TCPglobal - news, views and issues on total cost of printing

Issue #1008/1 – IPEX 2010 at the NEC exhibition centre in Birmingham, UK, was the scene for the first showing of several new high-speed continuous feed web production print units – utilising inkjet technology – and pointing the way towards the future of production printing. Could this development ultimately influence the office printing market?

Issue #1007/1 – Reports are emerging of an academic study, involving both Microsoft and the Institute of Directors in the UK, suggesting that remote working will/should expand dramatically and that companies should reduce their office space in favour of either home working or renting space for employees in shared bureau facilities – or both. This would have major implications on the way IT is delivered and also on the profile of the printer and MFP market. This article considers some of the conditions, benefits and downsides relating to the demise of the office as we know it, together with consequences for printer and MFP manufacturers.

Issue #1006/1 – Q. When is a printer error not a printer error? A. When it is a routine maintenance issue requiring little more than sliding one box out and another box in. Many inkjet printers have a killer-trigger that makes the owner believe there is a serious problem and that the printer could have failed altogether. This is far from the truth and something the manufacturers do not clarify.

Issue #0937/1 - During a round table session at a recent industry briefing, a guest presenter made that – oh, so classic – comment, “I just want to print”. Although there are many, many different aspects to this simple statement, it often seems as if it just isn’t going to be like that.

Issue 0926/1 – Related to the recent article "Hewlett-Packard plugs the gap – Extended alliance with Canon brings MFP hardware to bolster expanding Hewlett-Packard MPS offering", Hewlett-Packard admits that the traditional hardware sales model will no longer work and that the company must do whatever it can to access pages rather than printers. It is the migration from analogue to digital that has prompted this reappraisal of the marketing approach needed but why has the electronic age actually resulted in a rise in the number of pages being printed when we are told that we are supposed to be expecting a paperless environment?