HP Canon & Epson Ink, Lexmark, Brother Toner cartridge Printer Ink Cartridges News

Where’s the least likely place you’d expect to find an inkjet printer?

• a) In your home
• b) At the workplace
• c) In the Skip, along with its messy, expensive cartridges

Many people would likely answer b) to that question (although c. would also be acceptable), as laser is the technology of choice for office printing. Cheap inkjet printers–primarily consumer and home units–have given the inkjet technology a bad name.

That perception may be changing as new technology advances in inkjet printing, coupled with the rise of business colour printing, could make inkjet printers a serious challenger to business-class laser printing.
Sceptical? You should be.
Inkjet technology has largely earned the reputation of being inferior to laser in black-and-white office printing. But if colour printing continues to make inroads in the office, inkjet–which has colour-printing advantages over laser–is getting a second look.
“We see a very large opportunity for ink to be successful in business from SMBs up through the enterprise,” says Hatem Mostafa, senior vice president of Hewlett-Packard’s inkjet systems.
Several inkjet printer manufacturers are developing next-generation inkjet printers, which they say are faster and more reliable than their predecessors.

The Money of Colour

Colour laser is the fastest-growing segment of the Global printer market, with a compound annual growth rate of 15 percent from 2005 to 2010, according to market research firm IDC.
There are some doubts, however, about how much impact colour have on the office, as many businesses are still concerned about the high costs of colour printing. Still, though, if colour reaches even 25 percent of printing in businesses, the door is wide open for inkjet printers. In 2006, the total market for digital hard-copy peripherals, ink and toner supplies was about $35.5 billion, according to IDC.

Two years ago, HP introduced its Scalable Print Technology, the fruit of a $1.4 billion, five-year research and development initiative that changed the way HP designed and made inkjet print heads.
The new print head architecture enables faster development cycles at half the cost, improves the accuracy of ink-drop placement and allows for more nozzles to fit on a single print head. In addition, the print head width, and the number of nozzles and inks can be changed depending on desired performance and cost. That way, the manufacturer can use a single technology to scale from the consumer market all the way up to the enterprise.

At the launch of the new architecture, HP introduced several new photo printers. Since then, it’s also launched several new office products. For instance, last year it released the OfficeJet Pro K550 colour printer, which became the fastest desktop printer in its segment–of any inkjet or laser printer. HP followed that up last March with an all-in-one series, the OfficeJet Pro L7000, positioned for small businesses. The all-in-ones print at speeds comparable to that of low-end colour laser printers and cost about £0.05 pence per colour page–comparable to laser printers in the same class. The printers use new HP ink and paper supplies that enable the ink to dry more quickly.

Most recently, HP rolled out a new line of department-level multifunction printers based on its Edgeline technology, an extension of the Scalable Print technology. Edgeline, which employs a large array of fixed printheads which are stationary and span the width of the page, so that as the paper passes under the printhead the paper moves and not the printhead, which results in more accurate ink-drop placement and potentially faster speeds. HP says the printheads offer improved reliability, less maintenance and lower operating costs.

That’s not to say HP is abandoning its laser-printing business. For now, it’s targeting its ink products at SMBs and company departments, leaving the workgroup printing market to lasers.
Of course, HP isn’t the only major printing and imaging vendor seeking to drive ink deeper into the business space. Ricoh has developed its own ink-based technology for business, called GelSprinter, designed for entry-level monochrome and colour printing, and Xerox has seen year-over-year growth of its solid-ink business since its introduction in the early 1990s.
Xerox now has solid-ink printers and Multi Function Printers in the letter-sized printer line, but the company’s also looking to expand its solid-ink line into other business market segments.

Some solution providers aren’t sold that inkjet could be in their best interests–or in their users’.
HP, for one, says it has reduced maintenance required with the design of its Edgeline printers, but the perceptions around inkjet are still very pervasive in the market.
“A lot of the manufacturers are saying this makes inkjet just as good as laser, but why not just use laser then? Where is the pent-up demand for inkjet?

AT LAST, Ricoh(UK) has managed to get hold of some stock of its much hyped GELSPRINTER Gel Printers for sale in the UK.

The new GelSprinters come hot on the heels of Hewlett Packard’s (HP) Edgeline technology, unveiled in two multi-functional printers (MFPs) last month.

Ricoh UK originally planned to launch its gel-based printers in April 2006, but demand outstripped supply in Japan which meant all of Ricoh’s other territories had to wait for their quota of GelSprinters, with the UK last on the list.

Chas Moloney, Ricoh UK’s marketing director, said: “Ricoh opened a second factory in China so we now have enough GelSprinters available to us.”

The GelSprinters are aimed directly at the SME/SOHO market place and will compete with established players like HP, Epson, Canon et al.

Here at Stinkyink towers we have taken deliveries of the Gel cartridges and in fact shipped our first orders last week. We love anything that upsets the established applecart of high cost printer supplies and hope that Ricoh will succeed with this exciting technology

A company formed from IBM’s printing division has begun operation as a separate entity.

InfoPrint Solutions was announced in January, when IBM revealed that it would partner with Ricoh to spin off its Printing Systems Division into a new company that would progressively be absorbed into Ricoh.

Big Blue will continue to offer InfoPrint Solutions products to its customers and will provide support for the new company, which will inherit a customer base that generated more that $1bn in revenue last year.

IBM also expects that as many as 1,000 of its employees may move to the new business.

“With this launch, we have created a billion-dollar enterprise with the backing of two undisputed industry leaders. Together, we will drive the next generation of innovation in output solutions,” said former IBM Printing Systems head Tony Romero, who will serve as chief executive of InfoPrint Solutions.

Ricoh has paid IBM $725m for a 51 per cent stake in the new entity, as well as prepayment for the remaining 49 per cent transferred over the next three years and “certain royalties and services” to be provided by IBM.

Ricoh hopes that the acquisition will allow it to tap into IBM’s status as an enterprise computing heavyweight and give the printing company access to Big Blue’s vast customer base.

“Today is an historic moment for IBM and Ricoh and more importantly, an industry first,” declared Norio Tanaka, corporate senior vice president of the Production Printing Business Group at Ricoh.

“The creation of Infoprint Solutions brings together the best of two industry leaders, and greatly enhances the Ricoh portfolio of offerings.”

“It all boils down to a question of funding,” said Bob Kilcullen, senior vice president and general manager, InfoPrint solutions management. With the wide range of technologies IBM has in servers, storage, software and services, the vendor’s printing business wasn’t front of the line when it came to receiving investment for research and development (R&D). “Now we drop right into Ricoh’s strategic direction,” he added. “We go from side stage to center stage.”

InfoPrint will look to increase R&D across the board, filling in any gaps in its printer line-up, and integrating Ricoh’s print engine technology into its range of printers. The hope is that InfoPrint with Ricoh’s backing will be better positioned to compete against high-end printer competitors like Oce Technologies, Xerox and Eastman Kodak as well as rivals in the general office printer space, notably Hewlett-Packard.

The only potential area of overlap between IBM’s and Ricoh’s printing operations is in the low-end InfoPrint Express machines, Kilcullen said. IBM sourced those printers from Lexmark and InfoPrint plans to continue and expand that relationship. At the same time, Ricoh is an OEM supplier to Lexmark of print engines. “We’d like to form a three-way relationship to extend the relationships we have with Lexmark and with Ricoh to a higher degree,” he added. Trying to establish such a relationship is a highly complex matter but Kilcullen said that discussions with Lexmark are ongoing.

InfoPrint currently employs around 1,200 staff worldwide. For the first year of its operations, the company will draw on IBM’s printer maintenance experts to continue to provide maintenance services to customers. By June of next year, InfoPrint would look to take on most of those 1,000 experts. In practice, an IBM printer customer should be unaware of any change in maintenance support, with the same person servicing their printers this year and next year.

InfoPrint held a large party on Friday afternoon for employees at its Boulder, Colorado, headquarters to celebrate Monday’s opening for business. Although being spun off from IBM was a traumatic move for some staff, everyone was congratulating each other on the formation of InfoPrint, according to Kilcullen. “I could feel energy in the air,” he said. “This move is so positive for our business and it has been very well received”

Ricoh has launched its latest innovative printer technology in the UK with its range of GelSprinters. The launch has been long awaited as demand for the new printers had outstripped supply in Japan, which meant that the UK has had to wait for its supplies.

The revolutionary new range of desktop printers print with gel, rather than the liquid pigment or dye-based inks used by inkjets. Traditional inkjet printers print by spraying drops of ink through a series of nozzles onto the page. The method is simple and effective but can be slow and doesn’t dry instantly making it all too easy to smudge the print. The GelSprinter process replaces ink with a pigment-based gel. Due to the gel being of a similar level of viscosity to wine, it sits on the surface of the paper instead of sinking into the fibres. This produces an ultra quick drying, sunlight resistant and waterproof finish that apparently does not smudge, blur or bleed. The company state that the technology has “the speed of a laser, but the purchase cost is closer to an inkjet”.

The new Ricoh Aficio GX3000, GX3050N and GX5050N models are the first GelSprinters to be launched in the UK and are said to be capable of a very fast print rate of up to 29 pages per minute in both colour and black and white. Another benefit of the models is the availability of fast automatic duplex printing as standard. With the duplex feature enabled, the paper is instantly drawn back into the printer in order to print on the second side. In comparison, inkjets that duplex print, have to wait for the first side to dry before printing the second and so can be much slower.

Prices for the GelSprinter Aficio range between £128 for the GX3000, £178 for the GX3050N (with full network facilities) and £249 for the GX5050N, which make them an affordable printer for the home, small office or SME.

We are currently trying to get hold of one to try out in our office, and will let you know what sort of results we get from them.

The gel cartridges for these new models are already available here at Stinky Ink at fantastic prices.