Posts in Printers
HP introduces new "green" label for products
Erica Ogg | May 22, 2008
Not as in refurbished and resold, but a new Deskjet that is composed of 83 percent recycled plastic. Hewlett-Packard is introducing a new green-focused label for some of its peripherals, and one of the first items under that label is the aforementioned D2545 printer.
HP hopes to tempt the environmentally conscious as well as those looking for a bargain with the D2545, which retails for US$45. Even the ink cartridges it uses are made of recycled plastic resins.
The printer is one of several products that will fall under the HP Eco Highlights label. So far it also includes three LaserJet printers (P4015x, P4515x, and P4515xm models). HP says the label will list the environmental attributes of the product, and will eventually encompass all products the company offers.
HP recycles tons of dead tech products every year, so it makes sense that it's able to make products from the materials it recycles. So while consumers are becoming much more aware of the environmental impact of the products we use, and even businesses are beginning to see the boon that green policies are to their bottom lines, why not make this standard instead of an outlier?
HP responded that by 2010,100 percent of its Deskjet printers will contain some recycled materials, and will increase by three times the number of inkjet printers made from recycled materials.
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9-in-1 printer--makes you multitask
Leonard Goh | May 16, 2008
All-in-One (AIO) printers touting three to four features such as copying, scanning and faxing are aplenty. But when we received news of a 9-in-1 AIO, that blew us off. Well, almost.
Brother's MFC-885CW has to be one of the most feature-packed printer's we've seen this year. This color inkbox can not only print, scan, copy and fax, it is also capable of direct photo printing from a flash card or USB drive and PC fax. That's six features already. Ready for the weird-yet-wonderful? The Wi-Fi-enabled printer incorporates a cordless phone, built-in speakerphone and, to sweeten the deal, the gizmo is an answering machine, too.
Set on the printer is a nice 4.2-inch color widescreen display (one of the biggest we've seen for an AIO), which you can use to view photos or edit (tweak colors or remove red-eye) before printing.
The MFC-885CW is a part of the new lineup of printers that Brother is launching this year for its 100th anniversary. It's available now for S$528 (US$388.24).
For an additional 50 bucks, you can even make it dispense coke and toast bread. Just kidding.
A bucket full of printing needs
Leonard Goh | May 14, 2008
Before printing, the CP770 can automatically adjust the brightness of images for optimum print results or to correct red-eye effects. While making the 300 x 300dpi print, the printer also applies a thin overcoat of lamination over the paper to prevent smudging and to extend the longevity of the picture.
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Samsung showcases world's fastest laser printers
Leonard Goh | May 12, 2008These printers are not targeted at the usual home users but geared more toward corporations and enterprise.
The MultiXpress 6555N is a digital mono laser MFP capable of churning out 53 pages per minute (ppm). It comes with an 80GB built-in harddisk for storing files that are sent over the network. The A4-MFP also sports a 7-inch color touchscreen for accessing the menus. The 6555N succeeds the 6345N which prints at 43ppm.
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New way to save energy: Disappearing ink
Michael Kanellos | May 01, 2008
Think of it as the future of today's paper.
The Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) and parent company Xerox are experimenting with a type of paper and a complimentary printer that would produce documents that fade away after 16 to 24 hours. A restaurant, for instance, could print its daily specials on a piece of paper, attach the pieces of paper to menus, and then collect the sheets of then-blank paper in the morning to run through the printer again.
This piece of paper is blank, but about
eight hours ago it said, 'Reusable Paper.
Xerox Parc Inside Innovation at Xerox'
in block purple letters.
(Credit: Michael Kanellos/CNET Networks)
Users don't have to wait for the paper to fade either. By running it through the special printer made for this paper, the printer will erase the old image before putting the new one on.
The paper and printer could hit the market in a few years.
The same sheets of paper can be run through the printer hundreds of time, according to tests conducted by Xerox, said Eric Shrader, area manager, energy systems, device hardware laboratory at Xerox. Typically, the paper isn't reusable only when it gets damaged or crumpled.
The idea is to cut the amount of energy consumed in making paper and printing. Like refurbished PC makers have noted, reusing an item consumes a lot less power than making a new one, or even recycling one.
It takes about 204,000 joules to make a sheet of paper, Shrader said. That's about the same amount of power required to run a 60-watt light bulb for an hour, he added. Recycling that same sheet of paper takes about 114,000 joules.
Printing a conventional 8x11.5 sheet of paper takes about 2,000 joules, he said.
Reusable paper takes a lot less effort. It only takes 1,000 joules to print an image on one of Xerox's reusable sheets of paper, and that's if you use the printer to erase the image. If you let the image fade naturally, it only takes about 100 joules to print. It takes energy to produce the special paper, but the energy consumed in recycling fades out.
"Being able to reuse paper is a big energy win," Shrader said.
Energy has become a major focus of research at PARC over the last three years. The lab, which Xerox opened in the '70s, helped create the PC, inkjet printing, and Ethernet networking. Xerox, however, didn't commercialize a lot of these inventions successfully; instead, companies like Apple borrowed liberally from the lab to great effect. PARC now functions relatively independently, coming up with inventions to license to others.
Not every document is right for reusable paper. Presentations and legal contracts probably need to be printed on something more permanent. But lunch menus, daily work summaries, and memos from meetings can all potentially take advantage of this. Xerox says that 44.5 percent of documents are printed for one-time use and 25 percent of all documents printed get recycled the same day. (Lyra Research estimates that 15.2 trillion pages get printed worldwide a year, a figure that will grow 30 percent over the next 10 years.)
"Think of the Google map you printed to get here," Shrader said. "Thirty years ago, we said the future was paperless."
The paper and the printer will be a little bit more expensive than their conventional counterparts. The photosensitive molecule embedded in the paper is proprietary.
While the paper shown in the photo is yellow with purple ink that appeared later, Xerox has produced white paper and can come up with a variety of ink colors. The company, however, has used yellow paper as an example so that focus groups know what sheets to reuse and which to recycle.
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