TCPglobal - news, views and issues on total cost of printing

Issue #0823/1 – A redesign of its Scalable Printing Technology (SPT) print head has allowed Hewlett-Packard to cut drop size from 5 picolitres to 1.3 picolitres and thus to produce a range of Photosmart printers based on a dual drop size, 4-ink photo printing configuration, instead of 6-ink, plus a separate pigment black ink for printing documents. This article looks at the technology and the first printer to use the system, Photosmart D5460, together with the print quality and Total Cost of Printing associated with that printer.

Issue #0822/1 - In one of the most exciting developments seen in the field of business inkjet printing for years, brother has announced an A3 format inkjet All-in-One device, the MFC-6490CW, boasting a very high multifunction specification. Although the product is not yet announced in Europe, nor has it reached stores fully in the US, pricing is available for both hardware and print cartridges in the US so comparisons can be made against A3 single function inkjet, A4 multifunction inkjet and A4 multifunction laser devices.

Issue #0821/1 – Following the postponement of this article in favour of last week’s article ("Lexmark in-store inkjet visibility plummets"), we now consider the elusive new home/student range of inkjet devices from Lexmark and see just how expensive the X4650 is in comparison to its competition – Brother DCP-560CN, Canon PIXMA MP610, Epson Stylus Photo RX585 and Hewlett-Packard Photosmart C5280.

Issue #0820/1 – While undertaking research for an article on Lexmark’s recent launch of its new range of Home/Student inkjet devices, we were shocked at how difficult it is to find them in stores (article now to follow next week). So we decided that an impromptu survey was called for. In this article we analyse the share of ‘shelf space’ owned by each of Brother, Canon, Epson, Hewlett-Packard and Lexmark, together with the market conditions, strategies and implications. We see just how many Lexmark inkjet products are available in-store right now. It’s not a pretty sight – for Lexmark!

Issue #0818/2 - Sadly, the claims of most manufacturers need to be taken with a large pinch of salt when the words “affordable”, “lowest”, “smallest”, “fastest”, etc. are used in their marketing literature. In the case of the newly announced C3600 colour laser printer from Oki, the use of some of these terms is unfounded. Even “competitively-priced” can be misleading. Comparing with 10 competitors, Oki does not fair well overall where it really matters.