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

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 #0821/2 – Paper documents can only be accessed by one individual at any one time, making timely access by others difficult. Sharing by hard copying improves the situation but at the cost of copying and distribution, together with time implications where users are not at the same site. Electronic sharing of documents should promote easy and rapid access without the costs associated with producing and distributing multiple hard copies.

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 #0819/2 – In addition to the Mobile Express Driver, Xerox has announced another new printer driver, Xerox Global Print Driver, which is claimed to make network administrator’s jobs easier than any other network print driver deployment mechanism by supporting any network PostScript, PCL5 or PCL6 compatible printer, regardless of brand.