Toshiba Does its best David Blaine!

Last week we saw two major stories from Toshiba with the press release of copier/MFP that has disappearing toner (erasable), and then a program that will magically reformat your pre-printed pages along with claims to save toner and paper (Adobe Lean Print). Erasable toner, great idea, but who the heck wants to print in blue? Do you get the feeling that this is may be the last hurray for Toshiba?  What happens if Lean Print and Erasable Paper do not increase Toshiba’s MIF (machines in field)?

Existing Toshiba copiers will not be able to erase the toner on the paper, in order to have the erasable toner feature you’ll have to shell out some shekels for a new Toshiba MFP.  Plus, it’s been reported that a latent image will still remain on the page even after the toner has been removed.  Personally, I don’t think the Feds will be buying any of these systems. I’m not sold on either one of these new releases from Toshiba. It seems Toshiba has created some traction in recent weeks, but I doubt either of these new features will increase sales for the long term.  Adobe Lean Print at $99 per user seems a little pricing and what happens if you don’t like the way lean print will magically reformat your pages, you’ll have to print the documents again and again.  Where the heck is the savings now?   One of the videos that show the reformatting of twelve pages to four, Adobe Lean print reformats the single pages to three columns per page looking more like a news paper article.  You can get a better view here of what the pages look like.  I’m finding hard to believe that the font size will not be smaller from the original document.  I going to check give the 30 day trial a shot and see what happens, more importantly I’m trying to think of applications that I would use this for, as of right now I got nothing.

As far as the erasable toner goes, when was the last time you ran the same sheet of paper through a copy machine five times?  The Toshiba MFP system uses heat to remove the toner image, I can only think after using the same sheet of paper times there’s going to be some degrading of the paper. 

 Here's paragraph from House of Japan

"This is a special kind of toner that loses its color when heated, so this technology makes it look as if the printing has disappeared. With this system, one sheet of photocopy paper can be used at least five times, so this product combines economy with ecology."

So back to my initial thoughts, both of these releases have some WOW & Sizzle factor to them.  With Toshiba at a paltry 3% of the US market share I’m thinking it’s more of a flash in the pan and Toshiba may finally wave the white flag when it comes to manufacturing copiers.

-=Good Selling=-

MFP Weekend Industry Notes from 1/04/2010

- Microsoft co-founder, Paul Allen, announced he is renewing his effort to sue Apple, Google, Facebook, eBay, AOL and other companies for patent infringement. The patents at issue are owned by Interval Research, which was founded by Allen and Xerox’s David Liddle in 1992.


- Pitney Bowes announced that Patrick Keddy, Executive VP and President, will retire at end of year.

- Hewlett Packard announced it sold an Indigo W7200 production color system to Schmidt Printing of Byron, Minnesota.

- Adobe Corp. reported it first billion dollar quarter. In the fourth quarter of fiscal 2010, Adobe achieved record revenue of $1.008 billion.

- Brother announced a new promotion where customers who buy replacement ink cartridges get a free music download from EMI.

- Fuji, maker of most Xerox copiers, announced that future models will have “Smart Power Saving Technology”, where power will provided on an as needed basis. For example, if end user is scanning, then power is not supplied to print engine to save electricity.

- Impact of proposed new leasing rules studied. PricewaterhouseCoopers stated that it conducted a survey of the impact of proposed new rules that would do away with off-balance-sheet accounting for equipment leases. The study revealed that 24% of companies surveyed would experience an increase in debt of over 25%.

- Kyocera (aka Kyoto Ceramic Company) announced the following awards won:

o BLI stated that test of FS-1320D and FS-1370DN b/w laser printers delivered “flawless” reliability

o Industry Analysts Inc. gave “most reliable” rating to TASKalfa 250ci and TASKalfa 300ci color laser MFPs

o BERTL gave “Outstanding” ratings to FS-C2125MFP and FS-3140MFP

- Kyocera announced it now offers an embedded/panel integration HyPAS connector for docSTAR Eclipse document management system.

- Office Products Analyst Inc. stated that in a recent survey of 232 printshop owners:

o Kodak NexPress production color systems were rated the most reliable

o Sharp b/w MFPs (not production units) were rated most reliable

o Canon products were least reliable.

- Canon apparently is planning on selling a LCD manufacturing division to Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. of Taiwan (aka Foxconn) for $1.2 billion.

- Canon announced it plans on buying controlling interest in Altair Nanotechnologies Inc. of Reno, NV, which makes lithium ion electrical energy storage systems.

- A new survey conducted by Lexmark finds that 7 out of 10 offices workers that have access to wireless connection to their printers do not use it, due to connectivity and security issues.
- According to Contextworld, the best selling desktop color laser printer in the world is the Samsung CLP-315, beating out the HP Color LaserJet CP2025n by twice as many sales.

-=Good Selling=-

MFP Industry Notes from Around the World!

Special thanx to Print4Pay Hotel Members from around the world and a few moles in very good places!Take a moment and join the largest group of copier professionals in the world. Here's the link for the P4P Hotel forums

- Intel announced it is spending $1.4 billion to buy Infineon, maker of wireless network technology, which is found in Apple products.

- Adobe announced it will partner with Monotype Imaging to provide print drivers to MFP and printer makers. The two companies will offer a package that includes PCL, PostScript and XPS drivers, to compete against other makers like Global Graphics & Zoran.

- Hewlett Packard announced it won a managed print services contract from AIB in Ireland.

o 5 year contract

o Reduced fleet from one device for every 4 employees to one for every 12

o Included MFPs and LaserJet 4250dtn and Color LaserJet 4700dtn laser printers

o Included SafeCom solution to allow ID card readers on devices for authentication

o Claims to have reduced operating costs from 20-30%

- Hewlett Packard is sued. About 1 year ago, HP announced a partnership with large commercial printer, R.R. Donnelley, to develop variable data technologies. Now R.R. Donnelley has filed a lawsuit against HP over alleged patent violations, claiming that the violations are “willful and deliberate.”

- Hewlett Packard is fighting a claim by security firm, Zscaler Labs, that hackers can use the Webscan feature to capture images from documents that are left in Hewlett Packard scanners and MFPs that have an embedded Web server. Michael Sutton of Zscaler Labs claims that he was able to find many HP scanners on the Internet.

- Hewlett Packard announced it sold an Indigo 7000 production color system to Color By, a printshop in Italy.

- Hewlett Packard agreed to pay $55 million to settle claims it paid kickbacks so companies would recommend its products to U.S. government agencies.

- Hewlett Packard announced it won an $800 million bid to provide laptops and desktop PCs to U.S. Air Force.

- Hewlett Packard won a bidding war against Dell over both companies’ attempt to buy 3PAR Corp., which make data storage technology for cloud computing. HP will pay $2.1 billion for the firm. Details on 3PAR:

o founded 11 years ago by former Sun Microsystems employees

o original stock price was $10 per share, but sold at $33 per share

o the letters “P”, “A” and “R” stand for names of three founders

o based in Fremont, CA

o 670 employees

- Hewlett Packard announced study by BLI that apparently shows end users will have less print quality and service issues if they use official HP ColorLok paper with their color laser devices. Using ColorLok paper supposedly will lead to 4 times fewer faults and more than 4 times fewer paper path obstructions.

- IBM Corp. has beat a breach of contract lawsuit that accused the company of shorting a current sales rep on a commission he claimed he was owed in connection with a $3.8 million in licensing feeds Motorola Corp. paid IBM for software patents.

- IBM claims it has developed the world’s fastest microprocessor chip, running at 5.2GHz.

- Epson is fighting to keep an internal report private in a lawsuit. Apparently it was released by a disgruntled former executive, and may detail a misrepresentation of the quality of Epson inkjet cartridges.

- International Data Corporation (IDC) gave out it findings of worldwide market sales of printers and MFPs in last quarter:

o Includes inkjet and laser devices, from desktop to printshop

o total market grew 20%

o 29 million units shipped

o Total value increased by 14% to $13.3 billion

o B/w laser MFPs grew 39.7% (the first time that b/w had more growth than color)

o Color laser MFPs grew 33%

o HP shipped 2.8 million laser units, and 11.9 units total including inkjet

o Samsung color laser MFPs grew 55% to 108,731 units

o Samsung b/w laser MFPs grew 54% to 500,777 units

o 9 million total laser based units shipped

o 66% of market belonged to inkjet technology (primarily home use devices)

o Inkjet grew 14% to 19 million units

o 78% of inkjet units were MFPs

o In U.S., total shipments grew 14.4%

- Ricoh announced it sold an Aficio PRO C720s production color system to Noel-Baker School and Language College in England.

- Kodak announced a new solution partnership for its high speed scanners. The Kodak scanners, with the optional Kodak Capture Pro Software, now integrates with CAPSYS CAPTURE to create workflows for document management systems.

- In a study of 410 small companies conducted by 1&1 Internet Ltd:

o 37% reported that money is lost from employees failing to share updated versions of documents

o 53% are held back by poor archiving of emails and documents

o 59% of business owners are unable to amend documents when they are off premises

o Over half of business owners believe that their staff is wasting money with excessive printing

- IT departments across the country are facing a looming Microsoft Windows 7 migration deadline, as support for Windows XP will end in 4 years. Gartner study shows:

o Many are starting their migrations at end of 2010

o IT budgets will need to increase between 20% to 60% to accommodate the updates

o Cost of IT labor will also increase

o Estimated migration cost per PC will be between $1205 and $1999

o Capital costs account for 60% of total replacement cost

o Average business will have to replace 25% of its PC early

- The Marin County Board of Supervisors of California voted to stop the implementation of an SAP project, and admitted to wasting over $30 million when it awarded the SAP project to Deloitte Consulting. Marin County has sued Deloitte to get its money back.

- Worldox, maker of document management systems (DMS) to the legal industry, announced it won a contract from Hoskin, Farina & Kampf, a law firm in Colorado. Total cost = $32,975.00

- Microsoft was forced to apologize to attendees of a tradeshow in Australia. The company had hired female models for its booth, but apparently was unaware that they would show up wearing bikinis.

- Microsoft cofounder, Paul Allen is suing Apple, Google and 9 other companies claiming they are violating patents he owns

- Apple has sued Kodak, claiming it violated some of its digital camera patents.

- NER Data Corp, which was a maker of compatible toner cartridges, announced it has sold that business, and now plans on becoming a national provider of managed print services, using genuine HP cartridges.

- Lexmark was ordered by a judge to pay $8.3 million to compensate its California employees for a flawed “use it or lose it” vacation pay policy. Judge Greg Alarcon ruled that 178 employees should be compensated for vacation time they did not use before they were terminated.

- Sharp announced it hired Eric Hafter, to run its new Solar Energy Solutions Group, reporting to CEO, Kozo Takahashi.


- Now that Peerless has sold its print controller business to Kyocera, it only has 4 employees in a 2,000 square foot office, and is part owner of Highbury Financial.


- Sharp announced a new A3 color laser MFP, called the MX-2310F featuring:

o 23ppm top speed

o 4 tandem OPC drum design

o New compact design, smaller than other Sharp A3 color MFPs

o Uses a polymer resin frame, to reduce weight of main unit by one third of other SharA3 color MFPs (is this first copier to have a frame that is not made of metal?)

o Uses 77% less power

o Uses LEDs in scanning section instead of fluorescent lamps

o Faster warm up time

o Standby mode uses only 1 watt of power

o Uses new Sharp Microtoner HG2 toner

o 7” touch screen LCD control panel

o Ship data and pricing not yet announced

- A 44 year old man is being pursued in United Arab Emirates after attempting to cash two fake $1 million dollar bills made on a color copier.

- Bret Rhind and Debra Roberson of Missouri were charged with making fake currency using a color copier after they attempted to spend it at Walmart, Target and Lowes. The phony cash was passed in 19 states, and included fake $50 and $100 bills.

- Pitney Bowes announced that it spent $210,000 in the second quarter of 2010 to lobby the federal government. The company’s FM division, called PMBS, is now run by Vicki O’Meara, who was hired after the division reported a 5% drop in revenue in early 2010

-=Good Selling=-

MFP Weekend Industry Notes 8/22/10

Special thanx to Print4Pay Hotel Members from around the world and a few moles in very good places!Take a moment and join the largest group of copier professionals in the world. Here's the link for the P4P Hotel forums.

- The U.S. Commerce Department stated that businesses have boosted their spending on equipment and software by 21.9% in the second quarter of 2010. Related:
o KPMG stated its survey showed that 35% of manufacturing executives expect to increase spending on equipment/software in 2010
o 27% of service company executives will increase spending

- According to InfoTrends, color printing will gain share of revenue (equipment, supplies and service) from 65% to 77% in 2014.

- Muratec launches the MFX-2590 featuring:
o A4 b/w laser desktop MFP
o Actually made by Muratec
o 8.5” color LCD control panel
o Base MSRP of $3995
o 25ppm top speed
o 600x600dpi
o Copy/scan/print/fax standard

- Oce’, a division of Canon, announced it would relabel a Brother A4 b/w laser MFP, and call it the Oce’ VarioLink 3200x with top speed of 32ppm.

- Oce’ announced that it won a facilities management contract from Rolls-Royce Aerospace. Oce’ claims it is saving the firm up to 735,000 euros, and reduced the fleet by 100 machines.

- Office Products Analyst announced the results of its annual Color MFP End User survey. Details:
o based on respondents from survey sent to businesses across the U.S.
o users were ask to rate the performance and effectiveness of their color laser MFP in the following categories:
 total cost of operation
 operability/functionality
 image quality
 workstation/network compatibility
o The manufacturer that received the greatest number of first place ratings was
= Konica Minolta
o The manufacturer that received the highest overall average rating was
= Konica Minolta

-Ricoh apparently will be relabeling a Brother made desktop unit, and call it the FAX1190L for $595 MSRP. (manufacturer’s suggested retail price)

-A scientist from Argonne National Laboratory, named Mr. Vilas G. Pol, claims that he has invented a way to make toner from discarded plastic grocery bags.

- Hewlett Packard announced it sold two Indigo 5500 digital color systems to L&L Printers of San Diego, CA. It also sold an Indigo 7500 system to ORWO Net of Germany.

- The Japanese government fined Hewlett Packard $270 million for underreporting its taxable income.

- A group of investors is suing former HP CEO, Mark Hurd, claiming his disclosures surrounding his resignation led to a drop in share value.

- Microsoft announced it will release a record number of patches for its operating systems next week. All told, Microsoft will release 14 security update bulletins, fixing 34 vulnerabilities.

- Offset press maker, Heidelberg of Germany, reported a net loss of 52 million euros and announced that it will lay off an additional 278 workers.

- Better Buys For Business magazine gave out its annual “Editor’s Choice” awards for high speed b/w systems to:
o Konica Minolta bizhub PRO 950
o Konica Minolta bizhub PRO 1051
o Konica Minolta bizhub PRO 1200
o Kodak DigiMaster EX series
o Canon imageRUNNER 7095
o Canon imagePRESS 1100 series
o Ricoh PRO 907/1101/1357
o Oce’ VarioPrint 4110/4120
o Xerox 4127
o Xerox Nuvera series

- ABBYY of Moscow, Russia, maker of OCR (optical character recognition) software, celebrated its 21st anniversary. It also celebrated its 10th anniversary of marketing its products in the U.S. (currently in court battle with Nuance and Iris of Belgium over validity of OCR patents)

- Kofax, maker of middleware software to connect MFPs and scanners to document management applications, announced it won a $2.3 contract from the U.S. military, for use in HR department. (Kofax competes with Nuance eCopy and NSi AutoStore)

- Sharp launched the “Portal Connector” for its OSA (open source architecture) equipped MFPs. Details:
o enables network scanning directly from MFP to key corporate applications
o scan to Microsoft SharePoint
o available to Sharp dealers who belong to the Sharp AIP (authorized integrator program)
o free for M283N, M363N, M453N, M503N, M623N and M753N models
o $349 for other models

- Sharp makes an executive change. John Herrington, formerly of LG Electronics, was named President of the consumer electronics division of Sharp USA, reporting to Toshihiko Tanimoto.

- Anvik, a Hawthorne, N.Y.-based maker of lithography systems, won a patent case against Sharp Corp., which could cost Sharp billions in damages.
o Originally filed in 2007, the suit said Sharp had infringed on Anvik's patents by importing liquid crystal display televisions that were manufactured using a method Anvik had invented.
o Sharp tried to get the case dismissed in 2009, saying that Anvik's patents did not apply because they were methods of use rather than manufacture. But Judge Stephen C. Robinson of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York disagreed.

- Samsung of Korea launched the world’s lowest priced A4 desktop b/w laser MFP, called the SCX-4623W, which will offer 23ppm for $249. Toner cartridge has yield of 1,500 pages (based on 5% per page coverage) and sell for $62.99. Dell announced it will relabel it and call it the Dell 1135N.

- Samsung announced a new option for its laser MFPs, called the SCM SCR3310, which provides a Common Access Card reader for $299.99.

- The State of Washington announced that an audit found that Office Depot overcharged taxpayers $306,017 over three months for office supplies.

- Nuance, owner of eCopy, announced its last quarter’s financials:
o net loss of $1.5 million
o net income grew to $91.3 million from $73.3 million
o operating margin rose to 32.9% from 32.6%
o revenue up 13.4% to $273.2 million
o revenue from healthcare and dictation solutions rose 16.5%
o eCopy division revenue up 102% to $35.8 million

- IBM announced it acquired Datacap Inc., maker of document capture software, and headquartered in Tarrytown, NY.
- More details on the PREO Printelligence software being offered as an option by both Xerox and Toshiba:
o used in conjunction with a managed print services program
o made in Calgary, Canada
o software claims it can predict toner usage/coverage per page for each color before end user actually prints the page
 it can only predict, as it does not actually measure the amount of toner applied, instead counts pixels
o software delivers balloon messages to end users’ PC to drive behavior, so end user is not guaranteed that the toner coverage stated is accurate
o collects data on printing behavior

- Adobe Corp. announced it has promoted David Wahhwani to Senior VP and GM of Creative & Interactive Solutions, reporting directly to COR, Shantanu Narayen. Senior CP John Loiacono has been appointed to lead the new Digital Media Solutions division, also reporting to Narayen.

- Long Island University announced it is giving all incoming freshman free Apple iPad computers. The same offer was also made by the School of Medicine at the University of California – Irvine.

-=Good Selling=-

MFP Weekend Industry Notes

Gathered from Print4Pay Hotel Members from around the world and a few moles in very good places!

- Inkstop, a 150 location chain of stores that refill ink and toner cartridges, announced it is going out of business due to bankruptcy.

- Brian Parisi Copiers Co. announced it has acquired the former Harden Furniture building in Clarence, New York

- Toshiba announced it is bidding on building a new nuclear plant in Kozloduy, Bulgaria.

- According to white paper released by Kofax document imaging software:
- Over 20 million tons of office paper is consumed each year in the U.S.
- Federal government consumes 110,000 tons of paper annually
- Cost to file a single paper document is $20
- Searching for a misfiled document costs $120
- Reproducing a lost document costs $220
- 90% of medical patient related info is still paper based
- 31% of every dollar spent on healthcare is spent on admin costs
- Only 8% of the country’s 5000 hospitals use automated electronic patient records
- Only 17% of the country’s 800,000 physicians use automated electronic patient records
- 75% of companies surveyed employ paper based processes to manage AP
- Average cost to process an invoice is $37
- Average time to process an invoice of 33 days
- Accounts payable staff spends 40% of their time researching response info
- Document capture software market grew by 7.7M in 2008
- By 2012, document capture software sales expected to net $.27 billion

- According to a study conducted by the New England Journal of Medicine:
- 90% of all patient information remains on paper
- Only 8% of 3,000 hospitals studied used even a basic electronic medical records (EMR) system
- Only 1.5% of non-federal U.S. facilities use a comprehensive EMR
- Only 17% of doctors are using even a basic EMR system
- 12% are going through an EMR system de-installation

- According to survey conducted by Oce’:
- Commonly quoted 7% average toner coverage per page is actually more like 16%
- Abandoned documents account for up to 25% of all print jobs
- On average, 30% of IT helpdesk support time is spent on printers/MFPs
- The average time it takes to print a 40 page document on a desktop printer is 5 minutes

- Toshiba announced it plans on spending $2.2 billion expand its plant that builds NAND memory chips in Yokkaichi City, Japan

- In cost cutting moves, Dell Computer announced it will:
- spend $120 million to transfer its manufacturing plant in Poland to Foxconn Technology
- lay off 700 workers at its Malaysian plant
- close its plant in North Carolina

- OfficeMax is suing former sales reps for breach of their non-compete contract when they left for rival W. B. Mason Co. Inc. in New England.

- Adobe Corp. is warning users of a virus that can allow hackers to take over end user’s PCs. The virus can be embedded in a PDF, and be inadvertently unleashed on the PC after downloading the PDF attachment in email. Adobe has yet to release a fix to prevent this problem.

- According to Raymond James & Associates, IT shipments will increase 4.3% in 2010. FBR Capital Markets is projecting IT spending to increase 1.6% in 2010.

- The Wisconsin Supreme Court refused to review a court case that was lost by Xerox regarding how much tax it must pay in the state.

-=Good Selling=-

MFP Weekend Industry Notes 11/19/09

Gathered from Print4Pay Hotel Members from around the world and a few moles in very good places!

- Hewlett Packard reported info on its fourth quarter financials:
- Revenue down 8%
- Revenue estimate for fiscal year of $119 billion
- MFP/printer division revenue dropped 20% to $5.7 billion
- Printer shipments dropped 23%

- Hewlett Packard has agreed to reduce its claim against bankrupt Circuit City to only $70.5 million.
- Hewlett Packard announced it will spend $2.7 billion to acquire 3Com Corp. Details:
- will now compete head to head with Cisco for network switching and routing equipment
- 3Com was founded in 1979 by Bob Metcalfe, and retired in 1990
- Bob Metcalfe invented Ethernet, while working for Xerox
- ship the first Ethernet adaptor in 1981
- 3Com sold its first PC Ethernet in 1982
- becomes world’s largest manufacturer of network interface cards (NICs)

- Hewlett Packard announced it won a managed print services contract from Leighton Contractors of Australia. Leighton employs 9,000 people in Australia and New Zealand. HP will reduce the fleet from a seven-to-one user to printer ratio to 10-to-one.

- Kyocera apparently has chosen to use PrintFleet software for its KYOfleetmanager managed print services program.

- Intel agreed to pay AMD a whopping $1.25 billion to settle an anti-trust lawsuit filed against the company by AMD.

- Kodak announced it is reducing its staff in British Columbia and shifting work to Israel. This will reduce the Canadian staff from 1265 to 500. The Canadian office was part of the $980 million acquisition of Creo in 2005. Also, Kodak sold some of its office space in the area for $43 million.

- Ricoh announced that it has sold an Aficio C900 production color system to GAM Printers, a print shop in Sterling, Virginia.

- Ricoh announced it is forming a Business Process Automation Group, as part of its Document Solutions & Services Division. “BPA is a true value-add for Ricoh customers because we’re able to offer a suite of services from consultation to sales to implementation under one roof” said Mark Miller, Senior VP & Deputy General Manager at Ricoh. Ricoh’s BPA consultants will “assist customers in turning their current processes into turnkey solutions to fit their workflow requirements”

- X-Rite, maker of color measuring devices, and Pantone color systems, announced its last quarter’s financials:
- net loss of $9 million
- net sales down 25.6% to $45.6 million
- operating income of $1.6 million

- X-Rite, which recently launched Pantone color software for the Apple iPhone, called “myPANTONE”, had the software tested by the Flemish Center for Graphic Communication. The research firm found that when it viewed certain Pantone colors on several iPhones, that each one had a different shade of color. (there is currently no way to calibrate the screen of an iPhone)

- After being acquired by Nuance Corp. last week, eCopy has laid off a portion of its staff.

Details:
- Richard Mack, VP of Corp. Communications, stated that less then one-third of staff was affected.
- Any layoff larger than that would have triggered the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, which requires companies to provide advance notice of a mass layoff.
- Before layoffs, eCopy had 220 employees
- some of jobs will be transferred to Budapest, Hungary, where Nuance has office
- Nuance has 6,000 employees worldwide in 30 offices
- eCopy was started by a handful of people working out of Edward Schmid’s condominium in 1990, and was originally called Simplify Development Corp.
- Nuance, through its OmniPage division, provides OCR software to OmTool

- Tech Data Corp., a leading IT products distributor, announced a new Healthcare Specialized Business Unit to assist its computer resellers (VARs) meet growing demand in this vertical market:
- healthcare industry will spend $81 billion on IT in 2010, according to Gartner
- $22.8 billion will be spent on healthcare IT over next 6 years according to INPUT Research using federal funds from American Recovery & Reinvestment Act (ARRA)
- Department of Veterans Affairs has 2010 budget of $3.3 billion in IT spending

- American TonerServ, provider of generic laser print cartridges in Santa Rosa, CA, reported a 192% increase in last quarter’s revenue.

- Dell launched three new printers, with the following features:
- All are made by Fuji of Japan (which makes most Xerox copiers and printers)
- Dell 5130cdn is 47ppm A4 top speed full color laser printer for $1549 base MSRP
- 4 tandem OPC drum design
- polymerized toner
- optional paper drawers can make unit floor standing
- optional hanging stapler finisher
- unit’s exterior is dark grey plastic
- 8.5 second first print out time
- 1200x1200dpi
- 800MHz processor
- PCL and PostScript print drivers
- supports up to 216gsm paper weight
- auto duplex up to 163gsm
- Dell 7130cdn is A3 speed LED color printer for $2700 base MSRP (Xerox sells an MFP version)
- Dell 3330dn is 40ppm A4 b/w laser printer for $599 base MSRP

- In an effort to reduce costs, Colorado State University in Boulder, CO, announced it is closing its central reproduction department or campus printshop.

- Adobe Systems announced that it will layoff 9% of its workforce to cut costs. This will amount roughly 600 of its current 7,000 workers.

- Sun Microsystems announced it will layoff 128 workers at its Broomfield, Colorado campus. Oracle Corp. is attempting to buy Sun, but acquisition is being held up by European Union over antitrust concerns.

- Samsung of Korea lost a lawsuit to Sharp. Sharp’s lawsuit claimed that Samsung violated 4 of Sharp’s color LCD manufacturing patents.

- A report released by Samsung reveals that 83% of companies surveyed are not implementing basic technologies to reduce the volume of printed materials. Other findings:
- only 11% use a solution to track amount of pages printed
- over half of all document output costs are associated with purchasing paper and toner
- 69% of workers still prefer paper printouts

- A consortium of inkjet manufacturers have donated money to Cambridge University of London, England, to pursue development of a robust single pass production color printing system.

- Duplo, maker of duplicators, and finishing systems, announced it will create a sub brand, called Duplo Digital, to emphasize its finishing systems that are fully digital. (the company also sells relabeled Sharp digital b/w copiers)

- Two men were arrested in Eugene, Oregon for making counterfeit money with a color copier. Nicholas Pisciotta and Joseph Ulchinsky are facing forgery charges after police found a stash of fake $20 bills.

- According to survey, the average selling price of a b/w copy in a printshop is now 4.5 cents.

- EFI lost a lawsuit it filed against Leggett & Platt over supposed patent infringement regarding wide format color inkjet printers. EFI claimed that the company’s patent on UV ink curing was invalid.

- Canon announced it has hired John Hamm, former owner of Balmar Printing of Washington, to develop content for Canon’s imagePRESS Essential Business Builder Program. This is Canon’s option that can be sold to customers of Canon production color system to assist them in marketing and selling the output.