Why the ColorQube may click

Xerox's new printer, which uses solid ink technology, may be great for the environment and good for you too

Time and again, people in the media (this writer included) write about green technology and time and again, we ignore one thing printing is environmentally bad. And we are not just talking about newsprint, we are referring to all the printouts you take in the office.

These days, green is fashionable, and many people add a message to their mail (in green colour for added emphasis) that tells us not to print this mail until needed. But since we do need to print quite a bit, what we need is better printing technology.

Solid idea?

Xerox has introduced a new product that it claims is good for you and the environment. The company says that the ColorQube 9200 series meets stringent standards for reduced power consumption. Xerox also says that one reason why solid ink is good for the environment is because solid ink sticks use fewer material resources and less energy across the product lifecycle, which implies a smaller carbon footprint.

Examples always help, and Xerox points out on its site that, after printing 22,000 pages a month for 4 years, a solid ink product's waste amounts to 88 pounds, as opposed to 815 pounds of waste from a laser device.

Winning combination

While one always likes to do something nice for the planet, there is also an important question to address what about me and my organisation? After all, is it not best to go in for a product that, while being good to Planet Earth, is also cheaper for my company?

Xerox has a calculator on its site, but we suspect that most enterprises will try to calculate this on their own in a real-life situation that is, perhaps buy one product, hook it up and see the real cost reductions. This is ideal remember how much difference there is between the mileage touted in automobile ads and what you really get?

Will it work?
One question that vendors and users alike ask is thisu2014will the product ultimately make sense for me? In this day, when cost cutting due to the recession and protecting the environment are alike important, Xerox has made the promise of addressing both, as it must, to get people interested.
And if it lives up to these promises, then companies that make traditional printers could get some real tough competition in the days to come.

What are solid ink printers?
Solid Ink printers, also known as phase-change printers, are a type of thermal transfer printer. They use solid sticks of CMYK coloured ink (similar in consistency to candle wax), which are melted and fed into a piezo crystal operated print-head. The print head sprays the ink on a rotating, oil coated drum. The paper then passes over the print drum, at which time the image is transferred, or transfixed, to the page. Solid ink printers are most commonly used as colour office printers, and are excellent at printing on transparencies and other non-porous media. However, some users complain that the resulting prints are difficult to write on (the wax tends to repel inks from pens), and are difficult to feed through automatic document feeders, but these traits have been significantly reduced in later models. Source: Wikipedia

QUICK TAKE
>>Xerox's new printer uses solid ink
>>It is said to be good for the environment
>>It is also claimed to be much cheaper to operate than traditional printers