Two days of imaging and printing talk begin

Live from the 2008 Lyra Imaging Symposium in Rancho Mirage CA

The 2008 Lyra Imaging Symposium has officially kicked off with Mondays opening evening reception. Presentations over the next two days promise to include numerous insights into the direction of our industry, and I will be posting some of the most interesting ones right here. Coming up this first morning? Well be hearing from executives from Memjet, HP (NYSE HPQ), Xerox (NYSE XRX), and PrintFleet, along with a bevy of Lyra Research analysts. And well see if Lexmarks good news puts the conference in a buoyant mood!

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Best Cheapest Canon Inkjet Printing

We have been in this market for over 3.5 years. We started saving money by buying a cli-8 resetter and then peeling off our original ink chips and double sticking them to compatible ink cartridges. To say this is a savings is truly an understatement.

Buying a set of Canon cartridges, even at Costco is about $55 for five. That is the case whether you get the cli-8 carts or the new cli-221 carts, which hold about 1/3 as much ink as the earlier ones.

So since we started using a resetter and buying compatibles, we began to stock these. We now carry top of the line compatibles for both the 8 and 221 series. We stock brand new G&G Ninestar ink cartridges without chips. Buying a set of 5 of cartridges is an incredible savings.

5 Pack Compatible Cartridges without chips for CLI-8 / PGI-5
1 each Cli-8 yellow, cyan, magenta, black & Pgbk
For Canon Pixma Models:IP4200, IP4300, IP4500, IP5200, IP5200R, MP530, MP600, MP610, MP800, MP800R, MP810, MP830, MX850
Regular Price: $22.35  Introductory Price: $14.90 

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5 Pack Compatible Cartridges without chips for CLI-221 / PGI-220
1 each Cli-221 cyan, black, magenta, yellow & Pgi-220 For Canon Pixma Models: IP3600, IP4600, IP4700, MP560, MP620, MP620B, MP640, MX860, MX870 
Regular Price: $21.86  Introductory Price: $14.57 

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So we began our business with Canon resetters. Today we still carry the best resetters in the world for both the 8 and 221 chip series. The prices, as with anything in technology have dropped significantly.

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When we started we sold resetters for over $67 each. Today here are the prices:

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QE358 for cli-8 / pgi-5 with six month full replacement warranty is only $17.96  

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QE221 for cli-221 / pgi-220 with six month full replacement warranty is only $26.00  

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But we have gone into a much greater savings realm and a greener one too by refilling cartridges.

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Observations New Horizons in Printing

by Jim Lyons

The Hard Copy Observer, June 2008

New Horizons in Printing


One of the joys of being a printer industry “observer” is the combination of steady predictable trends mixed with the serendipitous nature of much news and development in the industry. While 2007 was hard to beat for momentous milestones for industry stalwarts including HP, Kodak, and Xerox, and attention-gaining surprises from newcomers Silverbrook/Memjet and Zink, 2008 has had its share of interesting developments as well. As we reach the year’s half-way point, I first think about some of the “little things” that I’ve seen and learned, including a delightful match of customer needs and industry capabilities I’m calling “media printing,” as well as a variety of other emerging technologies that have been lumped under the biggest of possible “printing” umbrellas and may grow to be of great importance someday.

At the risk of giving away some trade secrets about just how to be an industry observer, one of my methods is following company and trade communications (of course, The Hard Copy Observer tops this list). But I also like the serendipity of entering “printer” and “printing” into the search bar of Google News a number of days per week and just seeing what pops up.

In 2008 so far, in addition to media printing (more to follow), I’ve come across drug printing, 3D printing, organ printing, and electronics and solar cell printing, to name a few. Many use ink jet technologies in one form or another and provide a glimpse at many new horizons open to printing and print technologies.

• Drug printing is a form of the long-established ink jet industrial marking business, which HP has entered via its Specialty Printing Division. It is more than just printing a few characters of a cryptic code on a pill now though and includes images and variable data. The wonders of digital printing long ago came to the pharmaceutical industry, but now it’s the pills themselves that are being printed upon. (see "Drug Printing".)

• 3D printing and organ printing are also both variations on ink jet technology. 3D printing has actually been around for a long time and, as I always thought, it involves adding a “Z” axis to “X,Y” printing devices, and replacing the ink in a typical printing solution with a hardening compound that, when dry, hardens as a stable 3D object. 3D printing is grouped under the “rapid prototyping” technologies and is becoming a practical way to produce parts, competing with more established machine shop techniques. It’s hard to put a machine shop on a space station though, which is the somewhat far-out promise of 3D printing. With organ printing, or more generally “bioprinting” ink jet applications, a similar tack is used, but the printer jets biological materials (cells) to create a replacement organ or other body part for human patients. (see "Organ Printing".)

• Solar cells for converting sunlight into electricity are another important type of “cell” that is being printed—both with offset and ink jet techniques. Electronics printing (using print technologies to create circuit boards) has been with us for some time, and now it’s being applied to the emerging category of solar cells and panels. (see "Solar Cell Printing".)


With that range of technologies in mind, it was interesting to be introduced first-hand to the capabilities of a neighboring company here in Idaho: Gold Link Media. Specializing in “distributing content using the latest digital media solutions” per the firm’s Web site, Gold Link Media features printing capability for CD and DVD media that employs heat transfer film images produced by a Xeikon digital typesetter at CDigital Markets LLC of Baltimore, MD. Digital technology for this type of printing favors short runs and offers variable data printing, just as in more conventional digital printing. Gold Link Media uses a custom Trekk Equipment device along with the film supplied by CDigital to complete the media printing process at the same time that the firm puts data on the disk and the packaging.

Despite overall satisfaction and strong customer acceptance of its current media printing solution, Gold Link Media founder and president David Fish has his eye on emerging upstream printing developments that involve, yes, ink jet technology. For example, Tapematic, of Ornago, Italy, is touting a six-color UV-curable ink jet solution.

And one irony of the technology history of this category? Indigo Systems (Observer, 9/99), long before being acquired by Hewlett-Packard (NYSE HPQ) in 2002, had an initial foray into this market with its Omnius card press. As we watch HP “turning over many stones” in the industrial and graphics-arts markets in search of continued growth in its printer business, may we perchance see the firm’s presence again in this space?

Solar cells, DVDs, kidneys and spleens? What’s next for printing? Keep reading, and I’ll keep observing!

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December Observations Spin off Spinning – Looking Ahead to “The HP Printing Company”

December 2012 Observations

Observations: Spin-off Spinning – Looking Ahead to “The HP Printing Company”

My former employer, printing and imaging giant Hewlett Packard, has been the source of much bad news over the last few years. CEO turnover, over-priced acquisitions, and strategic stumbling have all made the company, started by “Bill and Dave” in 1939, the subject of much derision and speculation. And a tumbling stock price has made the ongoing crisis very real for share-holding employees and retirees.

HPQ stock price since 2000

The stock price, bouncing off a decade low in recent weeks, has been buoyed in recent days by calls for breaking up the company and rumors of corporate vultures like Carl Icahn circling (see "Rumors of Carl Icahns interest..." ). The accompanying speculation makes one ponder a future with an independent HP Printing Company in our industry’s midst.

Could once-proud HP, founding firm of Silicon Valley, really be in Icahns sights?

The most recent and most severe downward spiral began about a year and half ago with news that had little to do with the printing side of the house. The August 2011 announcements included a proposed spinoff of HP’s PC business and the cancellation of the firm’s short-lived TouchPad tablet computer (a would-be Apple iPad competitor that barely made a blip in the market) and exit from their WebOS investment, acquired via Palm in 2010. The simultaneous large acquisition of UK-based Autonomy, a provider of infrastructure software for the enterprise, was widely criticized as being too pricey at the time. (By November of 2012, HP management had accused the acquired company’s management of accounting improprieties, which led to that over-priced deal, seemingly discovering that the price was too high, well more than a year after the rest of the world caught on!)

That series of decisions in August 2011 was not at all well received by investors and industry watchers, lead to the departure of another CEO, Leo Apotheker, the third top executive to make an exit since 2006. Apotheker was replaced by current CEO Meg Whitman, who reversed the PC spin-off idea, and moved the former Imaging and Printing Group (IPG) under the company’s PC business and the leadership of Todd Bradley, simultaneously bidding adieu to “retiring” long-time printer chief Vyomesh Joshi.

And now, the world seems antsy about HP and its ability to turn things around. Some believe this situation to be a classic case of negative synergy – where the sum of the parts following a breakup of the firm would have more value than the current whole. According to some, we could see an independent HP Printing Company in the near future.

So what of a spin-off of the printer group? A little more history is worth noting at this point as this is not the first time the idea has surfaced. In 2002, former CEO Carly Fiorina successfully completed the acquisition of Compaq Computer. Before the deal was done one of the founder’s sons, Walter Hewlett, led a bitter proxy fight against the merger and suggested then that the IPG organization could fare better and bring higher value on its own (see “Hewlett suggests HP spin offprinting unit”, ). At that time, spin-offs for HP were hardly unknown – its original business in test and measurement products was successfully spun out, as Agilent, in the 1990s.

Spinning off HPs Printing Group is not a new idea

The printer group, the former IPG, has been out of the wake of most of the more scandalous news in recent years. Its acquisitions have been smaller and more sensible (I am thinking of Indigo – in the same time frame as Compaq – followed by Scitex Vision and MacDermid, which greatly bolstered the company’s successful upward market expansion into commercial printing). Negative numbers, at least in year-to-year compares, started to show up during in the 2008/2009 recession, especially in consumer printing. Since then, the portfolio has been a mixed bag, with Whitman’s assertion that print is in a “secular decline” becoming a headline-maker earlier this year. (See "HPs Big Problem.").

But those of us who make a living following the industry see definite promise and bright spots in HP’s printing and imaging business, even beyond the aforementioned commercial business, where the company has found growth by replacing traditional analog-based methods with modern, digital printing. In the enterprise space particularly, HP has a line of spiffy new monochrome and color MFPs and some new and expanding solutions based around document management and workflow improvements, as the worlds of physical and electronic documents become ever more integrated. Ironically, these solutions, branded under the “Flow” moniker, along with the print-and-scan hardware, are based in large part on solutions from Autonomy, the now-much-maligned acquisition target of 2011.

I personally think the new company would be formidable. HP’s investments and capabilities in its printing and imaging business have continued over the years, and more “autonomy” (ouch – forgive me!) for the business could do nothing but good for the proposed spin-off’s highly qualified but currently beleaguered marketing and technical teams. And who knows – if they need a CEO, I know a recently unemployed, but highly experienced executive who goes by the initials “VJ!”

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Google Chrome for iOS adds printing makes headlines!

A new version of Googles Chrome web browser (version 26) has added, among other features, support for Google Cloud Print and Apple AirPrint. In TheNextWebs brief write-up, it even made headlines! (See above.)

Interesting, too, in the Apple iTunes App Store listing, under "printing", theyve also included "Save web pages as PDF". (See below.)

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A brief view of the HP EDS deal relative to printing

As the market awaits HPs earnings announcement after todays close, its worth clicking over to Mike Feldmans recent "HP and EDS" post at the revitalized "HP’s Enterprise Printing Blog". Not surprisingly, Mike likes the deal, and sees an expanded overall services business at the combined companies leading to growing outsourced print services deals as well.

Again, not an earth-shattering view, but nice to get an executive opinion on a current news development directly via a blog.

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Printing and Imaging Tweets we love em!

As an active blogger for quite a few years now, I know how it can be somewhat painful to go back and read old posts. Sometimes they are naive, other times they include embarrassing writing glitches, and overall, truth be told, once in awhile, you just sound dumb!

But the historic value cannot be denied, and most often I do relish the fact that Ive logged my own thinking and observations from the time, as well as industry direction (including references).

So case in point - here we are, about three-and-a-half years since I posed the question, "Do we need printer industry tweets?" and while my post from November 2009 includes ALL the aforementioned problems, I am picking it up again. And I plan to highlight some of those very best and active tweeters in our biz in coming weeks and months.

To start, heres one with some stakes (i.e.prizes!). Memjet (see below) is racing towards 1,000 Twitter followers, and I am encouraging my readers to get in the game!

That is @memjet - on their way to four figures of followers, and beyond! And stay tuned for more great Twitter efforts from our industry...

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