Refill Ink Cartridge Instructions

Lexon Technologies (LEXO.OB) Inks Deal to Merge with INKTEK America Inc.

Ink Cartridges — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 06:30:40 +0000

Lexon Technologies Inc., a manufacturer of recycles toner for laser printers, fax and multi-function copiers, today announced it has signed a Letter of Intent with INTEK America Inc., a manufacturer of energy efficient paper shredders and toner cartridges and various other “eco-friendly” products under the GoECOlife™ brand.

Per the agreement, INTEK shareholders will receive newly issued shares of Lexon, representing an 80 percent ownership over the combined entity, over which INTEK will assume operating and managerial control.

INTEK is a large-scale manufacturer/distributor of consumer branded products. The company distributes the products through big box retail and dealer channels in the United States, Europe and Asia, with plans to target Australia and New Zealand.

INTEK introduced the first commercial and personal “green” paper shredders under the GoECOlife™ brand. The company’s GoECOlife™ remanufactured toner cartridge line is scheduled to launch in the next two months, followed by several additional products currently in development or pending throughout 2011.

Via: ibtimes.com

Philippines: Epson Launches Toner/Ink Collection Campaign

Ink Cartridges — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 12:03:49 +0000

Epson Philippines Corporation has announced its initiatives towards fulfilling the goal of reducing 90% CO2 emissions in its operations, as the company sets out to motivate its partners and consumers to also make a choice in protecting the environment.

The launch activity, done in cooperation with SM Supermalls, commenced with a photo exhibit featuring the Epson PRO, a group of distinguished photographers and graphic designers who expressed their concern for the environment through their art work. The photo exhibit entitled “The Choice to Change: Green Inspiring Blue”, showcases the Epson PRO vision of climate change to inspire everyone to act now. The photo exhibit will be showcased at SM Mall of Asia, SM North Edsa, SM Megamall, SM Cebu and SM Davao.

As a sales office, Epson Philippines has also launched the Epson Toner & Ink Cartridge Collection and Recycling Campaign, an expansion of internal efforts that the company has already undertaken in the past 3 years. The campaign sets to motivate Epson partners and consumers towards proper disposal of Epson ink cartridges to benefit the eco-system.

The launch of the Epson Toner & Ink Cartridge Collection and Recycling program will start off with the generous support of SM Malls. Recycling bins for Epson toner and ink cartridges will be situated in SM Cyberzones of select SM malls, so the end-users can conveniently drop off their used cartridges for proper disposal. A total of ten (10) drop-off locations will be announced this year.

To ensure that the collection will be sustainable and efficient, Epson Philippines is currently finalizing talks with its partners, distributors and retailers for additional drop-off and collection points. The recycling loop will be done in cooperation with Epson Precision Philippines, Inc. or EPPI, Epson’s manufacturing office located in Lipa City, Batangas.

Globally, Epson is the world’s first manufacturer to publicly declare its commitment to eliminate ozone-deleting CFCs in 1988. Since then, the company and all its subsidiaries all over the world have continued to apply compact, energy-saving, high-precision technologies to reduce environmental impacts and improve eco-performance in every stage of the product lifecycle—from design and manufacture through to transport, use and recycling.

This commitment to the environment was summarized in June 2008, when Epson officially announced its Environmental Vision 2050, which encourages everyone to share responsibility for reducing environmental impacts. The primary action that Epson has undertaken globally under its environmental policy is to reduce CO2 emissions by 90% across the lifecycle of all products and services by the year 2050. Also, as a member of the ecosystem, Epson has vowed to continue to work towards restoring and protecting biodiversity together with local communities.

Via: mb.com.ph

HP and Google Present Cloud Printing

Ink Cartridges — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 12:01:31 +0000

Tired of having all your stuff out there in the cloud? Now HP says you can print it out to any printer you want with the HP ePrint Center. Cleverly mixing in something actually makes HP money (printer sales) with cloud computing, HP will sell you a “Web-connected printer” — signing up for their online service gets you the ability to print when you are away.

It’s unclear how many Web-connected printers people are expected to buy, if they will be strategically scattering them at various locations in their daily lives, or if some sort of underground “print clouds” will emerge with “public printers,” “private printers” and maybe even “hybrid printers.”

Rumor has it HP used its purchase of Palm and Palm’s webOS to power the printers, which, naturally, have “apps” and can do things like browse the Web. Grumpy IT pros may say this certainly does not look like a secure improvement over a network printer and they already knew how to email documents to their printers, since HP has made that possible for about 20 years.Google Cloud Print, however, hasn’t made it off the ground yet, despite being the exact same idea. That may have something to do with HP selling printers as well as software and services and Google not doing so, but we cannot be entirely sure.

Via: searchcloudcomputing.techtarget.com

EU Study Reveals Successfully Inkjet de-inking

Ink Cartridges — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 12:59:56 +0000

Inkjet prints have been successfully de-inked in a procedure designed to replicate a typical European mixed-grade waste paper recycling system.According to the Digital Print De-inking Alliance (DPDA), a study conducted in France revealed that nearly all of the samples were de-inked in test conditions.Matthias Fromm, R&D manager for Océ Printing Systems, said the tests had been carried out using conditions that simulated the total paper recycling process for mixed grades of paper in a bid to understand the impact of inkjet printed papers in commercial recycling systems.

He added: “This research was conducted using 100% inkjet paper. We estimate that production inkjet’s market share of total graphic printing is less than 1% today.”Based on the projected growth rates of inkjet printing, we anticipate the de-inking industry is capable at current volumes and that we have a few more years to jointly develop the appropriate technologies of paper, ink and de-inking methods to ensure good de-inking performance if and when the need arises.”

Via: printweek.com

Cartridge-World Sponsors Honda Race Car

Ink Cartridges — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 12:57:23 +0000

On Friday 28th May Cartridge World Sudbury will showcase a shiny new road going replica British Touring Car Championship (BTCC) car.Racing fans and passers by are invited to come and see the car at Sudbury Town Hall, Sudbury town centre, at a special launch event from 10am – 3pm where the staff will be handing out balloons, sweets, and free ink refills.James Peck, manager said “This year we have gone one further and are offering a free ink refill with our voucher redeemable at Cartridge World Sudbury to celebrate. And what’s more, visitors will be offered a chance of winning their very own one-off Honda Civic Type R MUGEN Concept car through the Honda (UK) promotion and even have their photo taken by the car with our mascot Daemon Fill!!”For the second season running Cartridge World is continuing its involvement with BTCC motor sport and has teamed up with Honda (UK) and Team Dynamics to sponsor The Honda Racing Team for the new season, which snatched a top spot at Brands Hatch earlier this month.

James Peck, manager of Cartridge World Sudbury commented on the sponsorship: “We are excited about teaming up with Honda UK. This awesome partnership highlights the connection between two well-known brands. Both Cartridge World and Honda represent quality manufacturing, reliability and amazing value for money. We are proving ourselves both on the track and off with our products every time.”Celebrity racing driver Gordon “Flash” Shedden is representing Cartridge World once again. He is partnering with two-times BTCC champion Matt Neal – a reunion of the drivers who last competed together for Honda in 2007.Commenting on Cartridge World’s sponsorship, Gordon Shedden said, “Honda’s brand values of sustainability, reliability and quality match perfectly with Cartridge World, so even before the car has turned a wheel there’s a great common goal with both organisations.”

Both The Honda Racing Team and Team Dynamics look forward to meeting motor racing fans throughout the ten-event BTCC season, which runs through to 10th October. Fans can see the next round at Oulton Park, Cheshire on 6th June.For those who don’t yet know, Cartridge World is the leader in remanufacturing ink jet and laser ink cartridges using quality toner and inks. Why not come along to our special event, collect your voucher and try one of our refills for yourself?

Via: franchiseek.com

Proof That HP Regionalises All Ink Cartridges

Ink Cartridges — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 12:21:53 +0000

FLOGGER OF EXPENSIVE PRINTER INK HP seems to have figured out a novel way of extracting the maximum amount of money from punters who have been unfortunate enough to buy one of its printers.

Not content with overcharging for ink, the printer manufacturer apparently regionalises its print cartridges, as one user found out. The unfortunate soul in question, Michelle Sullivan, bought an HP Photosmart C7180 printer Down Under but found that when she moved to Malta she was unable to purchase compatible print cartridges.

The problem wasn’t due to anything as innocent as regional unavailability, but rather it was down to HP’s decision to create specific cartridges for different regions for the same printer.

The surprised and shocked Ms Sullivan went to great lengths to find out whether this apparent HP policy was actually true. After questioning the main dealer for HP in Malta, who told her that ink cartridges were regionalised, Sullivan then had a chat with a HP online support agent.

Unsurprisingly the response she received was less than helpful, with the agent suggesting that Sullivan try Bestbuy or Walmart, not realising that neither of these retailers has stores in Malta.

HP has in the past put some rather money-grubbing restrictions on its printing products. A number of its toner cartridges had page count chips that would stop the printer after a certain number of pages had been printed, regardless of whether there was still toner left in the cartridge. For the benefit of punters’ wallets and the environment, a cottage industry flogging ‘blank’ page counting chips successfully grew out of HP’s corporate greed.

This sorry saga has left Ms Sullivan with a six-month old printer that is effectively useless simply because she decided to move. If you’ve had similar issues with HP’s cartridge restrictions we’d love to hear them.At press time HP has yet to respond to our questions on this matter.

Via: theinquirer.net

H-P: Why Our Ink Is Expensive

Ink Cartridges — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 12:20:57 +0000

Tired of hearing customers whine that printer ink is too expensive–and facing competition from ink-cartridge refillers–executives at Hewlett-Packard’s printing division would like to buff up the print giant’s reputation with consumers. So the company recently sent Thom Brown, who specializes in “competitive media intelligence,” on a media tour with a presentation called “Why Does Ink Cost So Much?” Opening a bag of props including a trio of shot glasses, squares of foam and some disassembled print heads, Mr. Brown earlier this week explained the complex workings of H-P print heads, and the billions of dollars the company has spent over the years developing them.He talked about the challenges in shooting drops of ink at moving pages of paper, and the perils of refilling ink cartridges rather than buying new ones from H-P. Refilling involves poking a hole in an H-P cartridge and filling it with a god-knows-what mixture of non-H-P ink–a process that can lead to smudging and other poor performance, Mr. Brown said. H-P, he added, has heard from plenty of customers who tried refilling. “A lot of them don’t have good experiences,” he said.

In addition to research-and-development, the expense of ink cartridges comes from H-P’s high-tech testing of cartridges that break. The company uses electron microscopes, Mr. Brown said, to figure out what made a printhead malfunction. H-P has started what it calls an “Ink Amnesty Program” to bring back customers who have left H-P for refillers. In exchange for sharing your bad-ink story, the program will give consumers a 20% discount coupon for H-P ink.Of course it’s not just R&D that makes H-P’s ink costs so much. With more than 40% of the worldwide printer market last year, according to research firm IDC, H-P doesn’t face serious competitive pressure that would force it to drop prices.

Mr. Brown said his area of knowledge is printing technology, not profits.
But in the company’s last quarterly earnings report, H-P’s printing division booked more than $6 billion in sales and more than $1 billion in operating profit. Its operating profit margin was 17%, but Shaw Wu, an analyst with Kaufman Brothers, said that includes sales of low-profit printers. On ink alone, he estimates that H-P’s margin is somewhere between 20% and 30%.

Via: blogs.wsj.com

HP: introducing the webOS… printer?

Ink Cartridges — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 12:20:11 +0000

We’ve been all over the ins and outs of HP’s planned acquisition of Palm—the tablets, the phones, the bright promise of a cloud services company buying a cloud client, the grim prospect of one failed smartphone maker buying another—but for all that Palm will supposedly do for HP, the one thing I haven’t seen mentioned is the idea that webOS will go into a printer. At least, not until HP’s quarterly earnings call, where HP’s Mark Hurd said:

I think in this case of Palm, and our planned acquisition of Palm, it really has more to do with the intellectual property and the fact that when you look across the HP ecosystem of interconnected devices, it is a large family of devices. When we think of printers, you’ve now got a whole series of web-connected printers that, as they connect to the web, need an OS. We prefer to have that OS in our case to be our IP, where we can control the customer experience as we always have in the printing business, and that’s a big deal to us.

In other words, webOS gives HP its own lightweight, Web-savvy client operating system for all of its consumer-facing gadgetry up through netbooks. For anything that cries out for a touch-based OS—as opposed to a stylus- or mouse-based OS—HP now has webOS as an in-house option. One wonders what’s next: Calculators? Digital cameras? (Actually, a digital camera would certainly be a candidate for the webOS treatment.)

Hurd also reiterated the obvious point that HP is indeed planning a webOS-based tablet. Of course it is—the only question is whether said tablet will be based on ARM, x86, or both. And if it’s based on x86, will it dual-boot Windows?

When discussing tablets, Hurd went out of his way to emphasize that HP isn’t necessarily abandoning a Windows tablet. “Microsoft is probably one of the best relationships we’ve got in our company, and they’re still extremely important,” Hurd said.

Via: arstechnica.com

Ink Cartridge Recycling Program

Ink Cartridges — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 03:19:58 +0000

A 2004 Harris Interactive poll found that 55.6 percent of American consumers throw out their empty printer cartridges rather than returning or recycling them so they can be refilled and reused!

Those 270 million cartridges add more than 40 million pounds of unnecessary waste to the trash stream every year. The cartridges take more than 1,000 years to decompose.

Around 1990, rising retail prices motivated companies to start cleaning, refitting and refilling empty cartridges to be sold as a less expensive remanufactured product. A 2004 study by the Rochester Institute of Technology found remanufactured printer cartridges provide the same quality and page output as new cartridges.

Goals:

To reduce pollution by keeping cartridges out of the trash stream
To save energy by remanufacturing cartridges
To raise money to support UConn-SWCS activities

Project Status:

On February 7, 2005 the UConn Soil and Water Conservation Society (SWCS) initiated a program to collect and recycle student owned printer cartridges. Flyers were distributed to advertise the location of drop-off bins for cartridge collection in the following locations:

McMahon Hall Lounge
Branford Hall Lounge
Alsop B Lounge
Room 225 Beach Hall

The UConn-SWCS partnered with the Missouri based eCycle Group to implement the recycling program. The eCycle Group pays the UConn-SWCS between $0.50 to $14 per cartridge depending on brand and type. Funds raised by the recycling program will go to support UConn-SWCS activities like river clean-ups, maintenance of the UConn forest trails and student outreach events.

The UConn-SWCS is encouraging students to recycle used printer cartridges and purchase remanufactured cartridges which are available at most retailers that carry printer cartridges.

The UConn-SWCS is a student club open to both undergraduate and graduate students. The chapter began in 1979 and continues to draw much interest today. The UConn-SWCS promotes the wise use of soil, water and related natural resources in Connecticut through advocacy, professional development, and public education. The UConn-SWCS is a part of an international network of society chapters which foster the science and art of soil, water, and related natural resource management to achieve sustainability.
Via: ecohusky.uconn.edu

Epson Unveils $100 Wireless Multifunction for Home Users

Ink Cartridges — Fri, 28 May 2010 12:53:21 +0000

On Wednesday, Epson introduced the latest member of its NX line of multifunction printers, the Stylus NX420. Targeted at home users and students, the new print/scan/copy device costs $100 and features 802.11n WiFi, as well as USB 2.0 connectivity.

The printer uses Epson’s smudge, fade, and water-resistant DuraBrite Ultra pigment inks in four individual cartridges–one each for cyan, magenta, yellow and black–claiming print longevity of up to 118 years. Using ISO speed tests, the company claims print speeds of up to 6.4 pages per minute in black and 3.3 pages per minute color.

To print photos without a Mac, the NX420 offers a built-in memory card slot that supports multiple flavors of SD, xD-Picture Card, and Memory Stick formats and a 1.5-inch preview LCD. Editing features include sepia, black and white and red-eye removal.

The Stylus NX420 has a 1200-dpi optical resolution and flatbed scanner with 24-bit output. The multifunction device is now shipping, Epson says.

Via: pcworld.com