Dell Wasabi to bring portable printing to Asia

Sure, Polaroid might be 6ft under (or is it?), but casual photo enthusiasts can still enjoy instant gratification with Dell's Wasabi PZ310 Mobile Printer, just announced today in the US.

The Wasabi uses Zero-Ink (ZINK) technology that replaces cumbersome print cartridges with dye crystals embedded right into the proprietary ZINK paper. The crystals are heated as the paper passes through the printer, rendering clear, sharp images in less than a minute for each 2 x 3-inch photo.

ZINK also licenses its technology to other companies for their own unique products. For example, look for cameras and ZINK printers to converge in the Polaroid Pogo, to be released in the spring.
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Green printer that prints using coffee dregs as ink

We've seen plenty of printers in our time at CNET Asia, but this one is most definitely to our taste. Korean designer Jeon Hwan Ju, likely a beans person, has percolated a potent brew that utilizes coffee or tea dregs as the replacement ink for the printer. The result is the RITI inkbox, which probably is good for only sepia printouts, but is the kind of green tech we like very much. Coffee or tea dregs are placed into the cartridge, mixed with a little water. However, using this requires powering it along with a little muscle, moving the cartridge left and right in the slot while drawing on the paper. Not quite the most efficient workhorse for your home business, but at least it's the only aromatic printout you can personalize, from Lipton to Lavazza.
Via Core77

Sony patents Surface-like photo printer

At CES last year I was lucky enough to get a chance to spend a good half hour with a prototype of the Microsoft Surface device. Since then, I've been to the campus in Redmond a few times and have seen a few more things it can do. It's promising technology, but Microsoft's going to have to hustle to get it to market if it wants to stay impressive, as other groups, like Sony, look to be rushing their own versions into the world.

Take this patent Sony recently filed for a digital printer. Using a touchscreen UI, the printer wirelessly downloads photos from your (Sony-only, probably) digital camera. Then you can preview them on the screen and decide which ones to print.

It's likely you'll have options like red-eye fixes, cropping, and other basic image adjustments built in. The thing is, the camera download thing is one of the many things the Surface can do. If Sony can beat Microsoft in bringing that technology home, then it's one less exciting thing about the Surface.

That being said, this is still in the patent stage and nobody (that we know of) has seen a prototype yet. Maybe CES next year?

Via CNET Crave

Report: HP printers a hit in Iran

Hewlett-Packard printers, like blue jeans in the old Soviet Russia, are apparently a hot item among consumers in Iran.

According to a report in Monday's Boston Globe, a third-party distributor in Dubai has been selling HP printers in Iran since 1997. That's two years after President Clinton signed an order banning all trade with the country. If HP executives cut the deal with the Dubai company, called Redington Gulf, knowing it intended to sell HP products into Iran, the deal could be a violation of trade law, according to the Globe.

But did HP know what the small Dubai outfit was doing? As the Globe reported, the distributor's Web site says it began in 1997 "as a team of five people and...HP supplies as our first product, we started operations as the distributor for Iran." The article also quotes an HP executive in the late 1990s enthusiastically discussing sales in Iran.
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Laser printers don't emit harmful toner dust, study says

Tiny bits of toner wafting from laser printers can't be blamed for polluting indoor air, according to research released this week.

In 2007, a study from Queensland University of Technology in Australia suggested that breathing toner particles from printers could hurt the lungs as much cigarette smoke.

But researchers from that school and the Fraunhofer Wilhelm Klauditz Institute in Germany have found no evidence to support that claim, after examining the makeup of chemicals released from laser printers.

They determined that such airborne materials include paraffins and silicon oils that evaporate when a printer's fixing unit, which attaches dry toner ink to paper, reaches temperatures as high as 428 degrees Fahrenheit.


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