even more pressing is the problem of drivers on existing printers. Most printers and copiers need installation of a new driver to work with Vista. But for older models, most vendors aren’t bothering with an upgrade. So a perfectly good printer from two years ago that worked fine with all your XP machines might not be able to function in a Vista environment.

One article quotes a Microsoft vice president as saying “Frankly, the world wasn't 100 percent ready for Windows Vista.” Instead it’s clear that Vista is still not 100 percent ready for the world, even after a long-awaited service pack update.

Friday fun: why you shouldn't abuse your copier

2007-11-30T15:04:00.000-05:00

Wi-Fi: a growing requirement

2007-11-29T11:27:00.000-05:00

A recent study, conducted by Ipsos Public Affairs for Lexmark, shows the growing demand for wireless accessibility for printers in the SOHO market.

The survey interviewed some 9,000 “tech-savvy” end-users across the globe, over 700 in the US. 40 percent of respondents had wireless network (Wi-Fi) in their home and over 80 percent of these had experienced productivity benefits. The benefits cited were enhanced flexibility and added mobility. More and more offices, the study says, are getting used to mobility, given the use of PDAs, laptops, and digital cameras.

Furthermore, the study notes that 94 percent of respondents “say they need a printer in order to be able to do their jobs effectively.” Also that “access to a printer is perceived to be as, if not slightly more, important as having access to the Internet (93 percent) and e-mail (92 percent).” In addition, 92 percent claim they want to be able to print without being hooked by cable to a printer. That’s true at home, at work, and while traveling (especially in a hotel or airport business center).

Given all that, relatively few printers are Wi-Fi ready. Lexmark has been introducing a growing number of wireless-preconfigured models, and it only makes sense that Wi-Fi will soon be as standard equipment on many printers and MFPs as Ethernet and USB ports are.

Let’s face it. The current crop of laser printers and MFPs are more than fast enough and they have appropriate printing features for the majority of users. The big challenge is to make them more usable and for an increasingly mobile workforce, the ability to piggyback onto different printers at different locations (with proper security of course) is becoming more and more of a basic requirement.

Authentication at your fingertips

2007-11-28T11:48:00.000-05:00

One of the hottest new security features for the office product world is biometric authentication, especially in the form of finger-based identification. The use of analog fingerprint identification over 140 years has proven that no two people’s fingerprints are identical. Now that expertise has gone digital, with major breakthroughs over the past year.

The technique available for office use is finger vein authentication. This involves placing a finger on an authentication device which scans the blood vessel patterns, and cross-checks them with a database of previously stored scans. Manufacturers (Hitachi is the leader) claim that this is even more secure than regular fingerprint identification, since you are measuring internal, rather than external, patterns. According to claims, the method is highly accurate, with virtually no mistaken rejections of valid users.

Finger vein authentication devices are fast and compact, and it is getting better rapidly. Hitachi is the main manufacturer, and it is introducing the technology into door handles, automobile steering wheels, PCs, and ATMs. Hitachi has also released software development kits, and we expect that the applications will multiply.

Konica Minolta has been a leader in applying this technology as an option in its copiers (and now printers). It enables secure print, secure fax, and mailbox access. We expect that it will become an option on virtually all office equipment over the next year.

Oops

2007-11-27T10:51:00.000-05:00

We’ve all done it. Clicked on “Send” and immediately had our heart miss a beat as we realized that the e-mail was on its way to someone it wasn’t intended for.

No surprise, but a recent study found that 50 percent of all workers admitted to sending e-mails to the wrong person. Of course, most of the other 50 percent are probably in denial.

The survey, conducted by IT security firm Sophos, found that misdirected e-mails happen all the time. It’s not just the spectacular blunders we hear about – intending to send to a fellow employee an e-mail that makes fun of the boss, but mistakenly addressing it to the boss himself. More likely, it’s the inadvertent misdirection of confidential material, related to personnel, finances, or business strategy.

It’s a real concern. 75 percent of surveyed companies worry about sensitive information being leaked by e-mails.

Sophos, naturally, is interested in selling its software product that scans e-mail for critical keywords to filter out some of the problem, but that’s unlikely to plug all holes. The natural thought is that employees have to be educated to double-check messages before clicking on “Send,” but that it is not a trivial task. Somewhere between technology and training lies the solution, and this is a problem that more and more companies will have to struggle with.

TCO Wars

2007-11-26T16:04:00.000-05:00

Over the past few years, the prices on low-to mid-range color laser printers have fallen ever lower even as the cost of consumables has gone up. The price of equipment acts basically as a loss leader, whereas the real money is in toner.

Are buyers of color laser printers finally starting to think about more than the sticker price? Is the total cost of ownership or TCO (a formula that combines average cost per page along with machine price) becoming a factor in purchasing decisions?

That’s an assumption that OKI Printing Solutions is working under. The company just announced consumables price reductions on its C8800 and C6000 color laser printer lines. Cost per page on the ledger-size C8800 have been lowered by 11% to 9.1 cents a page, while those on the letter/legal-size C6000 were lowered by 25% to 19.0 cents for color and 1.6 cents for black. OKI is claiming that TCO has been reduced by 30%.

Changes in consumables prices is a rare event in the printer business, and these are pretty significant reductions. The compelling reason for lowering the TCO is allowing a vendor to gain traction in what is now an extremely competitive market of very solid office color printers. The big target of course is Hewlett-Packard, whose dominant market position allows it to maintain higher consumables costs in some of its models. But beyond HP, there is a confusing array of choices from over a dozen serious rivals.

After talking to key OKI product managers, it seems clear that the price shift is likely to have most impact on large corporate and governmental purchasers, where a realization has already taken hold that more goes into costs than the sticker price. And OKI will need well-tutored salesmen and resellers to push the kind of three-year cost timeframe that’s behind total cost estimates.

Of course, the TCO argument is nothing new. Kyocera, especially, has been making it for years, with mixed success in the marketplace. Clearly, OKI is betting on a shift in thinking in the market, which is starting to get the idea that the long-term costs of color are far higher than they expected. It will be interesting to see if others follow suit.

Secure printing: getting hot

2007-11-21T09:27:00.000-05:00

The hottest issue in the printer/MFP world is secure printing. And the reasons are well illustrated in a survey that tech consulting firm IDC did in the UK for Canon. The survey results, according to a CRN article (“VARs must switch on to secure printing”, 11/12/07:
▪ 72 percent of office workers have picked up personal emails belonging to their colleagues
▪ 18 percent have looked at personnel records including salary info ▪ 70 percent have found and looked over job applicants’ résumés

In another recent survey commissioned by Brother, it was found that three out of four small and medium-size firms were unaware of the issue of unsecured printing. And in the companies that were aware of it, only about 40 percent had policies in place.

These surveys were made in the UK, but the results would likely be similar in the US and the increasing push for document confidentiality is similar in both countries.

The CPN article, which is mostly aimed at telling dealers how push security as a selling point for new machines, stresses the increasing legal requirements many companies face in keeping data confidential. It also outlines the various techniques from PIN entry to encryption to biometrics that are being currently featured in more and more products. As the article puts it, “Secure printing is mainly used in government and in defence industries, but has filtered through to large enterprises, mainly in the legal and financial services industries.”

Print assessment through Technesis

2007-11-20T09:57:00.000-05:00

Any company that wants to improve its document workflow needs to start with the most basic of facts: how many printers, copiers, and MFPs do we have; who uses them and how much; and what is the balance between color versus black-and-white pages. For many workplaces, even well-managed ones, these numbers are unknown.

Even when companies use the accounting software on their copier-multifunctionals, they usually get limited information. Most companies have a wealth of smaller devices from a variety of vendors, including ones that are not attached to the network, but rather connected though a USB or parallel port to desktop computers.

Only when you have made a systematic analysis with hard numbers can you properly get a handle on printing costs and allocate office equipment. To do that, you need one of several software packages on the market.

US-based software company Technesis has recently updated its Print Control System. The software, originally developed for the large-format printer market, is scalable so both small and large companies can use it. It consists of centralized software which resides on a server on the network to gather stats and client applications on each computer on the network to capture the parameters of each print job.

The software, installed on both servers and workstations, can capture all printing that goes through networked print servers on the network, plus, for Windows machines, any locally attached models. It allows a variety of reports for identifying use by user and group. For PCL and PostScript jobs, it can also estimate the amount of color or black toner used on each job.

The result of the survey is an attempt to right-size the printer fleet. One manufacturing customer of the company with 3,500 users started with 600 machines. After using the software and making an analysis, they consolidated the fleet to 190 MFPs.

Much of Technesis’s sales come through third party consulting services, including groups from major equipment. The company also will lease the software direct, in 90-day increments and on a per-seat basis.

Xerox declares a dividend

2007-11-19T10:02:00.000-05:00

It’s a mark of Xerox’s progress away from the brink that the company today announced that it would start paying dividends again, after a six-year hiatus. The dividend is small enough (4.25 cents per share as the stock is worth around $19 a share), but it is hopeful sign for the company.

In addition, Moody’s recently raised the company’s bonds up one notch. Xerox’s bonds made it out of the junk category to investment grade only this year.

The Bloomberg News report gives the details:
Chief Executive Officer Anne Mulcahy is raising revenue by adding color products that print, copy, scan and fax. Color pages are five times more profitable than black-and-white prints. The company has introduced 18 color devices this year. Xerox boosted operating cash flow to $1.5 billion this year, and said it will increase to $1.6 billion in 2008.”

Congrats to Xerox for its amazing recovery.

Gigabit Ethernet and specmanship

2007-11-16T10:38:00.000-05:00

An increasing number of office products are now boasting of a new advanced feature: compatibility with Gigabit Ethernet. This strikes me as a case of utter “specmanship,” a feature of no real use.

Gigabit Ethernet (also known in its usual setup as 1000BaseT) is a version of Ethernet that is (in theory) ten times faster than everyday 100BaseT Ethernet. It was made a standard in 1998 (IEEE 802.3 for international standards buffs), and it is slowly growing in importance. The original intention was to use the protocol for high-capacity backbone networks, where massive amounts of data were being transferred between servers and network switches. Soon, some desktop computers became Gigabit Ethernet-compatible. This setup is especially useful for streaming video across a network. Gigabit Ethernet requires special network routers, hubs, and cables, which can also work with lower Ethernet speeds.

The real issue, as we see it, is that printers and scanners work just fine with regular Ethernet. You can deliver data far faster as it is than any printer or scanner can handle it – the limiting factor is not network speed or processor power but the mechanical speed of the hardware. We can imagine that some very high-speed digital printers doing variable data printing might get an advantage from the boost in network speed, but as it stands, no regular office equipment will run one bit faster by adding a Gigabit Ethernet link.

We see Gigabit Ethernet as a classic “check-off” spec. Big government and some business buyers require that equipment be able to check off compliance with a number of requirements, some of them not really relevant to the functions of the machine. Sales staffs need such features just to get in the door. Gigabit Ethernet is harmless, but it adds nothing to productivity for most offices.

What's next? 10-Gigabit Ethernet? Or maybe you'd prefer 100-Gigabit Ethernet?

Konica Minolta’s new printer strategy

2007-11-15T11:07:00.000-05:00

The printer product line at Konica Minolta has always seemed a little confused to me. In 1999 Minolta bought controlling interest in QMS, an Alabama-based pioneer in color laser printing. At that time, the printing operation seemed to be run as a separate organization with a different audience (often low end) than that for Minolta’s copier products. From the outside, at least, there seemed to be little shared technology.

In 2003, Minolta and Konica merged, and the situation didn’t change, as the new Konica Minolta had its hands full, combining both two sets of personnel and a confusing array of copier products with little in common. Starting in 2004 and moving forward, Konica Minolta started releasing the bizhub copiers and gradually built the newly unified technologies into to one of the most comprehensive and unified product lines in the business. Just last year, Konica Minolta had built a series of very successful color production MFPs (including the now top-of-the-line bizhub PRO C6500), which are giving Xerox’s DocuColor models a run for the money.

Now it is the turn of the (somewhat) neglected printer line. Konica Minolta just announced the release of two new PagePro black-and-white printers, two new families of magicolor color lasers, and an updated magicolor MFP. These new products are based on some of the technology developed for the bizhub copiers, including the same Emperon print controller. They use the same advanced Simitri toner and they share some of the same administration and security software from the bizhub line.

The most interesting product is the magicolor 8650DN, which looks like a 35ppm, printer-only version of the high-end color MFPs. It has a generous paper supply, solid finishing capability (including a booklet maker), and works with appropriate productivity software available with the higher-end bizhubs. We don’t have any prices yet, but this elegant and versatile printer looks like it will be leader in its market, somewhere between serious office use and light production.

Is e-mail almost obsolete?

2007-11-14T15:06:00.000-05:00

An insightful article on Slate.com (Chad Lorenz, “The Death of E-Mail,” 11/14/07) analyzes the way in which under 20s are increasingly abandoning e-mail in favor of more instant means of communication.

And Lorenz is no old fogy whining about the young-uns: he's in his 20's. But he’s dismayed at the way in which teenagers are switching off from e-mail. As he writes: “According to a 2005 Pew study, almost half of Web-using teenagers prefer to chat with friends via instant messaging rather than e-mail. Last year, comScore reported that teen e-mail use was down 8 percent, compared with a 6 percent increase in e-mailing for users of all ages. As mobile phones and sites like Twitter and Facebook have become more popular, those old Yahoo! and Hotmail accounts increasingly lie dormant.”

Lorenx points out that among the teens he surveyed informally, most “signed in to IM or Facebook from the time they get home from classes until they turn out the lights.”

As he points out, just as even older users have become addicted to e-mail connectivity, a whole new generation has gone way past that. What will be interesting to watch is how all this works out when that generation hits a workplace now dependent on e-mails.

As Lorenz points out, it looks like the oldsters will have to follow in the wake of the kids, as more and more adults are being pulled into the Facebook world. And as cell phones get smarter and smarter, all of us are going to have to become expert at more modes of interaction. “You can now send and receive every kind of message—texts, IMs, e-mails, and Facebook posts—with most new mobile phones.”

For all of us who seem to spend too much of our workday sorting through e-mails and being pestered by colleagues we don’t respond fast enough to, the onslaught is just beginning.

Security certification

2007-11-12T14:37:00.000-05:00

As security becomes an ever bigger deal, vendors are claiming different levels of security certification. This is a relatively new area, and you may not understand the buzzwords.

The security features in most copier/multifunctionals make use of a standardized model called the International Common Criteria for Information Technology Security Evaluation (ISO 15408). This is generally shortened to the term Common Criteria or even CC. For many corporations, CC certification is a requirement for all products added to the network.

Common Criteria is used to define the security levels for a wide variety of devices on the network, from servers to routers to PCs, as well as to the software that runs them. It is an international standard based on the security requirements from several sources, including those used buy the U.S. Department of Defense. Adherence to the standard is certified at a set of accredited neutral testing laboratories.

Most mid- to high-end copier/multifunctional released over the past year have some level of certification. Older models are less likely to be certified.

Among the features required for certification in copiers and multifunctionals are:
▪ Hard disk encryption
▪ Hard disk overwriting
▪ Hard disk removal protection
▪ Memory overwriting
▪ Digital watermarks
▪ Network job encryption
▪ User authentication
▪ Secure print and fax
▪ Job auditing and accounting

The report cards on CC testing is presented in term of EAL (Evaluation Assurance Level), ranging from EAL1 to EAL7, where the higher number indicates a higher level of security tested. Most office machines come in at EAL2 or EAL3. But don’t be too impressed by these terms. For general office use especially, EAL2 is quite sufficient. It’s sometimes just a matter of how much time and money a company is willing to spend on such testing.

Lexmark study: Med offices nix color

2007-11-09T11:53:00.000-05:00

Amidst the mass rush to color laser printing in the office at least one major sector is sticking to monochrome: the healthcare industry. That’s according to a study by Lexmark, which commissioned a survey of doctor’s office and healthcare service locations in the US, UK, Italy and France.

The result: color printing was seen as incidental for industry, with very little color printing in day-to-day operations, some color used for marketing materials, newsletters, and mailers, and much of that outsourced. While the industry is a massive user of laser printers and multifunctionals for printing out everything from insurance forms to prescriptions, to referrals, the survey sees no demand for that printing to be converted into color.

The survey also found that, more than in other offices, speed was a critical consideration (after all, there is usually a patient and doctor standing around waiting for a form to be printed out.)

The breakout of printed documents in the office surveyed came to:
▪ 52% text documents
▪ 26% forms and record
▪ 26% short reports
▪ 21% invoices and purchase orders
(Clearly, some documents fell into several categories.)

Lexmark is earnestly targeting this vertical market with its Lexmark Clinical Assistant package, which includes an X646dte MFP (black-and-white, of course) plus a set of targeted workflow software for medical offices.

RFID from ink jets

2007-11-08T15:48:00.000-05:00

Here’s one use that inkjet printers are being put to that doesn’t involve printing pages or photos. It is generating RFID-enabled labels and smart tickets.

RFID (Radio Frequency Identification), if you haven’t yet come across it, is a technology for adding tags to any item, tags that emit low frequency radio waves that can be read without having to physically touch an item. Think of them as barcodes that can be read with a scanning device just by walking by them. RFID is used in such fields as warehousing, theft protection, and manufacturing.

Up until now, one of the big problems with RFID has been that it has been slow to make the tags and attach them. The older technique involved copper etching. But new technologies are allowing companies to print out RFID-enabled labels on special adhesive tags that can be automatically applied to any item. Typical systems cost as little as 25 to 50 cents per tag.

Because this method uses printing technology, it can be set up to print with variable data, if you need, for example, to add a unique serial number for each item. The printer uses special conductive inks. It’s a technique that’s gaining wide acceptance in consumer products, crates, or packages.

Samsung floods desktop printer market

2007-11-07T15:40:00.000-05:00

Samsung, already the world’s #2 laser printer manufacturer (after HP) and the #1 maker of monochrome desktop laser MFPs, has upped its position in the US office market with the release of a cascade of new black-and-white and color printers and MFPs.

Recently released are three families of color laser printers, three families of monochrome laser printers, four families of color laser multifunctionals, and five families of monochrome laser multifunctionals. These include models ranging in speed from 16ppm to 55ppm.

One of Samsung’s big advantages is its ability to source many of its own hardware components, including processors, LCD panels, and memory chips, along with design and software. This means faster bring-to-market times, it claims, than its rivals. Already, it is OEMing its technology to widening number of companies, including Xerox, Ricoh, Lexmark, and Dell.

At an analyst meeting earlier this fall, Samsung shared the following predictions about the overall industry:
▪The total US market for printers and supplies (around $60 billion) is flatlining, with minimal growth expected over the next five years.
▪ As you might expect, the color MFP (desktop) market is expected to grow, while black-and-white printing and MFPs stay stable or decline. What’s surprising is that they see minimal growth in the color laser printer area.
▪ Samsung plans to compete mainly in the A4 (letter/legal-size) market.
▪ Samsung is trying to differentiate itself by adding memory, increasing processor speed, and beating the competition on consumables costs and street prices.

Clearly, Samsung sees itself grabbing a bigger market share in a basically static market, and that increase had to come at the expense of one or more competitors.

Paper Mountains

2007-11-06T13:48:00.000-05:00

A recent survey in the UK indicates that office workers print out “a paper mountain more than eight miles high every year.” The survey, commissioned by Fujitsu and Siemens, concluded that half of the pages printed in a typical office went unread.

According to a story in London newspaper The Telegraph (“UK offices 'print paper mountains', 10/15/07), the average office worker has grown used to “carefree printing habits.” Half of the workers surveyed admitted that they had printed out the same pages more than once by mistake.

According to the Telegraph story “Two in five workers (43 per cent) said they had picked up someone else's print-out by mistake and 8 per cent admitted to printing emails before they had read them.”

In other interesting results from the survey:
▪ Three out of four workers says that they have fixed paper jams themselves.
▪ Two thirds say that they have changed toner.
▪ A quarter said that they had walked away from an out of order printer, letting someone else fix it. (I’m sure someone is lying here)
▪ 17 percent admitted they just threw printed pieces away with no thought of recycling.
▪ Two-thirds of UK firms provided paper recycling bins, and almost half had ways for recycling confidential materials.

These are figures for the UK, but the US results are probably no different and may even be worse. If the UK has paper mountains, the US has Himalayas. And since the survey was based on self-reporting, you can be sure that the numbers look better than they really are.

Not surprisingly, two-thirds of all companies had no policies setting guidelines for what should be printed. It’s not simply a matter of “saving trees,” though that is important. It’s the enormous expense that unneeded printing costs in both paper and toner, and wear and tear on equipment. As has often been pointed out, printing and copying costs are one of the least controlled areas of office expense, and few companies have even a clear idea of what they are paying for it.

Lexmark study shows faxing still alive

2007-11-05T10:01:00.000-05:00

A recent Lexmark-commissioned survey studying workflow requirements of small and medium manufacturing businesses revealed some surprising findings. The survey, conducted in the US, the UK, France, and Italy, showed that these businesses, while paper-intensive, put a high emphasis on functions other than printing.

The survey asked users to classify various functions as “very important”, allowing them to choose more than one function. The results were:
● Making copies, 76 percent
● Faxing, 73 percent
● Scanning to e-mail, 35 percent
● Printing photos, 32 percent

It’s strange that straight-up printing is not included in the survey, but perhaps it is assumed that all MFP users have printing as a prime requirement. In fact, the number who needed to print photos in a manufacturing environment is strangely high.

But the real takeaway for us is that faxing is still much in demand, and that while scanning-to-email has some importance, at least in the manufacturing sector, faxing is still the technology of choice.

In addition, and this is no surprise, manufacturing sites are very concerned with machine performance and durability, since most machines have to working in rugged conditions, with dirt and variable temperatures. For that reason, laser machines are favored over inkjets.

Unauthorized copier lease costs big

2007-11-02T10:53:00.000-04:00

From Jacksonville, Florida comes the story of how an unauthorized city employee signed 48 copier leases and cost the city over $3 million to clean up the mess. According to a story in the Florida Times-Union (“Copier contracts will cost taxpayers”, 10/29/07), the CFO of Jacksonville’s library system signed a series of 48 contracts with IKON Office Solutions to lease copiers for the library system. That’s particularly troubling since Jacksonville only has 21 library branches.

City rules specify that only eh mayor can authorize such deals, and the whole arrangement was only discovered by the city four years after it started. The employee has been dismissed, but the city had to settle with IKON for $3 million to clean up the mess.

According to the article, the problem was compounded due to lazy oversight in the accounts payable stage: “The city didn't detect the problem with IKON in part because it had other contracts with the Ohio-based company. The library was authorized to make some purchases from IKON off a state contract and a city contract. So when McDowell [the employee in question] did turn invoices over to the city's finance officials for payments, the checks were authorized under the existing contracts.”

The take-away for every institution is to set up clear rules for purchasing and leasing office equipment, enforcing those rules, centralizing all decisions in excess of a preset limit. In addition, a frequent audit of all office equipment assets is a must, for, in addition to the unauthorized decisions, there clearly was a problem of bringing in far too much copier capacity.

Scan it or Quipit?

2007-11-01T10:16:00.000-04:00

You know the scene in the spy movie. The hero finally gets into the room and opens the safe with the documents, whether the plans for the new weapon or the proof of the villain’s crimes. So he (or she) takes out his concealed mini-camera and snaps the photos while the villain’s henchmen are about to burst into the room. The critical thing is to get the film to the authorities (usually accomplished after a long martial arts scene and desperate chase through the night.)

Well, now that spy can use Quipit. This product from an Austrian company turns your cell phone camera into a document scanner. The scans are transmitted to the company’s servers, where they are cleaned up, translated using OCR software, and tagged, ready for reading.

It’s an interesting twist on digital document scanning, and, aside from the spy uses, may be just what’s needed for someone on the road or in an archive where you can’t remove the material. It could also be used to confirm a contract on the spot, save a whiteboard, save handwritten notes, or to quickly backup information passing over your desk. This is a great supplement to standard desk-bound document scanning.

Canon and the dollar

2007-10-31T10:35:00.001-04:00

A Wall Street Journal article today tracks the finances of Canon Inc. The company is reportedly ready to set a record profit for the year, yet its stock price has been tumbling.

The reason for this seeming contradiction, according to the article, has to do with the falling dollar. “The company, which takes in three-quarters of its sales overseas, is one of Japan's biggest exporters. In this position, it is more vulnerable than most Japanese companies to fluctuating exchange rates and a slowing U.S. economy.” When the US economy sneezes, Canon is in danger of catching cold; the biggest decline, the article notes, came during the August mortgage-credit crunch in the US.

All this in spite of eight years in a row of record earnings and continued growth. But while Canon has hedged against currency fluctuations, the rapidity of the dollar’s decline versus the yen has surprised everyone. Investors are speculating that the dollar’s decline is not over. And 60% of Canon’s sales are in the US.

The point is that if Canon, with its strong market position and sustained profits is feeling the threat, its rivals, likewise highly dependent on Asian manufacturing, are likely to be suffering even more. For buyers of office equipment, it may be a mixed deal: the real cost in dollars of copiers and printers has to be going up, while the vendors, worried about a decline in sales, may be open to more aggressive bargaining.

2007-10-31T10:35:00.000-04:00

Health and laser printers

2007-10-30T13:00:00.000-04:00

A recent Australian study of office air quality raised some concerns about laser printers, more specifically the toner particles emitted by them. This so-called “ultra-fine particle pollution” can contribute to respiratory illnesses, much like having secondhand smoke from a nearby indoor smoker, something no office these days permits. As one of the scientist from Queensland University is quoted as saying “If a printer operates in an indoor environment, the concentration of ultra-fine particles would be of the same order of magnitude as if there was secondhand smoke in a similar environment.”

The curious thing is that some laser printers emit no or little toner, while others emit a high level. And even printers from the same vendor can range from totally clean to polluting. While all printers pass federal safety and health regulations, the Australian study points out a new area for concern.

The Australian group is still continuing its studies (they have found, for example, that copiers are generally less of a problem), and they may well discover why some printers emit give off more particles than others. There may be a manufacturing fix that can lower the particle count on the worst offending machines.

In a practical sense, offices should become more aware of general ventilation and air exchange, something that would be useful in general, for cutting down on colds and other air-borne viruses.

Sharp’s new fax-based MFP

2007-10-29T14:02:00.000-04:00

Faxing may be moribund, but some new products are adding new value by looking at these machines as appliances for routing documents and for enhancing office workflow. Such a machine scans in documents and distributes them using fax, email, FTP, or scan-to-folder.

That’s the approach Sharp is taking with its brand-new FO-IS125N fax-based multifunctional. This $600 (list) machine prints, copies, scans, and faxes. It uses Sharp’s Image SENDER™ technology, based on the same sophisticated scanning software that Sharp has on its high-end copier/MFPs.

According to Sharp product manager Gary Bailer, the concept was to make scanning to a destination as easy for non-tech-savvy users as faxing is. “How do I get a piece of paper form point A to point B very simply? We wanted to keep the simplicity of faxing while responding to current needs for document distribution.” Indeed, no other fax machines on the market offer the full range of scan-to options of the FO-IS125N.

In addition to allowing for the various scan-to options, the FO-IS125N offers a number of security features: including facilities for user authorization, fax rerouting, secure fax, and call restriction. For highly security-conscious sites, it offers a way of having each transmission, whether fax or scan-to-email authorized before being sent. The purpose of this feature is to automate some of the steps in gathering approvals for contract, press releases, and financial documents before they get released. That’s an area that such mandates as Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPAA have made much more important.

Sharp has added some nice user features as well: a functional keyboard, dual-sided scanning, and LDAP addressing. True, the machine is on the slow side (prints and copies at 12ppm), but the concentration on providing an inexpensive station for secure document sending is a smart direction for prolonging the life of the past-its-prime fax machine market.

The Money of Color

2007-10-28T14:16:00.000-04:00

This summer, a survey by print-industry experts Lyra Research and by Recharger Magazine confirms what we

have long thought — typical office users do not have the slightest idea what it costs to print or copy color pages, whether laser or ink jet.

Users were asked what it cost per page to print in color compared to black-and-white. 15% of those surveyed thought that it cost the same, while 39% thought it cost twice as much. Only 9% knew that the actual cost is usually around four times as high for color as for black-and-white.

That’s a pretty costly knowledge gap. It surely comes from an environment in which no user is accountable for costs and where there has been no education about the consequences of color printing. Before installing more color in your office, you may want to tackle the problem of ignorance.

Talk about hi-res!

2007-10-27T09:43:00.000-04:00

IBM, along with ETH Zurich (a Swiss research lab), recently announced the development of a technology called nano printing. (The original of the much-enlarged image on the left was created by putting down 20,000 gold particles, each about 60 nanometers in diameter.) The researchers came up with a technology that can lay down dots at a resolution of 100,000dpi, using dots of about 60 nanometers in width, a little higher solution than your standard 600dpi or 1,200dpi office printers. Now, this not something that is going into your office. It is clearly intended for creating tiny impressions on optical; chips or wires on tiny devices like biosensors. It could be the way in which semiconductors designers can put even more information on silicon. I like to imagine spies encoding vast databases on a Post-It note. This isn’t going to affect how you print your next memo, but advances in technology have a tendency to migrate both uphill and downhill. Office printers have improved over recent years due to increased accuracy in placing toner and ink, and the IBM breakthrough shows that accuracy can be taken to the ultimate degree.

Green faxing

2007-10-26T14:38:00.000-04:00

Here’s another good reason for managing fax traffic—the ecology. According to business consultant Heather Clancy, the best thing would be for everyone to convert to scan-to-email. But many small businesses, in particular, still have customers and business partners that are still very much wedded to the fax age. But traditional fax machines, as Clancy points out,“are notorious paper wasters and energy drainers to boot.” U.S. government stats show that “paper production is second only to petroleum in terms of energy used by U.S. industries.” And if your fax machines are like ours, sometimes they print almost as many ads for replacement toner, software bargains, and deli menus as they do real faxes. Even more wasteful is the cost of just sitting there waiting, according to Clancy: “Energy Star rates fax machines among the most energy-intensive types of business machines out there because most of the time they sit around turned on, basically doing nothing.” She points to an Energy Star Web page with a linked calculator that can help you determine the hidden costs of faxing here. The solutions are more scan-to-email and high-end network fax software that can intercept faxes, digitize them, store them in a secure environment, and perhaps reroute them by email. Being green may not be a priority of your business, but when being green means saving money and increasing security, it makes sense. Network fax software is available, for example, from MyFax, Equisys (Zetafax), and Captaris (RightFax) among others.

Print 2.0 — Part Two

2007-10-04T15:34:00.000-04:00

Hewlett-Packard’s Print 2.0 initiative, once you get past the marketing hype, is about a series of packages that extend the usefulness of printing for different classes of users. We’ll give a few examples below of new applications where we think HP has made a step forward, and may well help in its goal to have people print even more pages on desktop printers.

Consumers and Small Businesses
One trend that HP has discovered is that while a few years ago, the large majority of pages were printed from standard PC applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Photoshop, etc.), now a growing number of pages come directly from an Internet page (48 percent according to their figures and growing). Web pages have several characteristics for the print market, not least being that (if printed in color) they use up a lot of ink or toner, thanks to colored backgrounds. But as we all know, Web pages often don’t fit on printed pages.

So HP has come up with a program called Smart Web Printing that allows you to combine selections from several Web pages on one printed page. It will automatically resize the content to fit on one or more pages. You can also edit text and delete or resize graphics. This software will be packaged with new HP printers due out in September.

Small and Medium Business
One of the new applications that HP recently purchase is one called Logoworks, a package that allows businesses to put together a whole suit of branding materials (stationery, business cards, etc.), without having to go outside to purchase design services or commercial printing services. The software includes a number of templates that users can simply plug in logo and text.

Enterprise
The big announcement its new Open Extensibility Platform, which provides an application programming interface (API) so that users and third parties can develop interfaces and workflows for high-end printers and especially multifunctionals. With this HP joins copier companies like Canon, Ricoh, and Xerox, which offer this capability for their copier/multifunctionals. It is clear that HP is aiming at that market as one of its key strategies, with both high-speed ink jet and laser multifunctionals that increasingly look like office copiers.

Printer Management
HP’s Web Jetadmin has been the standard for IT department management of printers on the network, and has been a major selling point for HP. HP has upgraded its Office Server software, which adds several impressive layers of administrative controls. It has an impressive list of features, including on-the-fly format conversion, group and individual privilege management, job authentication, accounting, and performance reporting. While this product and the suite of products that extend it has been on the market for a while, HP released a number of enhancements.

There were lots more new announcements (including hardware upgrades and new software alliances. If Print 2.0 is not as quite a big revolution as HP would like to have us believe, it is still an impressive campaign on every front. The HP juggernaut has shifted up a gear and its rivals in the printer market will have to catch up.

Print 2.0 — Part One

2007-10-01T13:17:00.000-04:00

Hewlett-Packard recently rolled out its $300 million Print 2.0 marketing campaign. The term Print 2.0 is based on the growing concept of Web 2.0, generally seen as the second generation of Web use and services.

Basic idea behind Web 2.0 is an increased emphasis on user-to-user communication. Examples of Web 2.0 include YouTube (self-produced film clips), podcasting (shared audio information), FaceBook (social networking), and Wikipedia (an encyclopedia based on shared expertise). Some see the term as marketing hype, but there is no doubt that these programs and others have made it easier for end users to move from becoming simple consumers of the Web to producers and consumers.

So what is Print 2.0? It’s a little confusing at this point. HP sees it as an attempt to move “from selling printers to selling printing.” What that means is something like a move from selling boxes to selling solutions. And it makes sense. HP makes little if any profit on the sales of printing devices, especially in the competitive home and small-office markets. Where it does make money, and lots of it, is in selling consumables: toner and ink, which are high markup items. Hence HP’s emphasis not on selling more printers (they dominate the market for both lasers and ink jets), but on have customers print more pages on those printers (and buying more supplies).

HP, then, is in the midst of figuring out how to entrench and extend its domination. It’s pushing strongly in three areas:
* On the home consumer level, it is providing new software that encourages end users to get creative without necessarily having to buy or master Illustrator or Photoshop
* On the office level, it is putting a strong emphasis on multifunctionals as replacements for office copiers and on the workflow tools related to them
* On the high-end production level, it has been pushing it new Edgeline high-speed ink jet printer-multifunctionals along with a new generation wide-format printers and HP’s jaw-dropping Halo video-conferencing.

We’ll look at some of the specific new products in another post.

Color laser printers – down, down, up!

2007-09-27T16:10:00.000-04:00

We’ve been looking back at issues of the Better Buys for Business Color Laser Guide, and are struck by the amazingly rapid changes in the market.

First, we looked at some typical models from major vendors in 2002. All of these models are letter/legal-size printers and come network-ready. Note that tandem color printers, those that ran at or near the same speed in color and black-and-white, were just coming on the market. These printers are all suitable for small workgroup use and they are pretty representative. At this point, there were very few printers that could print faster than 20ppm in color.

Vendor	Product	Speed	Street price	Est. cost per page
Brother	HL-2400CeN	16ppm black/ 4ppm color	$1,999	2.7 cents (black)/ 10.6 cents (color)
Hewlett-Packard	Color LaserJet 4550 N	16ppm black/ 4ppm color	$2,369	2.2 cents (black)/ 12.7 cents (color)
Lexmark	C750n	20ppm black/ 20ppm color	$3,399	1.4 cents (black)/ 8.9 cents (color)
OKI	C72000n	20ppm black/ 12ppm color	$2,279	1.9 cents (black)/ 9.5 cents (color)
Xerox	Phaser 750N	16ppm black/ 4ppm color	$1,999	1.9 cents (black)/ 9.5 cents (color)

Now we’ll look at some parallel models from our upcoming 2007 guide. Note that there are many more models available, and lots of very speedy tandem models, running at 40ppm and faster in color. These models are again small workgroup-oriented, network-ready printers.

Vendor	Product	Speed	Street price	Est. cost per page
Brother	HL-2700CN	31ppm black/ 8ppm color	$450	3.3 cents (black)/ 13.4 cents (color)
Hewlett-Packard	Color LaserJet 3600n	17ppm black/ 17ppm color	$1,199	2.2 cents (black)/ 12.0 cents (color)
Lexmark	C532n	24ppm black/ 22ppm color	$499	1.4 cents (black)/ 9.8 cents (color)
OKI	C6000n	24ppm black/ 20ppm color	$700	2.6 cents (black)/ 16.3 cents (color)
Xerox	Phaser 6180/N	26ppm black/ 20ppm color	$500	2.4 cents (black)/ 12.2 cents (color)

Two things are noticeable. First, and most obviously, the staggering drop in unit prices along with a major increase in color printing speed. Second, there’s an overall rise in cost per page for these lower-priced units. Note that the most moderate prices belong to the HP models, which has a far higher price tag than the others.

Conclusion: The decline in prices has been countered by a general increase in costs. And as, color printers get faster and users print even more pages in color, the lower unit prices are an enticement for users to buy more and more machines and eventually high-cost toner.