Loading ...The Great Printer Emissions Scare of ‘07
by Bradley Hughes, Senior Analyst, IDC Canada -
About 10 years ago I worked with somebody who constantly complained about the quality of the air and smell around his desk which happenned to sit next to a printer. Management thought he was a whiner and eventually they found a trumped up way to get relieve him of his duties. Turns out he may have been right.
Last month a bomb got dropped in the laps of laser printer vendors (particularly HP) when the Queensland University of Technology in Australia published a study on airborne ultrafine particles being emitted by laser printers. Although the story is a bit old people continue to ask me about it so here is a quick primer on the situation culled from the research report itself as well as some fine reporting from ZDnet.
Number of printers tested: 62
Number of printers that emitted NO particles: 37
Number of printers considered HIGH particle emitters: 17
Were any trends detected?
No. HP may have been responsible for 16 of the 17 printers considered high emitters but they were also responsible for 29 of the 37 non-emitters. As well the HP LaserJet 5 was both a high emitter and a non-emitter.
What do the particles consist of?
We don’t know. No testing was done of the ultrafine particles themselves.
Is laser toner carcinogenic?
We don’t know — testing in lab rats did not find any abnormalities.
Is this just a problem for HP?
No. Unfortunately though 51 of of the 62 printers tested were HP devices. Thus far no one has pointed out that Canon manufactures the print engines in HP’s laser devices. If memory serves correctly it was Sony who ended up bearing the brunt for the Great Exploding Laptop Scare of ‘06 not Dell. Only one Canon printer was tested (it was a low emitter) as well no models from Samsung, Lexmark, Brother or Xerox were tested.
What does this all mean?
That the research thus far is inconclusive but definitely warrants more. From the actual study’s discussion section:
The high standard deviation of the average emission rates estimated in this study also indicates that the particle emission process and the behavior of individual printers are complex and that they are still far from being completely understood. Many factors, such as printer model, printer age, cartridge model, and cartridge age may affect the particle emission process and all of these factors require further study.
What’s the cynical blogger take on it?
Prepare for a lot of marketing material laying claim to “zero emission” printers.
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Loading ...The Rising Tide of Ink
by Bradley Hughes, Senior Analyst, IDC Canada
The world of printing has never been considered an exciting topic but in the past year we’ve seen a number of big advances in print technology. Vendors are increasingly placing bets on creating new disruptive technologies in order to shake up the old “inkjets for consumers, laser for business” order. As well, these technology advances all come about at the same time as the world of monochrome digital printing has hit its peak and the vendors all race to position themselves as the vendor to turn to for colour printing.
Thus far the biggest splash has been made by HP which introduced its Edgeline MFPs this summer. These devices use page-wide arrays of inkjet heads to produce colour prints at up to 50 pages per minute (ppm)at an apparently cheaper cost than a similar laser device. It’s too early to make comment about how these models have affected the market but the feedback thus far has been positive.
Of course, Xerox has had page-wide arrays for years due to its acquisition of Tektronix and their solid ink devices that currently run at 30 ppm for colour prints. Also in the mix is Ricoh’s GelSprinters which use a “viscous ink” and also run at 30 ppm.
The other big announcement this year for developments in ink printing was by a little known company from Australia known as Silverbrook Research. In March, Silverbrook showed off some prototypes (using what they call Memjet technology) that claimed to print at 60 ppm in full colour.
What this leads to is a possible showdown between ink and laser technologies in the battle for supremacy of the digital colour printing market. It will be interesting to see if the vendors involved in developing these new technologies can overcome the inherent bias that business purchasers have against ink devices. For example, IDC’s research has shown that over 70% of IT Managers in large & medium organizations believe that laser printing offers a cost per page that is much lower than ink. According to the claims of these vendors that may not be the case anymore. The trouble may be that while they’ve solved the problem in technology it will take much more effort to educate the end-user.
Of course, ink does have one good thing going for it: no airborne ultrafine particles.
(More on that next week)
Posted on August 31st, 2007 by Brad Hughes and filed under Research | No Comments »Add to: del.icio.us | Digg IT | Furl | Google | magnolia | StumbleIT | Wink | Yahoo! Technorati
Loading ...Star Trek storage
I was never a fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation — I watched the only Trek that mattered, the one with James T. Kirk, dammit — but I did find the concept of the Holodeck, a 3-D interactive simulation chamber, fascinating. Holograms themselves are fascinating — three-dimensional but insubstantial, only as heavy as light. Holography was invented by Nobel Prize-winning Hungarian scientist Dennis Gabor — no relation to Zsa Zsa, I trust — in 1947, but mass-production of cheap lasers has given the technology a push. In IT, its application to storage has been under development for several years.
Posted on August 3rd, 2007 by Dave Webb and filed under Research, Storage | No Comments »Add to: del.icio.us | Digg IT | Furl | Google | magnolia | StumbleIT | Wink | Yahoo! Technorati
Loading ...‘Undoing’ the math
It’s all about the math, right? Not so, says Karl Fant. He’s the founder of Theseus Research and he’s feels there’s something fundamentally wrong with using the algorithm as the basic paradigm of computer systems.
For a start, many functions of a computer system don’t fit the definition of an algorithm (algorithms terminate in a finite number of steps, for example; operating systems don’t). In the early days, mathematicians seized computer development, viewing them as computational machines. But Fant argues there’s an elemental conflict between math and computer science in his paper on the subject: Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on July 20th, 2007 by Dave Webb and filed under Computer Science, Research, Software | No Comments »