Office workers can breathe easily now that German scientists have shown that laser printer emit ‘hardly any’ particles of black toner, a potential carcinogen.

A previous study by the Queensland University of Technology found that printers emitted clouds of particles that were five times higher than levels outside, which they assumed could include potentially dangerous toner dust.

However, researchers at the Fraunhofer Wilhelm Klauditz Institute in Braunschweig looked into exact composition of the emissions.

“Some printers do emit ultra-fine particles made of volatile organic-chemical substances,” says WKI Professor Tunga Salthammer. “But one essential property of these ultra-fine particles is their volatility, which indicates that we are not looking at toner dust.”

Toner deaf

The scientists confirmed their conclusions by testing a range of printers without any paper or toner in them – and still detected the ultra-fine particles.

They concluded that the particles were coming from the printers’ fixing unit – a component that heats up as high as 220°C during the printing process in order to fix toner particles on the paper.

Ultra-fine particles are produced by many household gadgets that have an electric motor or heating element – such as toasters – but little research has been done into their possible toxicity.

In any case, say Fraunhofer boffins, there’s nothing to be done: “Our investigations show that as the ultra-fine particles are not emitted from a specific part of the printer, but also from the paper output, filters can only have a limited effect.”

You may know that DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) prohibits your downloading and sharing any copyrighted material – pirated movies, music, book, TV shows, etc. If your computer IP is detected to take part in such activity, your ISP will receive a DMCA takedown notice – a formal message to report infringing content. The ISP will, in turn, warn your or whoever is know to be associated with detected IP to stop illegal activities. Briefly, this is how copyrights holders protect their intellectual property.

What does it have to do with printers, you may ask?

I’ll tell you what. Some guys (two teacher and a student namely) from University of Washington examined BitTorrent file-sharing networks using specially designed BitTorrent clients to monitor the traffic on these networks. They didn’t actually upload or download any files, but somehow the researchers received over 400 takedown requests. Each of those notices was a false positive accusing them of copyright infringement. The results of the study show that virtually any Internet user has a risk of receiving the DMCA takedown notice.

It still has nothing to do with printers, you may remark.

Yes, but we are almost there. The researchers say in the study that of all the numerous takedown notices they received, 13 were issued for 3 laser printers and a wireless access point. Interesting, right?

The results of the study make it clear that being an advanced user you can make your printer download movies for you and come out clean. On the other hand, the study shows how inconclusive is the method used to identify infringing BitTorrent users.

So if your ISP forwards you a takedown notice, cast the blame on your printer.

New cost-of-ink-per-page analysis of ink cartridges is a new way for customers to estimate their printing costs.

QualityLogic, a company providing quality assurance and control services, reported it had completed Cost-of-Ink-Per-Page (CoIPP) Analysis for the Eastman Kodak Company.

CoIPP Analysis uses cartridge cost and page-yield to calculate and compare the cost of ink required to print one page on Kodak EASYSHARE 5100, 5300 and 5500 All-in-One Printers to 11 competing printers.

Page-yield is determined by Certified Page-Yield Test Program, QualityLogic’s special software based on ISO standards determines. Cartridge prices in UK, France, and Germany were provided by IDC, a provider of independent market intelligence.

QualityLogic published a paper that you can view for details, but here is a briefly overview of what results of the analysis show.

Naturally, all three Kodak’s printers demonstrate lowest cost of ink per page in monochrome, color and photo printing. For instance in UK, one page printed on any of Kodak Easyshare printers in mono, color and photo mode costs 0.016, 0.047 and 0.064 GBP, or $0.033, $0.096 and 0.131 respectively.

It turns out the most expensive printer inks among the compared are for Hewlett-Packard’s Photosmart C5280 followed by Photosmart C4280. A page printed Photosmart C5280 in monochrome mode would cost 0.065 GBP; in color mode – 0.148 GBP; in photo mode – 0.311 GBP. Converted into US dollars, that’d make $0.137, $0.302 and $0.636, respectively.

Of course, actual prices in USA will vary, but the example gives us a general idea of cost difference scale.

Not so long ago a study initiated by HP found that HP ink cartridges contain inks twice as much as remanufactured and refilled ones. Some time before that, an ink study sponsored by Epson found that Epson genuine inks provide stronger color-fading resistance and, thus, longer life of printed images.

Just like these studies, the QualityLogic’s analysis is not completely independent and unbiased. However, such CoIPP analysis provides consumers with information that is fair, accurate and consistent. It gives them a new way to look at this portion of the overall cost of owning and operating a printer.

Recent study show customers have no basis for comparison when buying printers, which results in $6 billion overpay on ink every year.

The American Consumer Institute released a new white paper entitled “Inkjet Prices, Printing Costs and Consumer Welfare” disclosing pricing strategies adopted within the inkjet industry. This is the first document made by public organization (we don’t consider numerous articles on the topic in magazines and sites by independent authors).

Inkjet printers are usually under-priced or even sell in the red to make them more appealing for purchase. However, the manufacturers make up the profit on overpriced ink, and consumers are left with no choice and spend hundreds of extra dollars to operate the printers. The printer ink is currently one of the most expensive liquids in the world. The price of it can be compared with that of the world’s finest champagne, gasoline and most luxury fragrances.

Currently, there’s no standardized printer ink unit pricing, such as cents per printed page. In this situation, customers at the shop have no information about real printing costs. They buy cartridges without knowing how much ink is in them or how many pages one cartridge will print. The lowest price cannot serve as the rule of thumb, because very often the lowest priced cartridges have much less ink.

The paper also suggests that adoption of a form of truth-in-labeling would allow customers to compare each printer’s cost-of-ink per printed page. The paper concludes that competition in the inkjet printer and ink sectors would be much more intense if consumers were made aware of the cost implications of their printer choices. Better information means lower costs for consumers.

I believe this is a good start. If more public organizations begin informing consumers on the issues and thus affecting the manufacturers, the situation with overpriced printer ink may really change for the better.