Today’s business world is more demanding for ability to conduct business almost anywhere. As a mobile professional, you may find it handy to print on-the-go, and Canon gives you this opportunity.

The new PIXMA iP100 Mobile Printer from Canon U.S.A, successfully addresses printing needs on-the-go and delivers text and graphics for printing a business presentation or a contract. It prints borderless color photos from the car or even at the beach. This printer has increased color resolution and is faster than previous models. The lightweight Canon PIXMA iP100 Mobile Printer fits easily onto a desk or into a case making it the perfect laptop companion for business or personal travel.

The PIXMA iP100 Mobile Printer’s new design includes increased color resolution to a maximum 9600 x 2400 dpi, one picoliter droplet size (the first-ever mobile printer to have a minimum), and increased print speed. Additionally, the printer will use 2 black inks, one a pigment-based black ink for text and another for printing photos. The total volume of the pigment black ink tank has been increased by 50%.

The Canon PIXMA iP100 is the first mobile printer to have Auto Image Fix technology. With a laptop, this technology automatically recognizes the scenes in photographs and optimizes printing settings according to the scene type, such as Portrait, Scenery, Snapshot, etc.

With print speeds of up to 20 pages-per-minute for black and up to 14 ppm for color, this printer can deliver projects faster than previous models. The PictBridge port allows printing 4-x 6 inch to 8-x 10 inch and legal size pictures from a compatible digital camera or DV camcorder without a computer.

The PIXMA iP100 Mobile Printer features a standard USB 2.0 Hi-Speed connection. Besides, business professionals have the option to print wirelessly from the built-in IrDA port or from select Bluetooth enabled cellular phones and computers with the new optional user installable Bluetooth Unit BU-30 (not included).

Canon offers the optional LK-62 Lithium Ion battery that last enough to make 290 pages per three-hour charge. Also, Mobile professionals will benefit from the optional Automobile Power Unit to power their PIXMA iP100 Mobile Printer directly through a car power socket.

The iP100 Mobile Printer is available for $249.99. The LK-62 battery costs an additional $99.99, and a compatible Automobile Power Unit (PU-200U) sells for $89.99.

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Couple of days ago, Canon U.S.A. Inc. announced the new PIXMA iP2600 Photo Printer featuring photo-lab-quality printing, fast output speeds and a stylish design to capture the attention and satisfy the needs of consumers. Continuing to build on its single function printer line, Canon delivers increased printing speeds, adds Auto Image Fix technology and a sleek design.

With an attractive piano black design with rounded edges, many technology features and a value price point, this desktop printer departs from the traditional to stand out among its competition in this class. Canon brings high-end features into this category with blazing speeds and microscopic ink droplets being placed as small as two picoliters at up to 4800×1200 dpi color resolution. The Canon PIXMA iP2600 Photo Printer can deliver photo-lab-quality borderless 4″ x 6″ photos in approximately 55 seconds.

The PIXMA iP2600 Inkjet Printer is an easy-to-use model capable of printing borderless photos from wallet size straight through letter size. Unlike many previous sub-$50 printers, the iP2600 Photo Printer even includes a paper output tray to neatly hold all printed photos and documents. As an attractive addition to the home office or a student’s desktop, printing from 1,472 nozzles helps to ensure speedy printing of documents, presentations and Web pages at speeds up to 22 pages/minute (ppm) for monochrome, and up to 17 ppm for color.

With only two FINE cartridges for consumers to concern themselves with, ink management is fast and easy. Included with the four-color PIXMA iP2600 Photo Printer is a pigment-based black ink cartridge and a tri-color dye based cartridge, allowing for improved sharp text printing with pigment black ink, plus vibrant photo quality.

The PIXMA iP2600 Photo Printer employs the Canon ChromaLife100 system for long-lasting photo prints. When using the FINE print head, select genuine Canon photo papers, and select genuine Canon dye inks, prints can resist fading for up to 100 years when stored in an archival quality photo album. The 100-year-lifespan rivals that of many traditional film-based photos, long considered by consumers to be the benchmark for image permanence. Prints produced on Canon Photo Paper Pro with ChromaLife100 have up to a ten-year gas fastness when exposed to open air. ChromaLife100 prints, when created using Canon Photo Paper Pro or Photo Paper Plus Glossy, have up to a 30-year light fastness when displayed under glass.

The new Canon Photo Paper Plus Glossy II offers vivid color with a high-quality finish to consumers who are looking for a professional look in their prints at a reasonable price. As a five-star paper with an average cost as low as $0.10 per sheet, this paper has the look and feel of high-quality photo paper fresh from the printer. During the printing process, the dye is fixed to the surface of the paper producing a deeper black and a clearer overall photographic finish. The color reproduction is stabilized faster than ever before enabling consumers to enjoy their memories right away.

The new PIXMA iP2600 printer has an estimated retail price of $49.99

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Canon U.S.A. announced an initiative that will combine the Company’s latest environmentally-conscious PIXMA, SELPHY and imageCLASS printer products and solutions under one corporate brand name: Generation Green. In addition, Canon offers a variety of solutions in its PIXMA, SELPHY and imageCLASS printer products that are integrated into this initiative such as paper saving technology, minimized product packaging, energy saving measures and the industry’s longest-running toner recycling program.

As part of its Generation Green campaign, Canon has also announced the availability of NatureStone™ product packaging in select ink packs. NatureStone uses biodegradable limestone packaging, which reduces the need for paper and other raw materials, resulting in a 45 percent reduction in natural energy, 65 percent reduction in petroleum-based plastics and 50 percent reduction in emissions.

Generation Green is divided into three product classification categories: Eco-Conscious, Eco-Standards and Eco-Friendly. Among the benefits of these categories:

• Compact product design and resized boxes improves shipping
• NatureStone™ uses biodegradable stone packaging, reducing the need for paper or other raw materials
• Packaging material for toner cartridges uses air cushioning to help reduce product sizes, improve shipping efficiency
• All newest generation Canon PIXMA printers are ENERGY STAR® qualified
• All newest generation Canon PIXMA, SELPHY and imageCLASS printers eliminate the use of specific hazardous materials
• First in the printing industry to create a toner cartridge recycling program Recycled Canon toner cartridges are 100 percent recovered with zero landfill waste
• Power supply casings for current PIXMA printers are made from recycled plastics
• All newest generation Canon PIXMA and imageCLASS printers’ user manuals are printed on 70 percent recycled paper

(From Canon’s Press Release)

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Today we take the laser printer as an integral part of everyday life in office environment. However 30 years ago when it first appeared, this piece of machinery was quite a curio.

When a document is sent to the printer, a laser beam “draws” the document on a drum using electrical charges. After the drum is charged, it is rolled in toner, a dry powder type of ink. The toner sticks to the charged image on the drum. The toner is transferred onto a piece of paper and fused to the paper with heat and pressure. After the document is printed, the electrical charge is removed from the drum and the excess toner is collected.

This is how the laser printer works now, but originally it all began from an experiment on image transition. On October 22, 1938, when American inventor Chester Carlson together with German immigrant Otto Kornei first transferred an image from a glass microscope slide to a sheet of wax paper using method later called electrophotography.

Kornei wrote the words “10.-22.-38 ASTORIA.” in ink on a glass microscope slide. Then the experimentalists prepared a zinc plate with a sulphur coating, darkened the room, rubbed the sulphur surface with a handkerchief to apply an electrostatic charge. After that they laid the slide on the zinc plate, exposing it to a bright, incandescent light.

They removed the slide, sprinkled lycopodium powder to the sulphur surface, softly blew the excess away, and transferred the image to a sheet of wax paper. They heated the paper, melting the wax off, and had their first near-perfect duplicate

In 1944 the technology goes to the Haloid Company for further development. Later Haloid renames the technology into xerography and makes up the name “XeroX” (that’s the original spelling).

On October 22, 1948, ten years after that first microscope slide was copied, the Haloid Company made the first public announcement of xerography. The first commercial product based on xerography was the Haloid Xerox Copier, which started selling in 1950. Since 1961, Haloid Company becomes known to the world as the Xerox Corporation.

Laser printing method inherits a lot from photocopying. Xerox engineer, Gary Starkweather, “merely” added a laser beam to existing xerography technology to come up with the laser printer. It tool 3 years before the first laser printer called EARS was created in November, 1971 in Xerox Palo Alto Research Center.

The first commercial laser printer was 3800 made by IBM in 1976. Apart from being first commercial, IBM 3800 Printing System was the industry’s first high-speed laser printer. It could speed up to 100 impressions-per-minute and was used for printing high volumes of documents such as invoices and mailing labels. According to IBM, the printer was installed in the central accounting office in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and said to occupy a whole room. Many 3800s are still in use.

One year later, in 1977 Xerox released its 9700 Electronic Printing System. According to the company, that was the first laser printer product on the market powered by Palo Alto Research Center research and a direct descendent from the original “EARS” printer. In 1981 Xerox was also the first company to present a printing solution to use with personal computers as a part of the Xerox Star 8010 Information System.

Although it was innovative, Xerox Star was considered to be a commercial failure because only about 25,000 units were sold. Xerox Star was an expensive system (around $17000) and was mostly purchased by a small number of laboratories and institutions.

In 1980s personal computer became more widespread and that was the time for Hewlett Packard. In 1984 the company introduced HP LaserJet – the first printer of the legendary series intended for a mass market. The laser printer was based on Canon engine controlled by HP software and could produce 8 pages per minute. Other manufacturers were quick to respond and soon released their laser printers, too.

An important role in making desktop printing popular played the introduction of Apple LaserWriter for Apple Macintosh in 1985. Accompanied with Aldus PageMaker software, this laser printer made it possible users to create documents that previously had been restricted to professionals.

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Canon U.S.A. introduced the Selphy ES2 Compact Photo Printer. The printer features “Easy Photo Pack” cartridges that combine ink and paper. It uses USB 2.0 to connect to a Mac or PC and also supports direct connections to PictBridge-enabled cameras. The Selphy ES2 also automatically corrects for red-eye and enhances images for exposure, color and brightness.

The Selphy ES2 sports a 3.0-inch “tilt-up” TFT display that delivers detailed previews of your images before printing. The printer produces from credit card size up to 4 x 6-inch prints at 300 x 300 dots per inch that are water-resistant and can resist fading up to 100 years.

Canon Selphy ES2 employs Canon’s proprietary Easy-Scroll Wheel, a navigation tool that lets you quickly browse and use the functions you want. The device also features built-in memory card readers that work with most commonly used memory cards in digital cameras including CompactFlash, Memory Sticks, MMC, SD Card, SDHC and others.

The printer is coming in October and will cost $199.99.

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Now, let’s get back from the world of innovation technologies to printer maker releases.

The Compact

The Stylish

The Sexy

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“The soil” of Canon is extremely fertile this month. Believe it or not, but here come three more multifunctions from that manufacturer - Pixma MX300, MX310, and MX700. As you may gather it from the word ‘multifunction’, these devices perform functions of printing, copying, scanning, and faxing.

Apart from the functions mentioned above, Canon Pixma MX700 features networking, two-sided printing, and an auto document feeder. The device prints and copies 30 pages per minute (ppm) for black text and 19 ppm for color documents. The printer employs 4 separate color cartridges (pigment black, cyan, magenta, and yellow) that are capable of producing 2-picoliter-sized droplets at up to 4800 x 1200 dpi in color and 600 x 600 dpi in black.

The printer also features a 1.8-inch LCD screen to helps navigate the menu, and supports PictBridge connection as well as memory cards. The MX700’s scanner has a CIS sensor to achieve 2400 x 4800 dpi; copy zoom ranges from 25 to 400 percent. For easier copying, scanning, and faxing Canon Pixma MX700 employs a 30-page auto document feeder.

Canon Pixma MX310 has the same basic design of MX700. Both the MX310 and the MX300 use one black and one combined color ink cartridge to print 4800 x 1200 dpi in color and 600 x 600 dpi in black. Both MX310 and the MX300 can print as fast as up to 22 ppm black and 17 ppm color. The printers are compatible with a PictBridge connection for direct printing from cameras, but don’t support memory card slots.

All in all, this month Canon has released 12 inkjet printers – 6 all-in-ones, 2 compact photo printers and 4 “men of mould” – regular color inkjet printers. Frankly speaking, I can’t imagine there is necessity for that many devices, however, there is surely someone at Canon who can. Wilson Rotham of Gizmodo.com is confused, too; in his acticle “Canon Launches 12 Printers, Only Needed To Launch 4” he tells why 4 printers would be enough and calls to put an end to this “product spam.”

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