The X9575 is the flagman ship of Lexmark’s Professional series of inkjet multifunctions designed to serve business needs. (The unit has a range of connection options and a number of PC-less features that make it a suitable addition to the home or small office. However, the printing speeds and photo quality leave a bit to be desired.)

The X9575 is rich in connectivity options: you can connect it using USB, Ethernet and 802.11g Wi-Fi.

The front control panel of the multifunction features a color LCD for previewing photos and navigating the menu. Next to the display is a PictBridge port for direct printing and a multi-card reader. The printer has an automatic duplexing feature, allowing businesses to save money through double-sided printing.

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Last Friday Brother introduced its new multifunctional inkjet printer — the MFC-6490CW.

This printer is the first in a new line of “Professional Series” printers. It is also first Brother’s color inkjet to print, copy, scan, and fax on 11 x 17-inch tabloid sized paper.

The MFC-6490CW can print at speeds of up to 35 ppm in black, 28 ppm in color at up to 600 x 1200-dpi resolution. When copying, you can achieve speed of up to 23 copies per minute in black, 20 in color. The scanning unit supports resolutions up to 19200 dpi

The printer uses 4 separate color ink cartridges for imaging.

The Brother MFC-6490CW is well-equipped: it has a 50 sheet Automatic Document Feeder, dual paper trays that can hold up to 400 sheets, and Super G3 33.6Kbps fax modem.

You can connect this printer via USB 2.0, but it also supports Ethernet and 802.11g-compatible Wi-Fi connectivity.

The MFC-6490CW has a built-in 3.3-inch widescreen display and allows for direct photo printing from digital camera media cards, USB flash drives or PictBridge-enabled cameras.

The printer is TWAIN-compliant and compatible with Mac OS X 10.2.4 or later. The bundled software includes Presto PageManager OCR.

The printer is available at an estimated street price of $299.

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We have all seen regular printers that produce pages, some of us have heard of 3D printers that create things. Somewhere in between, there’s a place for another kind of printers. PromoJET Solvent Inkjet Printer applies images on both flat and three-dimensional objects.

PromoJET flatbed inkjet printer uses 8 color solvent based inks which are formulated to adhere without pre-treatment to most materials:
plastics,
coated metals,
leathers, etc.
More difficult surfaces can be printed on with the use of a special pre-spray.

The printer is equipped with a 11×18-inch tooling table to place the parts up to 5 inches high. Specialized RIP software controls the color reproduction and the overall amount of ink laid on the product. It is claimed that the PromoJET printer can decorate a full table of parts in less than 3 minutes.

Printer specifications:

• 12″ x 17″ tooling platform
• 5″ vertical height adjust
• Automatic platform height adjustment (z-axis)
• Automatic nozzle cleaning system
• DC controlled reciprocating platform
• 8 color print head
• Control Pendant
• Opal ink start up kit (7×100ml containers)
• RIP software with volume control
• Print Driver for .AI, .PSD, .CDR
• Instruction and training manual CD, Printer Driver CD
• Maximum print area - 11.7 x 16.5 inches
• Ink colors - Cyan, Blue, Magenta, Red, Yellow, Photo Black, Matte Black, Gloss
• Connectivity - USB
• Maximum part height - 5 inches
• Maximum resolution - 2400 x 2400 dpi
• Compatible software - Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, CorelDraw

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Nowadays, large offset presses, costing several million dollars apiece, dominate printing business that is estimated for $418 billion a year. Most of the offset presses sold in the world are produced by Xerox.

This state of affairs is likely to change with the introduction of the new inkjet technologies. And the success of new technologies means troubles for Xerox and more business for major makers of inkjet printers like Hewlett-Packard, Eastman Kodak and others.

The introduced inkjet presses, priced as much as $2.5 million per unit, are more expensive than the half a million dollar Xerox machines, but cost less per page. For instance, inkjet machines produce a page for 1 cent, versus about 4 cents for the Xerox’s laser technology. Just like with desktop printers, the digital printer makers expect to make their profits by selling ink.

So far offset printers produces 95% of all printed pages worldwide. Digital presses account for only 2% of offset pages, or $US8 billion annually. However, inkjet makers expect that share to triple in the next 3-4 years as quality and speed of digital printing improve. But even today inkjet makers are sure with their technology digital printing is competitive in price and quality with offset printing.

At the Drupa trade show world’s printer makers are showing new inkjet presses predicted to be the future of commercial printing.

Kodak will demonstrate its Stream inkjet technology that can print at a speed of 150 meters a minute, about half the speed of traditional offset. The technology will be available in 2010, Kodak says.

HP will show its Inkjet Color Web Press, which prints at 120 meters a minute and will be available for sale next year.

Industry specialists are cautious in theirs predictions and say digital printing won’t push out offset as fast as digital photography replaced film. But the shift to digital printing provides an important growth opportunity for printer makers.

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Surely you have faced this problem: one fine day the printer stops printing and starts flashing with its LEDs. You know that something went wrong but don’t know what it is.

The thing is when broken, printer can’t TELL you happened (I imagine it would be breathing like Darth Vader or speaking in Optimus Prime’s voice,) but it can give you a sign. It is the you who should understand that signs (as a higher developed species.) At least, it’s in your interest to do so.

So let’s learn some printer signals language. (more…)

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While being just another low-cost color inkjet printer, Lexmark Z2420 Wireless stands out for its integrated 802.11b/g wireless connectivity, which makes it as flexible as only few other printers in this price range. Unfortunately, that’s all there is, because its performance is moderate, according to, discovers Melissa Riofrio, in PC World review of Lexmark Z2420.

In tests the Z2420 performed fairly well. It produced 10 pages of text in 1 minute, which is slightly above average for this category. As for color graphics printing, here Z2420 rates slowest among the likes.

It was noticed that the Z2420’s print quality greatly depends on the type of paper. On the plain paper, the black ink produced slightly faded and fuzzy-looking letters. Color photos also looked faded and grainy. On Lexmark’s own photo paper, the same images brightened and showed improved, crisper details.

Lexmark calculates its ink yields using a suite of typical documents. The cartridges that came along with the Z2420 printer ran out fast, after 175 “black” pages and 150 “tricolor” pages. A higher yield, yet more pricy cartridges are available; black cartridge costs $25 and lasts 500 pages or 4.9 cents per page. A tricolor cartridge lasts same 500 pages, but costs $35, which makes 7.2 cents per page.

The printer is easy to install via USB or wireless, thanks to the helpful installation process. The overall design is of the printe is described as simple, too.

The printer can hold up to 100 sheets through rear-loading input area and has a 25-sheet output tray. The cartridges are hidden behind a top panel and have easy-release latches. There are only 2 buttons on the control panel that perform all, but this is a common site for a budget printer like that.

In conclusion Melissa finds Lexmark Z2420 Wireless rather disappointing as main printer. However, as a cheap secondary device for occasional photo printing, Z2420 is a good choice. Besides it has a wireless connection, something that other low-cost printers don’t.

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“Inkjet prints cannot be recycled for new newsprint or copying paper just as old newspapers or magazines,” claims INGEDE, International Association of the Deinking Industry.

It turns out, the recycling process doesn’t remove the ink from inkjet prints; the new paper comes out shaded. The recycling paper mills can still cope with single inkjet prints from households or offices. But what printer manufacturers plan to introduce at the “Drupa” fair, the world’s largest printing and paper exhibition, jeopardizes the paper recycling cycle: Direct mail or newspapers printed with inkjet are like a sponge full of ink – and even in small amounts of such printed products can cause the graphic paper recycling to collapse.

For a couple of years INGEDE has been trying to solve this problem together with printer manufacturers and other members of the paper chain, but futile. Quite the opposite – those printer manufacturers focused on excellent recyclable dry toners now also offer inkjet systems for high volumes.

The association believes that publishers and mailing designers need to be informed, as even a single publisher investing in this kind of equipment could severely harm paper recycling all over Europe. INGEDE plans an intensive information campaign in the forefront of the “Drupa” fair. Clearly, inkjet printed news and direct mail do not fit into the higher-grade paper recycling system. That is why possibly this kind of printed products have to be clearly visible marked as “not recyclable”.

The dry toner performs very well in the paper recycling process that originally has been developed for the removal of offset and gravure inks. A series of tests by different European research institutes on behalf of INGEDE has confirmed these findings.

For those of us who are environmentally conscious, all the above means we’d better stick to laser printers, if we want to be greener.

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