HP Inkjet Technology Delivers Dialysis

Hewlett Packard has licensed Home Dialysis Plus (HD+) to use HP’s inkjet technology to mix water and concentrated dialysate, a mixture of chemicals used to remove toxins and deliver electrolytes to blood in human body.

HP states mixing the solution helps filter toxins over a longer period, and HP’s smart memory-chip technology will secure the correct dialysate prescription is being delivered consistently to conduct dialysis while the patient is at sleep.

The deal between the two companies came out of HP’s intellectual-property licensing program, and HD+ expects to get its machine onto the market by the end of 2010.

HP says there are many technologies available for licensing that lend themselves well to the health and life-sciences industry, and the company will continue to look for opportunities within a variety of markets so that people can further benefit from HP inventions.

Via TCD blog

QualityLogic's Tests Prove Reliability And Higher Yield of HP Inks

Hewlett Packard is reported to announce results of a research study to compare how original HP ink cartridges rate against 13 most common ink cartridges refillers. The results of the test showed that

“original HP inkjet cartridges printed 57.5 percent more pages, on average, than the refill brands tested.”

Besides, HP cartridges proved to be more reliable:

“None of the Original HP inkjet cartridges failed during the test, whereas an average of one in five refilled brands was either dead-on-arrival or failed prematurely.”

All in all, HP cartridges 'won' refilled cartridges in every test.

The study was conducted by QualityLogic, one of the world largest and respected independent quality organizations. The funny thing is, HP recently argued results of a test conducted by that very independent quality organization, when QualityLogic tested Kodak inks. Can't wait for Kodak to strike back and question the results of HP ink cartridges study :)

HP Argues The Results of Kodak's Ink Test

TechTalk blogger, Dean Takahashi, presents in his article an argument between HP and Kodak. The cause of the argument was the results of Quality Logic’s test proving that Kodak inks save customers 50% on everything they print. I wrote about this test not so long ago.

He lists a number of HP statements challenging the conditions and results of the test, as well as Kodak’s responses to those statements. I’ll quote one of them:

HP goes:

"QualityLogic’s test did not include all available HP supplies. For example, HP’s Photosmart C4180 offers a larger black supply (HP 95) than what was included in the test, which would have resulted in lower black cost-per-page for HP. What’s more, HP offers many different value pack options that further reduce HP’s cost-of-printing."

For that Kodak replies:

"Kodak chose to test the cartridges that ship with each printer because these are the cartridges that consumers are most likely to purchase. Therefore, the testing was based on individually purchased cartridges. It is also the most practical way to provide an apples-to-apples comparison.

Like HP, Kodak offers a discounted combo cartridge pack, delivering an even lower cost-of-ink and lower cost-per-page to consumers. While this would have provided even better cost-per-page results for Kodak, it would not have supported apples-to-apples comparative testing."

Seems like Kodak does have a weapon to conquer the ink cartridges market, however HP won’t to give up its market share easily.

Interview with HP Vice President Vyomesh Joshi

PC Magazine published an interesting interview titled ‘We Could Ink Jet Anything’ with Vyomesh Joshi titled, executive vice president of HP's Imaging and Printing Group. Simply put, he is the one in charge of HP printer business.

He opens the conversation with a brief overview of how printer business in HP has changed.

“We are focusing on pages. From a page point of view, 48 trillion are printed a year. Now we measure our market share in pages, and we are less than 2 percent. When you start thinking about pages, we have a tremendous opportunity.”

Then he moves to the issue of printing less in the modern online world:

“In 1984 we were promised the paperless office. And in 2006 we are using ten times more paper.”

Also, Vyomesh Joshi tells about new imaging devices coming up, gives his prospect of view on the new implementations of inkjet technology, such as DNA sequencing, 3-D printing and competitors achievements.

As a person who is into printing, I had a great time reading the interview.

HP To Accept New Ink Cartridge System

From my previous post (or maybe from some other source) you already know that inkjet cartridges market is estimated $32 billion. 21% of that market belongs to third-party companies that produce compatible generic cartridges and refills, and the number is growing, judging by success stories of refilling businesses I hear.

Cartridge refilling and remanufacturing enterprises are so successful because they offer customers a cheap and quality alternative to buying costly OEM supplies. Current business model of most inkjet printers makers is to sell cheap hardware, but expensive ink supplies; this is what they make money on. However, this is what customers don’t seem to like.

In effort to win back a share of that 21%, HP try a new approach. Hewlett Packard is changing the way of delivery of its ink cartridges: a new three color-coded categories and a lowered, two-level pricing system. Within 2007 year, HP will introduce inkjet printers designed to be used with new cartridge system.

Labeled with blue, green, and red color coding, standard, value, and specialty cartridges will be introduced in various retail stores as well as online, reports ChannelInsider.com. Besides, the new cartridges will contain a greater volume of ink. All this is to offer customers “a simplified shopping experience, more choice, and greater value”, the company said.

Seems like, first, HP recognized the fact that every one has different printing needs, second, it feel threatened by third-party cartridges manufacturers, that sell HP-compatible ink cartridges for much less.

New HP Deskjet Printers

HP has updated its line of Deskjet printers. HP Deskjet D2460, HP Deskjet D4260 and HP Deskjet F4180 All-in-One are designed for home and small and medium businesses and to allow (oh my God!) printing business documents. Apart from printing, the printers also include a bunch of other features.

The D2460 prints at speeds of up to 20 pages per minute in black and 14 pages per minute in color. It can amazingly produce 4x6 in. borderless photos at 4800 dpi resolution, and if you run out of ink, the printer will tell you so.

Deskjet D4260 is more sophisticated and kindly allows users to share, save and print photos simply by pressing HP Photosmart Essential button. The printer comes packed with HP Photosmart Real Life Technologies to help remove red-eyes effect, etc., and features HP Smart Web Printing for neat printing of web pages. D4260 is also faster — churn out 30 ppm in black and up to 23 ppm in color.

HP Deskjet F4180 All-in-One has the features of the two Deskjets, at the same time it allows copying, scanning at 1200 x 2400 dpi resolution and 48-bit color.

Do You Know HP?

Every one of us who have some knowledge of computer peripherals, know what HP stands for. Every time you think of a printer, you probably recall Hewlett Packard. Well, for some of us it’s Epson or Canon, but that’s not the point. The thing is, HP is well-known company.

One guy described his experience of searching for Hewlett Packard stand at London Book Fair. "Youlit Packet...?" a staff member asked when the guy was trying to find his way. Yes. They are still there, people who haven’t heard of HP or HP toner cartridges.

HP Goes Wide

After drawing much attention to CM8050 and CM8060 high-end multifunction printers, HP goes further with the Edgeline Technology.
The company introduced a wide-format printer DesignJet T1100, addressing the need of technical users such as architects, engineers and geologists. DesignJet T1100 uses same printheads as CM8060, but instead of having multiple printheads spanning the whole width, it prints a 1-inch band along the page.

The printer is capable of making line as thin as 0.04mm with an accuracy of 0.1%, compared to 0.2% of industry average. Also, DesignJet T1100 uses special matte black, which provide a better match with 4-color inks, and gray inks for smother gradients.

As usual, the print speed depends on printing task and paper quality. HP DesignJet T1100 produces a plain A1 page in 35 seconds in draft mode, 2.8 square meters per hour in best quality on glossy paper.

The printer features a fast controller that processes files independently from the computer.

A Cat Against An Inkjet

Let's have a break from serious new and watch a funny video of how a cat battles an HP Deskjet printer.

New HP Printers. Now With Video.

HP released two new high-end color multifunction printers - CM8060 and CM8050. Based on Scalable Printing Technology that cost HP $1.4 billion of investments, printers utilize HP Edgeline Technology to merely spit out pages. The printers are the fastest among HP top models: CM8060 can print 60 and 50 pages per minute in monochrome and color, respectively. The CM8050 can reach speeds of 50 ppm in back-and-white and 40 ppm in color.

But what really interesting in these printers is that they have an unusual user help system. HP added a bunch of self-help feature like step-by-step instruction on control panel and even live-action videos. All this designed to help end user fix occurring problems with printer on their own.

For example, if paper is jammed in CM8060 and CM8050, AutoNav self-help tool will play a video showing the location of jam and giving instruction on how to remove it. Those videos are said to be very specific and to address the exact problem, as opposed to giving general help.

HP did lots of marketing research on printer user interface and it turned out that some changes to make it easy to use are required. HP believes the printer to produce pages 30% more cost effective the average in industry. They also hope the new printers self-help features help reduce volume of call to technical support and minimize end-user training.

A really nice move by HP. First, they will help users indeed. Second, we are, probably, witnessing how a new entertainment market is born. How long has it been since nobody really believed watching video in mobile phone would come true? :) You can also search for HP toner cartridge you need, and buy it for your printer.

Web Friendly Printer by HP

If you ever tried printing a random web page, you probably know that what you get is far from original. There are stripes of white space, images chopped in two, text cut from one side, and so on. That’s annoying. On the other hand, with the development of Internet era people tend to print less, partially because of such web-hostile printer behavior.

Hewlett Packard is reported to address this problem. They have numbers showing that a good half of the materials printed at home is from Internet, while computer software generates only 20 percent of printing. Internet is infested with blogs and pictures galleries, which can spur the demand for printing, provide printers are web friendly.

In effort to stimulate home printing, HP resorted to help of a side company, Tabblo, a developer of Web-based software. The software creates templates that reorganize the photos and text blocks on a Web page to fit standard sizes of paper. HP wants to make this software a general standard, like Flash or Java. With such printing engine of the Web, HP will help all printer companies, but being the industry leader, it will surely benefit the most.

New HP Printer Eases Print and Preprint

Hewlett Packard announced a new wide-format photo printer Designjet Z3100ps GP. This model extends the model range of HP Designjet Z professional photo printers and feature easy integration into designing and publishing process. Aside from color management system, a property of all Z series printers, HP Designjet Z3100ps GP implement new HP DreamColor Technology. This technology is actually a complex of means of color management, providing accuracy and stability of color rendering for various digital devices.
The new model of HP Designjet Z series is firstly designed for design offices, marketing agencies, preprint offices and printing-works. New raster processor Adobe PS3/PDF features high usability and performance, while HP Advanced Profiling Solution with display calibration system allows experiment print on various media.
The built-in spectrophotometer based on X-Rite i1 Colour Technology automatically analyzes colors, calibrates them and instantly creates ICC-profiles. This drastically boosts print process of multicolor mock-ups and 24” and 44” color tests.
A free HP ProPrint module for Adobe Photoshop enables to achieve required colors at first try. This module is developed for Adobe Photoshop CS2 and is compatible with all HP Designjet Z series professional photo printers.
HP Designjet Z3100ps GP uses HP Vivera pigment inks 12-color print system.
Designed for workgroups, HP Designjet Z3100ps GP has a built-in web-server that allows task and queue management for maximum performance. The server is capable of processing task in multi-user environment due to 256 МB of RAM and 10 GB of flash memory.

Search for HP toner cartridges at Toner Cartridge Depot.com

Best of Laser and Inkjet Printing by HP

Hewlett Packard has developed a unique Edgeline and Scalable Printing Technologies for high-speed quality high-volume printing at low running costs.

The development has taken $1.4 billion and over 4 years of work. The goal of the research was to create single printing mechanism using advantages of both laser and jet HP technologies. As a result, the developed Edgeline technology has considerably increased the speed of printing and it’s outstanding quality.

The HP engineers have managed to combine best features of inkjet and laser printing: high speed, quality of text and graphics, low print cost per page and the lowest general running costs.

Edgeline Technology is one of a kind – printheads are positioned sheet-wide, so the only thing that moves during printing is paper. The speed increase has been made due to linear positioning of big fixed printheads – inks pour on paper sheet-wide while the sheet passes under printheads. That results in accurate ink application and maximum print speed.

The devices built on this technology use Vivera inks to provide highest print quality even on plain paper. Unlike jet technology, inks don’t diffuse into paper, but are applied on its surface and fixed with fixing agent to form a thin film. As a result, printouts come out dry even at high speed.

HP Edgeline Technology is developed for high-volume printing systems used in commercial print, industrial and office large-volume print. First products built on Edgeline technology are expected to appear the soonest.