Printing and scanning technologies have improved
steadily over the years, resulting in faster outputs and higher
quality prints and scans. But the new breed of peripherals also
offer innovations such as combined "multifunction" printing,
scanning anddocument managementcomponent
miniaturisationgreen technologiesand better
integration with back-end software.
Sharon McNee, principal research analyst at Gartner, has seen a
number of new trends, the primary one being that suppliers are
adding more features to their devices.
"There has been a big trend away from single functions. Gartner
has been highlighting the fact that you can save a lot of money by
combining your printer, copier, scanner and fax into a healthier
consolidated device. Healthy, because you are moving away from
single functions and saving on hardware, maintenance, costs and
potentially consumables," says McNee.
"If you are sourcing from one or two suppliers, you are saving
money too, and if you are printing more smartly you can also save
money. It is worth looking at things like having default duplex
printing and double-sided printing and copying, which saves on
paper," she adds.
Gartner also notes a move to single multifunction A4 devices
from larger A3 machines. "User habits have changed in terms of what
we are printing and copying, and a lot of newspaper articles have
gone down to the A4 size. It is a global trend in Japan and Asia
Pacific as well as Europe and the US," says McNee.
One new printer technology worth noting, say analysts, is
HP's
Edgeline colour inkjet technology, which has been developed
over the past four years. It offers a similar quality to laser
printing, but uses ink, and this can bring down hardware costs and
cost per page for printing, according to analysts.
Two of the main innovations that Edgeline brings to desktop
printing are page-wide print heads and printers that move the paper
rather than the print head, so that the printing processes can be
carried out at speed.
The technology is now being used in several new HP peripherals,
including the CM8060 and CM8050 colour multifunction printers. The
CM8060 can print 60 pages per minute (ppm) in monochrome and 50ppm
in colour, with the CM8050 having a slightly lower throughput.
Malcolm Hancock, Gartner principal research analyst, says,
"These new technology products offer fast business-quality colour
printing for A4 or letter-size output, but throughput is
compromised when using larger paper sizes."
Hancock also warns that the technology is still relatively new.
"Treat these Edgeline products as you would any first-generation
product. Edgeline offers a viable alternative to established laser
technologies, but it should be evaluated on a small scale alongside
existing systems," he says.
Another innovative printer technology comes from
OKI Printing Solutions, which has developed a light emitting
diode (LED) print head which has enabled it to shrink down the size
of the physical printing device.
Unlike laser and inkjet printing technologies, which use a
rotating mirror to shine a light on the drum and discharge the
colour, LED technology assigns 10,000 LEDs to each of the four main
colours, cyan, magenta, yellow and black.
This means that colour printing can be carried out in a single
pass, rather than having to rotate four colour drums four times to
print a colour page, says Alan McLeish, product marketing manager
at OKI.
Brother is another printer manufacturer that has been busy
innovating the colour print heads of its inkjet printers. This has
allowed it to modularise the heads so that they can be expanded to
cover a wider print area.
The Piezo Inkjet Line Head "Cobra" technology effectively takes
the inks off the print heads and connects them up to the heads via
tubes. This means the ink containers are squatter and lighter and
require less power to run. In addition, the noise level is reduced,
print accuracy is increased and the consumables are easier to
access, says Mike Dinsdale,
Brother's director of communications and corporate social
responsibility.
Brother announced the Cobra technology in 2005, but has been
developing it in collaboration with Kyocera and is working on
commercialisation for 2009 or early 2010.
Dinsdale says, "The technology is quite radical in that the head
is divided into modules an inch long that can plug together to make
an inkjet head as long as you want. The paper then passes under the
head. The idea goes back to line heads in the 1970s. Energy
consumption is incredibly low, and the speed becomes radical."
Brother has demonstrated printing 150 photos a minute for 600dpi
photo-size prints, or 80 photos a minute in A4. The latter print
run required just 13W of energy to achieve, which is significantly
lower than the power requirement of many of today's printers.
"We are getting a massive increase in throughput with a massive
reduction in energy. This is a technology we would probably stake
our future on. Because the head can be plugged together in modular
form, it can make an eight or nine-inch head, which can increase
the resolution. You can do anything from business card printing to
digital press functions," says Dinsdale.
However, he says that the main challenge of the technology is
that there are many more nozzles in a small space than a
conventional print head, and they could get blocked. Also, ink
handling with larger print heads is an issue, as is feeding paper
through the printer at speeds above 40ppm.
Brother is also developing sub-£600 laser printers that can
print
radio frequency identification (RFID) tags on to labels a
technology that generally costs about £60,000, according to
Dinsdale.
Brother intends to bring RFID printing to the desktop this year,
using its own format of labels, chips and readers.
As well as hardware innovations, print management software has
become more sophisticated.
At the basic level, it allows users to scan and then save or
send the document, rather than print it out. But more advanced
features can indicate how many printers are on the network, and
help the IT department to charge back printing activities to
individual business units.
One application used by the likes of
HSBC,
Orange,
Yellow Pages and several universities is SafeCom, which can
save 15%-45% on paper and toner costs, according to the firm.
Termed "intelligent print management", SafeCom's modular
software can control users' access to printers and multifunction
devices. It can track users' print and copy activity and set
printer quotas for users.
Individuals can also prepay for printing and copying, personally
topping up their credit so they can use the printers. The software
also enables departmental charge backs, and can turn any public
workgroup printer into a personal printer to control its usage.
Another additional piece of software that allows users to manage
their document usage is eCopy's Sharescan OP. This works with a
range of multifunction printers from the likes of
Canon, Toshiba and Ricoh.
The software enables users of a departmental or enterprise
network to distribute digital files generated by the multifunction
printer, and route them over the corporate network or internet to
the user's desktop, via the network fax, e-mail, back-end
enterprise application or document management system.
McNee concludes that ironically, printer users are increasingly
using the printer not to print at all. "A lot of end-users are
conscious of how printing impacts the environment, and suppliers
are having to make more and more environmental concessions. Most of
the excitement is now around how the suppliers are helping users to
improve their workflow," she says.