Xerox MFDs Replaces Charectors (6=8)

Don't most of the MFP's use jbig2 compression?  I must have had 30 blogs come across my alerts since the story broke yesterday.  Funny there has been no comment from Xerox, I too am somewhat skeptical of what was found.  We have many members that resell Xerox here on the forums.  Is this true, have you heard of these issues in the field?

The following come from the attached article:

Xerox to update scan software after switched number outcry

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23610405

Xerox (XRX) is now saying that some of its scanners can alter numbers in documents, even at the highest resolution setting. It blames a software bug for which it does not yet have a fix. “We continue to work tirelessly and diligently to develop a software patch to address the problem,” the company said in an Aug. 11 statement.

The admission over the weekend is a fresh embarrassment for Xerox, which assured customers last week that scanners would alter documents only if the factory settings were changed to a lower resolution. Now it says problems can occur  at the factory settings and even at the “highest modes”—i.e., above the factory settings.

“We apologize for any confusion that came from our prior communications,” Rick Dastin, president of Xerox’s office and solutions business group, said in Sunday’s statement.

Routine documents should still be reproduced perfectly, according to Dastin. The ones where problems occur are “stress” documents, “which include documents with small fonts, those scanned multiple times and hard to read.” His statement includes a list of affected machines.

The problem came to light when German computer scientist David Kriesel scanned a construction plan on a Xerox machine and noticed that it changed numbers on some of the room measurements. In an e-mail, Kriesel said he was honored that Xerox had reached out to him to acknowledge the problem and asked him to test their patch. He wrote, “I am glad not to go down in history as the guy too dumb to read the manual. :-)”

http://www.businessweek.com/ar...blem-just-got-bigger

This is a big deal! And Xerox needs to get this resolved ASAP to maintain some credibility. They have issued a number of false statements. I have also heard Xerox and those who sell & support Xerox say that:

1. This is a “Jbig” (compression) problem

2. and a lot of other manufacturers use jbig compression.

While both statement 1 and 2 may be true, when spoken together they are intended to mislead. What they are trying to imply is that other manufacturers have or may have this same issue. Let’s just stick to the facts, Xerox has this issue. They have known about it for a while and indicated that it was “acceptable” behavior. They seemed genuinely surprised at the uproar over the issue (Someone at Xerox needs to buy a clue).

There has been no evidence that any other manufacturer except Xerox is replacing numbers when they scan documents. If Xerox has information showing that other manufacturers do have this issue they should present it, or they should shut up and fix THEIR PROBLEM! And you can bet that Xerox is looking for another manufacturer, any other manufacturer that has this issue, so they can get out from under the spotlight.

That's my $0.02

Vince

Xerox (XRX) is now saying that some of its scanners can alter numbers in documents, even at the highest resolution setting. It blames a software bug for which it does not yet have a fix. “We continue to work tirelessly and diligently to develop a software patch to address the problem,” the company said in an Aug. 11 statement.

The admission over the weekend is a fresh embarrassment for Xerox, which assured customers last week that scanners would alter documents only if the factory settings were changed to a lower resolution. Now it says problems can occur  at the factory settings and even at the “highest modes”—i.e., above the factory settings.

“We apologize for any confusion that came from our prior communications,” Rick Dastin, president of Xerox’s office and solutions business group, said in Sunday’s statement.

Routine documents should still be reproduced perfectly, according to Dastin. The ones where problems occur are “stress” documents, “which include documents with small fonts, those scanned multiple times and hard to read.” His statement includes a list of affected machines.

The problem came to light when German computer scientist David Kriesel scanned a construction plan on a Xerox machine and noticed that it changed numbers on some of the room measurements. In an e-mail, Kriesel said he was honored that Xerox had reached out to him to acknowledge the problem and asked him to test their patch. He wrote, “I am glad not to go down in history as the guy too dumb to read the manual. :-)”

http://www.office.xerox.com/sc...ware-patch/enus.html

We held our Patch launch go/wait review this morning for Wave 1 products and we’re a GO.  We have tested the Wave 1 products against 1000’s of test cases and have completed a field test for install and quality with over 75 machines including the original blogger.   We are confident that we have eliminated character substitution.   The patch is reliable and easy to load.  As with any software update issues will arise and we experienced a few not related to the patch itself which involved machine behaviors.  We’re making sure that support has the information needed to handle these type inquiries.

There were a couple of issues not related to the patch itself which were found during testing which were resolved.  We are assuring that support is ready to handle issues that may arise.

We will be going live on Xerox.com tomorrow morning (Thursday  August 22^nd ) at roughly 9am EST.  We decided to launch tomorrow morning as we will have our full support teams in place worldwide to respond rapidly to any issues.

The Wave 1 products are as follows:

a.       All ConnectKey software based products (can be updated with a common patch)

          i.      78xx (Spyglass)

          ii.      72xx (Javelin)

          iii.      58xx (Luminance)

          iv.      93xx with ConnectKey software (Tesla+)

          v.      89xx/87xx with ConnectKey software (Mamba+) but not 89xx/87xxxx without ConnectKey Software (Mamba)

b.      CQ 93xx (Tesla, prior to ConnectKey software)

c.       WC 75xx total family (Northwood)

d.      WC 57xx (Radiance)

We’re currently testing the Wave 2 machines which we are targeting to be available by August 28^th and as product testing is complete we will make those products available one at a time as needed.  Again, a few of the very old products may be delivered beyond the August 28^th date.  As we know more I will keep you updated.

We’re also looking into methods to proactively notify customers of patch availability—if they come to the download page and their device is not among the Wave 1 offerings. 

The patches will be available via Xerox.com with an easy to use interface with product and software version drop down boxes.  We are also making the patches available to technical service via GSN and there will be a single Hub site for internal distribution as necessary.

The following support materials, some of which will be translated, will be available on the day of launch or soon thereafter:

-          Scanning and Compression White Paper (translated, Customer Collateral)

-          LL Patch Update… What you can expect  (translated, Customer Collateral)

-          Scanning and Compression Technical Q&A (English only, Xerox Internal only)

-          Internal Video on talking points already released (English only, Xerox Internal only)

The materials above will be available by tomorrow morning at the following link:  http://smartcentre.xerox.com/P...Scan-Patch-Solution/.

We continue to work with manufacturing and the supply chain and will let you know when we have initiated the patch cut-in for currently shipping product.

We’ll once again use our Real Business at Xerox blog site to communicate this news and information, and our communications team is prepared to monitor social media traffic and respond to news media inquiries, as needed.

I’ll write another note tomorrow morning when we go live including updating our Blog.

from someone at Xerox