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

Issue #0430/1 - Print speeds are boosted to over 30ppm by doubling of the nozzle density in Hewlett- Packard’s next generation inkjet products. Several DeskJets, PSCs and PhotoSmart
products are already on the market, with more to come.

For its entire next generation of inkjet products, Hewlett-Packard has again produced new ink consumables.

Although the new cartridges are visually very similar to the No. 56/57/58/59 series, the technology is far from identical, providing the capability for some of the new printers to achieve print speeds of up to 31ppm – a new bench mark for inkjet printers. These breakthrough speeds are achieved by a doubling of the effective nozzle density in the new cartridges.

This higher effective density has been made possible by producing two lines of nozzles parallel to one another but offset by half a nozzle, meaning that the print head can place a full resolution image in one pass where it would have needed two passes of the previous generation head. Unfortunately this difference can barely be seen in the accompanying photographs.

As ever, subsequent generations of ink cartridge offer higher and higher performances. In this instance, the result is also a reduction in the cost of printing. Nominal CPPs for the new series of cartridges are 19% (Black) and 11% (TriColour) lower than the previous generation. Not surprisingly the higher reduction is on the black rather than the standard tricolour.

Some confusion may result from the fact that there are two sets of cartridges available, covering different ranges of products, that are actually identical. Yes, they service two different sets of printers but the two sets of printers are actually identical also!

This stems from the fact that Hewlett-Packard has implemented a strategy of regionalisation with some of its products from the new generation. The latest PhotoSmart, DeskJet and PSC products are the first to market – see accompanying table for models already released (August and September).

Therefore, where we see products such as the DeskJet 6540 and DeskJet 6543, they are actually the same product, as are the PhotoSmart 8150 and 8153.

As part of its battle against grey importing and VAT cartel activities, Hewlett-Packard has effectively divided the region that was known as EMEA into two - one region that includes the 25 EU states, together with the EFTA (European Free Trade Association) states and certain other countries of the former Eastern Europe; and a second region that has been called ‘CISMEA’! CISMEA is the combination of the Commonwealth of Independent States, together with the Middle East, Mongolia and Africa.

Hewlett-Packard has keyed the new printer products and cartridges so that, despite identical technology and construction, only the cartridges designated for the region of sale will physically fit the printers designated for that region. Hence, the No. 13X series cartridges will only fit the XXX3 series printers, for sale in CISMEA, while the No. 33/34 series cartridges will only fit the XXX0 or XXX5 series printer products in the EU-centred region.

This could become incredibly complicated and difficult to administer, especially as Hewlett-Packard has placed both sets of cartridges on the price lists for all countries! This means that there are actually UK Sterling prices available for the products that are only to be sold in the CISMEA region and vice versa. Even more confusing, the UK pricing for each member of each cartridge pair is different – the CISMEA cartridges are priced nearly £1 lower than the UK designated cartridges. However, some countries (such as South Africa) sensibly have zero prices against the cartridges that are not relevant.

Grey marketing, and VAT cartels in particular, have become big problems for the printer manufacturers – indeed it is believed to be a bigger problem than counterfeiting (see TCPglobal #0205).

Only one of the new cartridges has escaped this treatment and that is the No. 100 grey photo cartridge – presumably because this is such a specialised cartridge with relatively limited appeal that scope for illegal activity is minimal.

Prices across the Euro-zone do vary by up to 25%. These prices are taken from Germany and are generally slightly lower than those in France, rather lower than those in Spain but somewhat higher than prices in Italy.

With this new cartridge set comes the appearance again of both high and low capacity cartridges. Ostensibly, the low capacity cartridges are for users with low volume print requirements so that when new cartridges are bought, the ticket price is within acceptable bounds.

However, this table clearly shows that the low capacity cartridges are considerably more expensive per page than the high capacity cartridges and illustrates why they should be avoided in most instances. Users will need to be careful to check cartridges to be sure that they are buying the cartridge they want, especially if buying in-store where they may simply request a ‘cartridge for the Hewlett-Packard PhotoSmart 8150’.

~End~

This entry was posted on Friday, September 24th, 2004 at 12:02 am and is filed under Supplies, News, Total Cost of Printing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.