- Printing decreases for first time in U.S.? According to researcher, Jake Wang, of IDC:
- “Starting with the fourth quarter of 2008, we saw a definite drop in printer page outputs”
- IDC uses computer software to monitor the use of 700,000 printers and MFPs in the U.S.
- “It was like going over a waterfall.”
- Total of 1.5 trillion pages for the year, or 5,000 sheets of printouts per man, woman & child.
- Predicts drop of 10% in 2010.
- “When an economy sheds million of workers, there are that many employees who aren’t
doing the printing”
- “I’m thinking fewer contracts are signed. Fewer documents sent from one person to another”
- Expects increase in 2011 after the recovery.
- Forrester Research predicts that electronic bank statements will start declining in 2010.
- In 2007, the Securities & Exchange Commission stopped requiring corporations to mail out printed annual reports to shareholders.
- How Internet was invented:
- 1958 – President Eisenhower created the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) at the Department of Defense to fund scientific research, which includes the Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) to fund computer projects.
- 1964 – IPTO head, J.C.R. Licklider, conceives of creating time-sharing to link researchers far away to ARPA computers.
- 1966 – David Evans joins University of Utah to start computer science department and gains millions of dollars in federal research grants
- 1966 – Robert Taylor of IPTO, wins approval for vision of ARPANET, a network that allow computers to communicate
- 1969 – Four universities are chosen to be nodes of the first network, including University of Utah, UCLA, Stanford and University of California - Santa Barbara
- 10/29/1969 – First message ever sent over ARPANET from UCLA to Stanford.
- 12/1/1969 – All 4 colleges are connected.
- 1990 – ARPANET is shut off.
- Sharp announced it has renewed its lease on a 500,000 square foot office/warehouse in southeast Memphis, TN. Pricing unknown.
Sharp announced it would open up a fact
- ory direct branch in Mexico City, Mexico.
- Hewlett Packard announced it won a managed print services contract from a healthcare firm in Connecticut. Details:
- Contract included Capella Technologies FormPort Server software that generates forms for
Healthcare industry
- Contract included 65 HP LaserJet devices
- Average volume per device of 5,000 to 6,000 per month
- Grove Hill Medical Center, has more 70 physicians, and replaced over 100 dot matrix printers.
- Organovo Inc. of San Diego, CA and Invetech of Melbourne, Australia announced that they have partnered to create an inkjet printer that can create human cells:
- Uses a robot to lay down cells in precise positions in three dimensions, accurate to within 20 microns
- Puts down object on 2D layers, one of top of the other
- Particles used are made up of stem cells, formed into tiny spheres and cylinders
- When device is used for treatment, cells will come from patient, such as bone marrow,
or fatty adipose tissues
- Uses adult stem cells, not fetal stem cells
- Researchers take a picture of the object they want to build, such as an artery
- Objects take an hour to build, then cells fuse together on their own in 48 hours
- In 2000, Xerox & Kodak combined employed 38,750 workers in Rochester, NY area. Now the total is 15,430.
- Big fight over a facilities management contract in California between HP and Xerox:
- California Department of Health Care Services announced its intent to award the $1.4 billion Medi-Cal contract to Xerox, to its ACS division (which it just acquired for $6.4 billion)
- The contract is for 10 years, and was previously held by Hewlett Packard (which gained the contract when it acquired EDS two years ago)
- The contract handles $19 million in medical claims from 7 million beneficiaries
- The bid contract is 40,000 pages long
- “We’re very disappointed with the decision. We’re in the process of reviewing the document before we determine our next step”, said Bill Ritz, spokesperson for HP.
- HP current employs 2,000 in California to fulfill the contract.
- Xerox announced it would layoff 181 employees in its ACS call center in Houston, TX due to lack of work.
- Xerox’s ACS division announced it won a five year, $72 million contract from DCP Midstream, an energy company in Denver. The contract includes desktop support, network services, messaging, document management, IT security and managed print services.
- Ricoh launched the Aficio MP 2851 and MP 3351 offering:
- 28ppm and 33ppm top speed
- Base MSRPs of $7600 and $9250
- A3 laser b/w models handling up to 11”x17 ledger sized paper
- Optional Personal Paperless Document Manager (PPDM)
- Scan to PDF
- Scan to MS Office (Word, Excel or PowerPoint)
- Scan to email/FTP/folder/web folder
- Can scan in color, even though output is b/w only
- Can convert to WAV audio files
- Data from fillable forms can be extracted in a .csv file
- Optional App2Me features:
- Can create custom workflow
- User can create custom control panel interface
- Optional eCopy
- Optional Ricoh GlobalScan NX
- Finishing options include stapling, hole-punching and booklet making
- Full color touch screen control panel
- Optional 50 sheet document feeder (does NOT scan both sides of original at same time)
- Top color scan speed of 50opm for b/w and 29opm for color at 200dpi
- Optional fax board
- Optional controller
- Actual maker unknown (most likely Oak Technologies)
- 533MHz processor
- 10/100BaseT & USB ports standard
- PCL print driver standard, but PostScript is an option
- 768MB RAM (can not upgrade)
- 40GB hard drive
- 600x600dpi
- 22 second warm-up time
- 4.5 second first copy out time
- Comes standard with two 500 sheet paper drawers and a 100 sheet stack bypass
- Can add up to two more 500 sheet drawers, or a 2,000 sheet letter size paper deck
- Drawers and auto duplex up to 28lb. bond paper only
- Bypass can hold up to 42lb. bond paper
- Copytronics Information Systems announced it won a 5 year contract that includes 320 copiers to Volusia County, Florida.
- The Kansas City, MO ethics committee was appointed to investigate elected Kansas City officials in regards to a copier contract:
- Reams of depositions from a Jackson County Circuit Court case are being forwarded to the committee
- City Attorney Galen Beaufort said the depositions being forwarded are from the lawsuit filed by copier dealer, Perfect Output LLC, against the city and the winning bidder, Ricoh Business Systems.
- The suit alleges that Ricoh wrongly interfered in the city’s decision making.
- The city auditor’s office issued a report concluding that the selection criteria was biased and that the actions of an unnamed City Council member may have tainted the process.
- IKON, a division of Ricoh, lost employee to solutions vendor. Scott Robinson was named Senior Account Manager of TERIS, in its San Diego office, which specializes in litigation support services for law firms.
- Recent statistics on the print for pay industry from American Printer magazine:
- Web printers run their presses an average of 5.2 days per week in 2009
- More than half of printshop owners expect paper prices to increase in 2010.
- 33% of printshop owners are concerned about success of Amazon Kindle electronic book’s effect on reducing need for book printing.
- 23% feel that the biggest issue is improving the front end link from customer to prepress department
- 51% believe that digital toner presses threaten web offset print volumes
- 61% state that their customers are printing less direct mail pieces due to higher postal costs
- 90% of end users who receive bills in mail open them. In contrast, if they receive bill via email, only 72% open the email.
- 32% plan on acquiring a new digital toner press in 2010.
- Pocket Watch Software announced a $3.99 program that allows users of Apple iPhone to print to a device on a WiFi network.
- Fujitsu announced it would start a managed print services program in Japan, called “Workplace LCM Service”. Unknown if it will launch similar program in the U.S.
- 1,200 workers at Fujitsu’s offices in England went on strike to protest changes in their pension plans.
- A company that provides outsourced CRM and call center work, announced it is entering the copier services market. Service USA, headquarters in Leawood, Kansas, claims it will offer:
- maintain and repair copiers and printers
- automated customer and field service systems
- covers equipment in commercial locations like grocery and convenience store chains
- deploys technicians nationwide to provide install, maintenance and repair
- LG Electronics, Panasonic and Sony apparently showed prototype 3D, high definition flat screen televisions at the recent Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. DirecTV also announced it will launch a 3D satellite channel in 2010. The goal is to convince all owners of HDTV flat screens to upgrade to 3DTV units in next couple of years.
- Japan’s prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama, apparently expressed interest in relaxing nuclear technology export restrictions. (This would undoubtedly help Toshiba Corp, which is betting big on expansion of worldwide nuclear plant construction)
- Cartridge World announced it plans on opening 250 stores in India to refill inkjet and toner cartridges.
- Better Buys For Business magazine gave out Editors Choice awards to the following Konica Minolta color MFP models:
- bizhub C280
- bizhub C360
- bizhub C452
- bizhub C552
- bizhub C652
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