Epson has announced that later this month they will be releasing a new print technology that will produce more advanced prints that currently possible using their, or any other, inkjet technology.

They have succeeded in developing an advance to their Micro Piezo print head technology. They have advanced their Micro Piezo print technology with what they are calling a thin film piezo element.

Epson’s Micro Piezo print head has been used in their Stylus Photo and Stylus Pro inkjet printers for man years now. The original Micro Piezo technology uses electrical signals to change the shape of piezo elements and then fires ink droplets according to the physical force generated by the change in the shape of the elements. This technology has earned very high praise from the photo printing community.

Inkjet printing systems are attracting more attention because they are being used more frequently in printing and manufacturing processes (thus Epson’s interest in a better Micro Piezo system). Micro Piezo technology offers superior ink ejection performance and compatibility with a with a wide variety of inks and durability. As a result, it has been used very effectively in commercial and industrial fields such as photo lab printing, digital printing, textile printing, and color filter manufacturing. Micro Piezo technology is suitable for functions ranging from consumer applications to commercial and industrial applications. Importantly, it is a cost effective solution due to its high degree of reliability and production volume efficiency.

With all this in mind, Epson has been focusing its development work on creating a next-generation Micro Piezo print head to support expansion of the inkjet printer beyond consumers an to business and industry.

The result? Epson has developed a print head nozzle with a density of 360 dpi. According to Epson, this is the highest density in the world for an inkjet printer (we could not find any evidence to the contrary as of yet) using piezoelectric technology, while at the same time maintaining the advantages of the conventional Micro Piezo print heads.

As this technology advances it will usher in a new era of speedier, more compact, and better performing that Epson has ever produced before.

Be on the lookout for a new wave of Epson printer models as this technology takes hold. As we said before, Epson’s initial focus for this technology is more in the business and industrial areas, but it will definitely makes it’s way to the individual consumers.

Following in the steps of Kodak (well, kind of in the steps), Fujifilm has said they will enter the market for inkjet printers and print cartridges.

As the market for non-digital photography products continues to decline, companies such as Kodak and Fujifilm are working to reinvent themselves and regain the profits they once earned. On Friday (4/6/04) Fujifilm said they would enter the market for industrial inkjet printers to spur the sales of ink cartridges.

Their goal is to obtain sales of $169 million of the new printers and ink by 2009-2010. Fujifilm proposes to buy the printers from two other manufacturers and the ink from a third manufacturer (that it acquired in 2005). They will then market the printers and cartridges together.

It is expected that Fujifilm will launch their printers and ink cartridges in the U.S. this month.

The inkjet market is becoming quite these days.

Looking to reduce the amount of equipment on your desk? The Brother MFC-665CW may just be the solution you need. It’s a handy little unit that does a lot in just a little bit of space.

The Brother MFC-665CW combines a document printer, a photo printer, a flatbed scanner, a fax machine, a photo copier, a telephone, and an answering machine. The telephone and answering machine are what really set it a part from any other multifunction machines.

It can be connected directly to your computer via a USB cable, or you can connect it to your home or office network using an Ethernet cable. For those that live in the wireless world, it can be set up as a stand alone wireless printer.

The 665CW is competitively priced with other multifunction machines. It uses separate cartridges (one for each color) and prints 27 pages per minute in plain black and 22 per minute in color. The printer has an internal tray for holding full sized sheets of paper and a separate tray that holds up to 20 4×6 sheets of photo paper.

Its scanning capabilities have improved since earlier versions of brother multifunction machines providing a very easy scan process that produces high resolution scans. The MFC-665CW does not provide the ability to scan from negatives or slides. The scanner lid also has extended hinges so you can scan thicker documents and features OCR (Optical Character Recognition) technology. The scanner lid also features a auto sheet feeder that holds up to 10 pages at a time, allowing you to fax or make copies in either black and white or color.

The fax function allows you to do fax polling, fax retrieval, or fax forwarding.

This machine supports various memory card formats (Compatibles, Secure Digital, Memory Stick, and xD Picture Card). You can print photos directly from your memory cards. All you have to do is place your memory card in the appropriate slot and your photos will be displayed on the 2.5 inch color LCD screen. YOu can select your photos from the screen and do some basic photo editing. You can also print images directly from your digital camera.

The unit is priced online at about $200.00, but you can find it at some online stores for about $20.00 less. Reasonably priced! It uses the Brother LC-51 series of cartridges. Manufacturer suggested prices for these cartridges are $23.99 (black cartridge) and $13.99 (for each cyan, magenta, and yellow cartridges). Full compatible, non-Brother brand cartridges can be purchased online for as low as $3.99 each.

Overall it looks like Brother has created a great multifunction machine. User ratings are quite strong with excellent feedback provided. It may be that the only flaw is in the included telephone. While useful, its design is not one that invites a lot of use. Individuals won’t be replacing their desk phone anytime soon. The included telephone cord is quite sort, and would need to be replaced. The handset design is not the most ergonomic. Brother reports that the voice mail function will hold up to 29 minutes of messages.

Let us know what you think.

Buy the Brother MFC-665CW Printer

Buy Brother MFC-665CW ink cartridges

It’s Good Friday, so that means is it time for a good story. And, we’ve got a good one for you.

The printer industry has evolved quickly over the last few years, but the claims of an Australian company could advance inkjet printer technology even faster than we have seen in the past. They claim to have a printer that can print at a rate of 2 pages per second. They also claim that their printer will have affordable ink cartridges (under $20 for a 50ml ink cartridge). Forget about the print speed, the price of the cartridges is the real advance in technology.

Silverbrook Research, a company with over 1,400 patents, is claiming that it is finally ready to reveal its “Memjet” inkjet printer technology. This printer has been in the making for 10 years. The technology is similar to HP’s Edgeline Technology in that it uses a single printhead that spans the width of a standard 8.5″ x 11″ piece of paper.

Here is where the story gets GOOD!

Silverbrook is detailing the technology in a paper that will cost the reader $2,995.00 to access. That’s right, just under $3,000 to read it. Anyone got few spare thousand dollars lying around?

You can read some free information at the Memjet Technology website. You can even view a video of this speedy little printer. Click the link under the A4 Document Printer.

Enjoy!

Here’s are a few items for thought. They originally appeared in a post a week or so ago, but were buried near the bottom of the post. In hindsight, they are pretty interesting quotes. So, here they are again.

“Ink is actually one of the most costly substances on earth — if you were to fill up your car with ink instead of gas, it would cost $150,000 to fill up your car.”

“It certainly feels that way (expensive) when I go round to Office Depot or wherever and end up spending $25 for a little package of ink that’s no bigger than a cigarette packet.”

“Printers are sold relatively cheaply, but the consumer is then stuck buying ink at the equivalent of $2,000 a liter.”

“If everybody used Greenprint it would save somewhere between 20 and 30 million trees a year. Billions of tons of CO2, if it was on every computer, it would be the equivalent of taking millions of cars off the road annually.”

We all know printer ink is expensive, but it has become somewhat of a necessity in our lives. Our best hope is to get someone to pay for our ink for us. Our second best hope is to research the alternatives. There are alternatives to buying the expensive manufacturer brand cartridges. If you have not already, take a minute to check them out.

Thanks to our friends at Greenprint for their thoughts.

A cartridge test standard? I guess this is just a general interest story for those interested in how much ink is really in a printer cartridge. Why is this important? Because it leads directly to the eternal question, “how many pages can I print with my cartridge?” which then determines how often you will have to buy printer cartridges, and how much it will cost to keep your printer full of ink.

As of now, it is up to manufacturer to disclose the amount of ink, usually number of milliliters (ml), that is inside a cartridge. The manufacturer then takes this number and uses a “magic” algorithm to determine how many pages of print you will get out of the cartridge. Most interesting is that these calculations are always based on 5% page coverage. So, here’s some quick math for you:

If you figure that a standard page is 8.5 x 11 inches, a single page will give you 93.5 square inches of paper to print on. Five percent of 93.5 is about 4.7 square inches. Now measure out a space that is 4.7 square inches on your piece of paper. If you print in that area only you should be able to print the number of pages the cartridge manufacturer suggests you can. Not likely, huh? (DISCLAIMER: I am not a mathematician, so if my math is wrong please correct me).

Back in February, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) published a standard for measuring the number of pages an ink cartridge will produce. The standard was subsequently backed by HP, Canon, and Kodak. Standard ISO/IEC 24711:2006, which has yet to be approved, establishes how ink and toner cartridges are to be tested. The standard cites how many cartridges must be tested to determine an average lifetime (nine of them), what constitutes a standard test document (five pages printed with default printer settings) and the kind of machine on which the cartridge must be tested.

An interesting aside to the story, Kodak (a supported of this standard) has just released its own line of inkjet printers and inkjet printer cartridges and claims that they will be selling their printer cartridges at a price that is 50% less than other printer cartridge manufacturers. But, Kodak has yet to disclose how many milliliters of ink are in their cartridges. Until we know how much ink is inside one of their cartridges, we can’t really believe their price claim of 50% less.

We’ll keep you posted as we find out more.

Reports on the HP OfficeJet 5610 have shown it to be very usable machine for the home office, but CNET warns that some compromises will have to be made on performance and convenience should you choose to buy one. Priced at around $140.00, the 5610 is a multifunction machine with photo printing capabilities. As for overall functionality, this machine does it all - prints, scans, copies, and faxes. When just judged on general use alone, it does the job. Here’s where it gets in to trouble.

Photo printing. As mentioned above, the machine does have the capability to print photo quality prints. Only problem is that users have reported mixed results in the quality of their prints. And they complain of a slow print speed. Those more proficient in the photo printing world have reported that those looking to buy a new printer should opt for ones with memory card slots.

Overall print speed. Those looking for a machine to quickly print black and white documents would be better opting for a multifunction machine that uses a laser toner cartridge. The cartridges for the OfficeJet 5610 are quite expensive and won’t last you all that long when compared to the page yield you will get out of a laser cartridge.

And, the CNET bottom line: “The HP OfficeJet 5610 is affordable and provides most of the home-office basics, but it doesn’t stand out from the crowd of better-equipped multifunctions.” They rated it a 6.1 out of 10 (which is a “Good” rating). The 5610 is inexpensive and small. It prints well and should be considered for those on a budget who just need basic functionality and print quality. And the negatives — It uses expensive ink cartridges, has poor scan quality, prints slowly, and has not memory card readers. On the other hand, Yahoo! users have rated it 4.5 stars out of 5 (this is only on 3 reviews though).

Here are the printer vitals:

What are the users of this printer saying?

Pros: Print, Scan, Fax, Color copies, Inexpensive

Cons: Expensive ink, Slow, Poor scan quality, No memory card readers, Automatically starts application on your computer

Buy the HP OfficeJet 5610 Printer

Buy HP OfficeJet 5610 ink cartridges