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

Issue #1122 – Alarming reports have been emerging in the press over the last week or so suggesting that Hewlett-Packard (the only manufacturer named so far) laser printers could be susceptible to catching fire as a result of a hacking attack. Firstly, is this seriously a possibility and, secondly, surely the alarming factor here is not the danger of catching fire but what could happen to a user’s information and printer control?

Issue #1113/3 – A recent report claims more than 127 million employee hours are lost to IT downtime each year [costing businesses in the order of $4.8bn at US rates]. We speculate that, with around 30-40% of help centre calls reckoned to be printer-related, printer downtime costs could be as high as $1.9bn. Thus, we cannot afford to ignore the reliability factor in relation to the printers we buy.

Issue #1112 – Genesis undoubtedly has its upsides and the innovative use of flash scan technology in a desktop device is effective. However, as reviewed in the first article about Genesis, there are downsides to Lexmark’s implementation of the technology and, although print quality is excellent, Total Cost of Printing is appalling. In this article we look at installation, usability, print quality and cost of printing.

Issue #1109 – Following the departure of Mark Hurd in August 2010, and the instalment as CEO of former SAP boss, Léo Apotheker, in September, the atmosphere at Hewlett-Packard has undoubtedly changed. No longer the sense of foreboding but an air of enthusiasm and optimism, with a clear target of taking over the world.

Issue #1107 - With the arrival of the ‘pad’ computer, particularly in Apple and Android guises, the need to be able to print from mobile devices has never been stronger. While individual office software applications running on smartphones and pad devices do not include a print capability, it is down to the printer manufacturers to enable printing for their own devices. Who has done it? How? And how good are they?