When you try and search for stuff to read concerning printers and printer ink cartridges, you will not only find legit and totally predictable stuff such as printer reviews and posts related to energy consumption and the environment; you may also find a thing or two where printers and printer cartridges suddenly play a rather unexpected role

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Hewlett-Packard Co.’s complaint seeking to bar imports of certain printer cartridges that it claims use protected technology won review by U.S. trade officials.

The U.S. International Trade Commission in Washington yesterday said it would investigate the complaint brought last month by Hewlett-Packard, the world’s largest maker of personal computers and printers.

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Office Depot® (NYSE:ODP), a leading global provider of office products and services, today announced the availability of Office Depot brand ink and toner that is compatible for use with Dell printers. The cartridges are currently available at Office Depot retail locations nationwide and online at www.officedepot.com.

Office Depot’s line of Dell compatible ink and toner products allow customers to save 20 percent versus purchasing the national brand equivalent, and all Office Depot ink and toner cartridges are backed by a 100 percent quality guarantee.

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In a push to make digital photo printing easier, Canon launched a portable talking printer – the Selphy ES40. In theory, the printer should talk you through any complications you might encounter while printing.

But at first glance, it wasn't clear why the voice guidance was necessary. The buttons on the printer are labeled in a clear, simple manner and the menus were easy to navigate. I wasn't sure I was going to need any voice guidance.

But I turned it on anyway.

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Truth in advertising is everything, especially when it comes to the high price of ink. So when Kodak advertised that consumers would save “on average $110 annually on ink by switching to Kodak ink and printers,” HP challenged the claim with a complaint to the National Advertising Division of the Council of Better Business Bureaus (NAD). The NAD is an independent organization that resolves disputes over truth in advertising as an alternative to litigation. Kodak failed to show up for its NAD complaint proceeding, and instead defended itself with a press release asserting that its ads have been approved by the NAD and that the complaint is “simply an effort to maintain HP’s dominant market presence while it continues to increase its ink prices.”

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Epson has launched an inkjet printer with white ink aimed at the packaging proofing market.

The Epson Stylus Pro WT7900 is a 610mm wide (24in) printer which uses the first water-based white ink.

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On paper, the recycling program was touted as a bold step toward California's green, climate-friendly future.

A mountain of plastic and metal would be diverted from landfills. Greenhouse gas emissions would tumble. And one of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's climate change goals – trimming power use in state buildings by 20 percent – would nudge closer to reality as agencies snapped up new, more efficient office printers.

That is what state and Hewlett-Packard officials said last year when they joined forces to ship used HP printer ink cartridges from state offices to Virginia to be ground up and recycled into auto parts, serving trays, clothes hangers and other products.

But a Bee investigation, based on more than 100 pages of e-mails and other records, has found that 17 months after it was created, the program has delivered few if any of its promised climate benefits.

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"Some of the most popular toner cartridges are sold by HP, Dell, and Brother. Toner cartridges that people tend to purchase the most include:

1. Brother TN-350 black toner cartridge
2. Dell X5015 310-5417
3. HP-92A C4092A
4. HP-3A Q2613A

Other popular toner cartridges from HP include: HP 2550, 2550L, 2820, and 2840 cartridges. A few of the more popular choices for toner cartridges under the Brother brand are TN-460, TN-430, and DR-400. Color toner cartridges are also available from these companies."

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A new handheld printer that's the size of a mouse and weighs just 250g can print onto anything from notebooks to napkins.

The Print Brush, made by a British company called PrintDreams, prints up to A4 size in black and white, at resolutions of 600dpi. The company says that it's the smallest printer in the world.

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As more and more consumers are realizing the value of refilling and recycling ink cartridges, Cartridge World franchisees are reaping the benefits. The world's fastest growing ink and toner refilling retailer is reporting double digit increases in same-store sales for the sixth consecutive month, with domestic same store sales increasing 16.3% for Quarter Two over last year.

Despite the tough economic conditions, 55 percent of Cartridge World's stores have achieved an all time high month at some point during the seven months of the year.

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The Courtenay operations of Island Ink-Jet are no more.

Company CEO Carey Porcher has shut down all operations of the company headquarters.

Independent franchisees will continue to run using inks from other suppliers.

Porcher said the company has been losing money since it lost 100 US locations three years ago.

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Lexmark’s inkjet printers have had a pretty rough ride from PC Pro in recent reviews and Greg Caster, senior development manager for inkjet R&D, admitted to me yesterday that its 2008 range was simply a step behind its competitors. To change that, Lexmark is finally moving to individual inks for its next all-wireless range of inkjet all-in-ones, and introducing a fantastic touchscreen interface that I’ll come to later.

But the real news for me - and for anyone who ever has trouble choosing a printer - is the way Lexmark’s eight-product line has been assembled.

Currently, buying a printer is a confusing experience, with too many competing manufacturers, each with too many printer ranges that contain too many similar models and accept too many different cartridge types. Even within a single manufacturer’s product range, the variation in quality and speed can be staggering.

So Lexmark is taking a different approach, one that makes choosing a printer so simple for consumers I can only beg and plead with Canon, HP, Epson and the rest of the inkjet world to flagrantly copy it.

Put simply, whether you buy the base consumer model for $99, the premium $399 business device or any of the six models in-between, you’ll get the same underlying print engine.

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If you go by sales figures and consumer recognition, Canon and HP are the two top printer brands. This isn't a great surprise — both companies make well-built, fast, great quality printers and multifunctions to suit a range of homes and small businesses. Whether you're looking to print school assignments, lab-quality photos or business documents, there is bound to be a printer from either of these manufacturers to suit your needs. The question is: which brand is better and for what purposes?

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Palo Alto Research Centre (PARC) which is a subsidiary of Xerox Inc has developed a type of paper that, combined with a special printer, can print documents that erase themselves after a day so that the paper can be reused.

According to Xerox almost 25 percent of all documents can be recycled the same day they are printed, and that 44.5 percent are intended only for a single viewing. Using the new printer and paper for one-shot documents like daily menus, work summaries and office memos could vastly reduce paper and energy use, the company said.

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There was an interesting development in the printer industry last week. Lexmark announced a new line of inkjet printers for homes and small businesses.

No big news there. The really big news is that the ink cartridges will be reasonably priced, and, added Lexmark, they will contain more ink than their old standard cartridges.

If you do a lot of printing of letters, Web pages and forms that need only black ink, there is more good news: One black cartridge for these new printers costs a penny under $5 - and that's the suggested retail price.

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Zoe Kleinman finds out why printer cartridges are being replaced before they completely run out of ink.

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Four alleged ink-cartridge thieves operating in Utah and Salt Lake counties were nailed at Staples Thursday morning in Orem.

An employee aware of prior thefts alerted Orem police at 11 a.m. that three suspected shoplifters were in the store at 157 N. State.

When police arrived, a fourth member of the ring in a black Chevrolet Avalanche tried to speed away from the store's parking lot toward Orem Boulevard, only to collide with another vehicle and roll the Avalanche. He was then Tasered and detained.

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In September, a soy-based toner created with soybean oil will be available for select laser printers.

For more than a decade, the Ohio Soybean Council has worked in partnership with Battelle to develop an environmentally-friendly toner using soybeans.

AgriTone replaces traditional petroleum based toner.

West Point Products is releasing the AgriTone premium replacement toner cartridges.

They are a series of remanufactured laser toner cartridges containing toner that is 35 percent or more biobased.

In 2008 alone, the company collected more than 900,000 cartridges through its Empty Core Collection Program and recycled more that 1 million pounds of raw materials from its manufacturing process

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According to a survey by information technology research firm Gartner, the worldwide combined printer, copier and multifunctional printer shipments market totaled 51.3 million units in the first half of 2009, a 20.2 percent decline over first half of 2008 shipments. The report found while not a single region was spared the downward trend, the emerging regions of Eastern Europe, Middle East and Latin America were the worst hit, as shipments declined 41.8 percent, 28 percent and 22.9 percent, respectively, in the first half of 2009.

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Both Canon and Brother are well-known names in the world of printers. Moreover, their multifunction printers are also quite popular and are a great choice for people who want to conserve space and yet want all the functionalities on offer.

When it comes to printer sophistication, Brother MFC steals a march over its other competitors. Not only are they light in weight but also compact. Moreover, apart from the usual functionalities they can also record messages. My Brother MFC also performs the role of an answering machine. Moreover, the Brother MFC has a multitasking scanning function, which not only scans pictures and documents but also emails.

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Are you replacing printer cartridges faster than Citibank is raising credit card interest rates? Aggravating, and no surprise–inkjets have a voracious appetite.

Have a glass of warm milk and relax — I have a few solutions that can make you happy.
The biggest waste of inkjet cartridges is printing in color when good old black and white will do.

I say to you: Turn off the color. Yep, it’s that simple. Unless color is crucial for your document, you’re wasting ink if you output in color. Try this experiment: Print a color page, then print it again in gray scale. To do this, go to Start, Settings, Printers and right-click on the printer’s icon. Go to Properties and find the tab that lets you change from color to gray scale. Save the settings, then print the page again.

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The global market for printers, copiers and multifunctional products (MFPs) declined by a fifth in the first half of 2009 to 51.3 million units sold, according to analyst Gartner.

The reasons behind the fall were "weak demand as both businesses and consumers reduced spending and the drop in shipments was also impacted by tighter inventory controls in order to minimise inventory levels in the channels," said Gartner senior research analyst Lai-Ling Lam.

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Kyocera has outlined a scheme to win share back from sales of what it calls ‘non-genuine’ toner.

In a statement, the print vendor said it wanted to encourage partners to sell more Kyocera toner.

“Kyocera has created a consumables direct partner programme with the main aim to reward Kyocera’s direct partners who distribute genuine quality toner manufactured by Kyocera,” said Charlotte Elmer, consumables and spares manager at Kyocera.

“[We want to] ensure that end users are buying genuine Kyocera consumables, and therefore not compromising the quality of their Kyocera product.”

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ewlett-Packard Co.'s profit dropped 19 percent in the latest quarter, dragged by ongoing weakness in sales of personal computers and printer ink.

The Palo Alto, Calif.-based company reported Tuesday that consumer spending on PCs is improving, and business in China was particularly good. Corporations are still being tightfisted, though.

Because of the recession, 2009 is shaping up to be the worst year in nearly a decade for the PC industry. HP, the world's No. 1 PC maker, has been branching out into other areas, like technology services and computer networking, but the PC business still makes up nearly a third of its revenue.

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You’ve heard about the fears of a jobless economic recovery. For Hewlett-Packard, there is an even darker threat looming as the world works its way out of a recession: an inkless recovery.

In the last year, H.P.’s sales of printers and related supplies like ink have tumbled. The major cause for the decline remains the weak global economy. Businesses have spent less on printing products, and with unemployment high, fewer workers are around to hit the ink-burning Print button on their computer screens.

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