- Spencer Labs announced results of testing of several office color MFPs. Comments made include:
- “the Ricoh Aficio C5000 exhibited the most differences in print quality on different media types, with color toner splatter causing loss of edge sharpness on standard office plain paper and economy media as well as generally lighter rendition of high grade and recycled media”
- “Ricoh C5000…edge sharpness of secondary colors was poor and coarse screening detracted from overall color print quality”
- “”output exhibited some toner splatter, expecially on secondary color,
making text & lines appear blurred”
- “color text & lines were rendered with poor quality, exhibiting distracting coarse screening patterns with tertiary color text appearing very jagged.”
- “toner splatter was noticeable, causing the color text & lines to look blurred, especially on secondary colors”
- “tints and blends were rendered least well as they exhibited coarse, distracting screening that detracted from overall quality”
- “images exhibited good sharpness, but coarse screening detracted from overall image quality”
- “images exhibited a slight yellow cast”
- “Canon imageRUNNER C5180 output had very smooth screening, although text & lines appeared comparatively thicker with soft edges limiting sharpness”
- “tints & blends exhibited mottling on the standard office, economy and recycled media output”
- “images on high grade paper exhibited a magenta cast and some banding was noticeable on solid image areas”
- “misregistration was noticed on tertiary color text such as brown”
- images were rendered with excessive contrast”
- “highlights were blown out and shadows were plugged, losing some highlight
and shadow details”
- “images appeared comparatively dull”
- “Xerox ColorQube….some random jaggedness was noticeable on both high resolution/photo and enhanced mode black text”
- “black text in standard mode…comparatively lower quality and density”
- “individual black dots were visible….white unfilled spaces were noticeable…….making text appear gray”
- “in fast color mode, black text was fuzzy and grainy”
- “on all 4 output modes, reverse black text was rendered with unsharp edges, random fill-ins were noticeable”
- “radial black lines exhibited jaggedness on all
- “angled and curved black lines were jagged and broken and appeared uneven”
- “color lines were not razor sharp and exhibited soft edges”
- “curved fine color lines were slightly uneven”
- “even straight color lines appeared jagged and blurred”
- “on standard and fast color mode, solid blacks appeard noisy with visible streaking”
- “machine streaking was noticeable in standard and fast color mode through solid color areas”
- “grays were rendered as four-color grays on all modes” (meaning unit will use lots of color wax to create grays or halftones, instead of using just black toner like a
typical color laser MFP)
- “standard and fast color mode output appeared grainy with noticeable streaking”
- “solid image areas appeared slightly grainy on high resolution/photo and enhanced mode”
- “lack of image details in standard and fast color modes was noticeable”
- “both standard and fast color mode image output was lower quality with visible streaks in dark image areas”
- “high resolution/photo mode images were slightly yellow”
- “standard mode images appeared to have a slight magenta cast”
- “blue blends appeared to shift towards purple and showed some harsh transitions”
*************************************************************************************
- In his memoir, Bob Metcalfe, inventor of Ethernet networking, gave some history on how he first tried marketing his new product:
- DEC said; “Yes, but we’re gonna have to be sure that you know how to build stuff because we wouldn’t want to buy junk. We’re a serious computer maker. We need to check all your manufacturing processes”
- IBM said; “Get the hell out of here. We’re not doing business with you. We think Ethernet is junk. We’re gonna do the token ring. We were selling millions of Ethernet cards to buyers of IBM PCs without IBM’s permission.” (IBM eventually discontinued Token Ring in favor of Ethernet)
- Apple ordered 300 units, but required that they be external boxes made with lots of metal. “I believe that all 300 of them are out there in the San Francisco Bay right now, serving as boat anchors, holding yachts in place”
*************************************************************************************
- Interesting statistics from U.S. Postal Service:
- 86% of domestic mail is generated by business
- 14% of mail is from households
- In 1995, 20% of world communications was mail
- 99% of companies worldwide use email
- 86% of companies have a website
- 78% of companies have an intranet
- 72% of companies plan to process transactions over the Internet
- 45% of all print is distributed via the Postal Service
*************************************************************************************
- Lyra Research released study of average monthly volumes on A4 laser printers in the office:
- for 21-30ppm b/w devices, average of 1750 pages per month b/w
- for 21-30pm color devices, average just under 1000 page per month b/w and color
- for 11-20ppm b/w devices, average of 1200 pages per month
- for 11-20ppm color devices, average of 800 pages per month
- Also released by Lyra, was average monthly volume on A3 laser MFPs in the office:
- for 70-90ppm b/w MFPs, average of 35,000 pages per month
- for 70-90ppm color MFPs, average just under 20,000 pages per month
- for 41-69ppm b/w MFPs, average just under 15,000 pages per month
- for 41-69ppm color MFPs, average of 12,500 pages per month
- for 31-40ppm b/w MFPs, average of 7,000 pages per month
- for 31-40ppm color MFPs, average of 6500 pages per month
*************************************************************************************
- Why did Hewlett Packard develop their LaserJet laser printers in Boise, Idaho and not Silicon Valley? In his new memoir, retired HP executive, Ray Smelek, states that one of the reasons he decided to choose Boise was Idaho’s legal driving age. In 1973, when he was researching cities, he found out that Idaho’s legal driving age was only 14, which was very appealing to his kids, who were 7, 10, 12 & 14 at the time.
No comments:
Post a Comment