2nd February 2021: Well, maybe not quite! But using wine boxes as ink tanks in large format printers provides a significant eco-advantage by removing almost all the plastic from the printer consumables, thus meeting the demand in the user base for more sustainable products.
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The year was 2009! And the month, November! The first ‘web-connect’ or ‘smart’ printers arrived on the scene! And we thought, “Oooh, that’s clever”! Now, as we’re getting frightening close to the end of yet another decade, I’ve been pondering on whether the next development in the printer arena could be the introduction of a true multi-function, multi-tasking ‘Office Hub’ and ‘Home Hub’.
News items appear in the media at least once a year (at Christmas), informing us of the scale of growth of internet shopping. Time was when locating Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) supplies for your printer was easy and users wanting to hold fast to their principle to buy OEM consumables had a choice of many suppliers. Now? Not so easy! In fact, a user may have to work really hard to find OEM supplies at all, let alone have a decent choice of where to buy them.
Ever been frustrated that the print you urgently needed half an hour ago has failed for the 10th time? Of course! Well, one modern reason for that failure may be your WiFi! One favourite statistic often quoted was that printers accounted for 40% of helpdesk calls – I’d like to think that this percentage has fallen in recent years but, as we enter more and more into the mobile, wireless age, that percentage could start to rise again.
CISS (Continuous Ink Supply System), conceived by the third party ink supply industry many years ago, has so challenged the printer manufacturers that in the last year or two several of them have come up with a couple of different ways to combat the threat to their own original ink supplies. Obviously seeing some success in its implementation of a CISS response with some of its inkjet printers, HP has now launched a laser printer using the same concept of ‘2-year’s-worth’ of toner.
Although Hewlett-Packard/HP Inc. (HP) has long had one of the widest ranges of printer hardware on the market, the high end A3 and copier spaces have consistently evaded the company. Coming in the spring of 2017, through (originally) an alliance with the Samsung printer division, which HP has now agreed to buy for $1Bn, together with development of its own A3 PageWide inkjet print head and engine, the company is attacking the A3 and copier spaces head on.
Individuals, home buyers in particular, are not fed enough of the important information at the right time to help them make the right choice of printer. Whether the printer uses dye or pigment ink can be a critical element of the purchase decision – if only the customer knew the difference and the implications.
I have just, this morning, received my postal ballot paper for the UK’s referendum on membership of the European Union. Guess what? The weather is not great at the moment, it is raining, and it turns out that the envelope the ballot paper was posted in has been printed using dye based ink! Result? Smudged text!
Aware that business customers are concerned about a raft of printing issues, including space, economy and security, Hewlett-Packard claims its latest range of laser printers and MFPs, announced last week, are the ‘-est’ LaserJets ever produced thanks to its new ColorSphere3 toner formulation and Page Maximiser technology – grouped under the ‘JetIntelligence cartridge technology’ banner – and JetAdvantage Private Print technology.
Despite the fact that third party, or ‘compatible’, ink cartridges are priced to undercut the original cartridges from the printer manufacturer (often by a huge percentage), testing shows that the quality of the compatible inks and cartridges does not match the quality of the printer manufacturer’s original inks and cartridges, severely compromising the printed result and even the health of the printer itself. The user experience may be badly affected even if the costs of running the printer are reduced by buying the cheap ink.
