Copies, Copiers, Green Printing and Online Data Backup

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OKI Printing Solutions recommends that all K-12 schools consider the following tips to identify opportunities for savings on their own everyday printing costs:

1. Migrate away from expensive inkjet printers that expend a significant portion of the technology budget towards a centralized and consolidated fleet of color and mono workgroup laser printers, ensuring increased productivity and a low total cost of ownership.
2. Redeploy technology resources more equitably and effectively by placing lower-cost, mono workgroup laser printers in areas that require heavy printing volumes, and affordable color laser printers in shared computer labs and individual classrooms to aid students’ learning.
3. Incorporate affordable, High-Definition color printers to create more engaging instructional materials and vibrant banners up to four feet long in the classroom, stimulating students’ learning and increasing academic performance.
4. Utilize Color Access Policy Manager to place comprehensive print controls on classroom printers, helping manage the expanded color capabilities and keeping a handle on printing costs.
5. Consolidate devices with all-in-one document management solutions that prove invaluable to administrators by saving time, space and money.
6. Employ a long-term print management strategy that includes annual assessments and technology refreshes, ensuring continuous technology improvements and maintaining a low total cost of ownership.

According to a new Office Depot survey, “green” has gone mainstream in the small business community. Half of all respondents are interested in making their offices “greener,” according to a survey of 2,500 business professionals commissioned by Office Depot® (NYSE: ODP - News), a leading global provider of office products and services. The survey also found that cost and understanding are the two primary factors preventing businesses from going greener at the office.“It is encouraging to see such strong interest in going green among small businesses,” said Yalmaz Siddiqui, Director of Environmental Strategy for Office Depot. “The good news is that creating a greener office is simpler than ever. Not only are there more high-quality, low-cost greener products available than ever before, but the range of solutions to help reduce waste and energy has also grown significantly.”

Although more than half (55 percent) of the survey respondents stated they do not associate going “green” with saving money, this is a common misperception Siddiqui said. “There is actually a range of cost scenarios that a business could face when deciding to go green,” he explained. “Some choices, like remanufactured cartridges, cost less; some require an upfront investment but come with long term cost savings, like compact fluorescent lights; some products entail no price difference; and some green ideas do cost more. The trick is to understand the different options and not assume that going green will always result in higher costs.”

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1. Reduce paper

Set your printer to print on both sides. Use e-mail and intranet for internal documents.

Small companies can save about 350,000 sheets of paper a year doing this, according to Working.com.

Before you print, think: Do you really need it in hard-copy form? Or can you survive with it on the computer? If a customer or client asks for a document in paper form, ask them if you can e-mail it.

If you’re making a presentation, keep it on PowerPoint. Every attendee in the room doesn’t need a hard copy. E-mail the presentation later.

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BERTL, a leading independent test lab, has awarded BERTL’s Best 2008 honors to Lexmark International, Inc.’s  C500n, C780 printer family, C782dtn, X940e and X945e color workgroup laser printers and multifunction products (MFPs), recognizing the devices for their functionality, features and performance.

BERTL noted that the Lexmark C500n, which received the award for Best A4 Toner-Based Small Office/Workgroup Color Laser Printer, has “solid overall office color image quality” and “above average overall ease of use and print productivity.” With print speeds of up to eight pages per minute (ppm) in color and 31 ppm in black, the Lexmark C500n can easily serve as the primary printing device for customers who require color but also print large volumes in black. At an estimated street price of $299*, the Lexmark C500n also comes standard with networking so it can easily be shared by several users in a small workgroup, reducing the cost of maintenance and supplies.

Best User-Friendly Color Printer Range was given to the Lexmark C780n, C780dn and C780dtn, while the Lexmark C782dtn was awarded Best Color Workgroup Printer. The Lexmark C780 and C782 color laser printer families are designed for business workgroups that need access to high-quality, reliable color printing technology at affordable prices. Both printer families feature Lexmark’s Color Care technology, which helps customers manage color usage and control the cost of color in general office printing. The Lexmark C780 printer family features print speeds of up to 31 ppm in color and 35 ppm in black with prices starting at $899*. The Lexmark C782 printer family prints at speeds up to 35 ppm in color and 40 ppm in black with prices starting at $1,299*.

The Lexmark X940e and X945e were named Best User-Friendly Workgroup Family. Available for $10,499* and $12,499* respectively, the Lexmark X940e and X945e deliver outstanding print quality and feature reliable performance to meet the demands of busy workgroups. Customers can use these workhorses to print full color product brochures, booklets, signage, and invitations in-house, saving users time and money.

The Lexmark X940e and X945e “feature an exceptionally easy-to-use, large color touch screen with large, easy-to-read text that is arguably the easiest touch screen to use among touch screens evaluated by BERTL,” said BERTL. They feature Lexmark’s award-winning e-Task color touchscreen interface, which can be customized to simplify complicated processes at the touch of an icon. This interface drives Lexmark’s industry-specific workflow solutions, which are designed to help customers print less and save more.

More information about Lexmark’s entire line of printing and imaging products and solutions is available at www.lexmark.com .

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About 367,000 units of HP Fax 1010 and 1010xi machines, made in China and imported by Hewlett-Packard Co., because an internal component failure can cause overheating, posing a risk of burn or fire. The company has received three reports of overheating, including two resulting in minor property damage. No injuries have been reported. The fax machines were sold at electronic, computer and camera stores nationwide, as well as at online stores from November 2002 through December 2004. Details: by phone at 888-654-9296; by Web at http://www.hp.com/go/fax1010recall or http://www.cpsc.gov.

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Some eco-friendly tips from the website, www.idealbite.com

• Get your name removed from mailing lists along with 13,890 others and guess what: 3,300 trees will be saved - not to mention the 388,000 pounds of paper.

• Be among 11,870 people who empty lint filters after every load and save enough energy in one year to run their dryer as many as 7,900 more times.

• Buy that CD online so that you and 14,966 other CD shoppers can keep 3,300 pounds of plastic and paper out of the production stream.

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Lexmark will showcase its latest innovations in wireless inkjet printing at Digital Experience! at the Metropolitan Pavilion in New York City on Wednesday, June 25. The company offers the following tips for using wireless technology to make this summer a little more peaceful on the homefront:

- Set up a wireless network. All you need is a broadband Internet connection and a wireless router to set up your home network. Wireless routers offer easy-to-install instructions and serve as the hub of your wireless network.

- Connect your family’s computers and laptops to the wireless network. Most laptops today come with built-in wireless technology that will easily locate your wireless network once it’s set up. If you have an older computer, a wireless adapter will help connect you to your new network. Once you’ve connected all of the computers to the wireless network, you’ll be able to enjoy the freedom of Wi-Fi connectivity from anywhere in your home, anytime.

- Set up shared wireless storage. Today’s families snap more photos and download more music than ever before, which also means they need more hard disk space for storing this digital data. When the whole family can access multimedia content, it makes it simpler to share it and easier to keep individual computers’ hard drives from overcrowding. This also allows for data backup of all computers on the network. Consider installing a Network Attached Storage (NAS) system, which is available from wireless router manufacturers and computer makers.

- Purchase a wireless printer. Wireless printers(1) such as Lexmark’s X4650 All-in-One and X9575 All-in-One can connect with multiple computers through your home wireless network. This means everyone in the family can print directly to one family printer from anywhere in the house. There’s no need to buy multiple printers or determine a schedule for sharing the device when your kids or partner need to print a homework assignment, recipe or business document. A wireless printer can handle all incoming print requests from any room in the house, making it incredibly easy to share while saving you time and money.

Lexmark will demonstrate the following wireless all-in-one inkjet printers at Digital Experience! New York:

The Lexmark X9575 Wireless All-in-One: Part of the Professional Series of printers, the X9575 four-in-one wireless printer responds to the demanding needs of small office and home office (SOHO) users and includes high-yield cartridges and lifetime, priority phone support. The Lexmark X9575 Wireless All-in-One is priced at $249.99(2).

The Lexmark X4650 Wireless All-in-One: Part of the Home and Student line of printers, the Lexmark X4650 serves the growing number of mobile laptop users and makes wireless printing easier and more affordable. The Lexmark X4650 offers three-in-one functionality via printing, scanning and easy, one- touch copying with fast and easy installation in as little as 10 minutes. The Lexmark X4650 Wireless All-in-One is priced at $129.99(2).

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Xerox Corporation today announced two new easy-to-use scanners that help users boost office productivity by scanning, e-mailing and copying documents at the touch of a single button.

The Xerox DocuMate^® 515 is a color flatbed scanner with a hinged lid that opens to scan large items directly on the glass and an automatic document feeder (ADF) that scans 15 pages per minute (ppm). The Xerox DocuMate^® 150 is a color sheetfed scanner with ADF that scans documents at speeds up to 18 ppm. Both scanners have a small footprint, making either suitable for workgroup or desktop scanning.

“The DocuMate 150 and 515 deliver some of the most essential and productive scanning features available today. By combining the ease of Visioneer OneTouch scanning with the superior image enhancement of Kofax Virtual ReScan^® (VRS) software, we have created a powerful solution that will allow any user, regardless of experience, to easily scan documents and be more productive,” said John Capurso, vice president of marketing for Xerox DocuMate scanners. “If you don’t have a scanner on your desk, either of these devices will help you control the volume of paper you manage every day.”

“Many users are looking at affordable simplex scanners for everyday office use. They want a device that delivers high-quality scans to their local folder or e-mail in searchable PDF,” said Henry Hsia, assistant product manager at Newegg.com, a top online retailer of computer and consumer electronics products. “These scanners do just that yet have the extensibility to scan to virtually any program or location that more expensive competitive models offer.”

Perfect Scans from Imperfect Originals

The new scanners include Visioneer OneTouch^® with Kofax^® VRS^™ technology to improve the scanned image quality of faded or degraded documents and automatically crop and/or deskew odd sized papers at the touch of a button.

“Anyone who has a filing cabinet will immediately discover the benefit of making a small investment in a desktop scanner. The time saved alone in filing, searching and retrieving paper will pay back your investment in only a few months, making this virtually a no-risk purchase. People will think you’ve hired an assistant,” Capurso said.

Powerful Scanning at the Touch of a Button

The easiest document scanning technology to use, Visioneer OneTouch technology allows users to effortlessly scan to the “destination” of their choice by pressing a single button, eliminating multiple steps in sending scanned documents to predetermined applications or devices. Scanner buttons come pre-programmed to scan, e-mail or copy in searchable PDF file format, but the user can easily customize them to scan to print, scan to archive, scan to network, and scan to OCR. The Visioneer OneTouch driver, bundled with the DocuMate 515 and DocuMate 150, also supports automatic delivery of scanned images to applications such as Microsoft SharePoint^®, Kofax Ascent^® Capture, Laserfiche^® Enterprise and Intuition^®, EMC Captiva^® QuickScan Pro^®, Hyland OnBase^® and Datacap Taskmaster^®.

Productivity at the Desktop

The new scanners both include more than $400 in bundled software, including Visioneer OneTouch with Kofax VRS technology, Nuance PaperPort^®, OmniPage^® Pro OCR and TWAIN, certified-ISIS and WIA drivers. Nuance PaperPort is a desktop document management solution that enables users to view and assemble mixed document types into PDF files that can be managed and accessed locally or on the network.

Pricing and Availability

The Xerox DocuMate 515 is priced at $499.99 and the Xerox DocuMate 150 is priced at $399.99. Both are available immediately through retail and online channel partners, major resellers and Xerox and its agents and dealers.

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Print Audit, The Print Management Company, announced today the release of Print Audit Green. Print Audit Green, which is powered by Print Audit’s flagship software Print Audit 5, is designed to educate and assist organizations in reducing both their environmental impact as well as their printing costs.

It is estimated that one tree produces 8,333 pieces of paper and that an average employee in the United States prints 10,000 pages per year. This means that a typical office worker consumes more than one tree worth of paper per year. With the assistance of Print Audit Green, Print Audit customers have helped save 90,000 trees every year - approximately enough trees to fill Central Park four times over. These calculations are based on the fact that Print Audit has been installed on over 500,000 units worldwide and companies typically experience at least a 15% reduction in printing when Print Audit Green is installed.

Colorado State University’s Library Technician Erik Meakins says that using Print Audit Green in their library resulted in “an impressive 97% reduction in print volumes” and that “users have become very conscious of their printing and only print what’s necessary for their educational needs.”

With Print Audit’s Green program, organizations will have the ability to monitor their print situation to gain a better understanding of their environmental impact. Print Audit Green’s comprehensive reporting tools can show exactly who is printing, as well as when, where and what is being printed. This information can be used to spot misuse and unnecessary printing.

After an organization has identified its undesirable printing practices, Print Audit Green’s rules-based-printing features can be used to alter their users’ printing behavior. For example, Print Audit Green will allow organizations to utilize printing limits with customizable pop-up messages to notify users of costs before they print and can suggest lower cost devices. Additionally, Print Audit Green also includes the ability to decrease paper usage by encouraging users to print on both sides of the page.

For more information about Print Audit, please visit www.printaudit.com .

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Xerox Corporation  announced that Ifolor AG, a photo and print lab based in Kreuzlingen, Switzerland, has agreed to purchase multiple Xerox iGen4 Presses. The deal was struck at drupa, the world’s largest print trade show, in Düsseldorf, Germany. It caps a very successful event for Xerox, which sold more than 300 digital systems and software.

Ifolor AG specializes in the digital production of photos, posters, photo books, greetings cards and calendars and delivers these specialty products to customers in Switzerland, Germany, Norway, Sweden and Finland. The company will be one of the first print providers in the world to use the new Xerox iGen4 Presses.

“Demand for high-quality photo applications has rapidly increased, and in this space, there’s one aspect of production that is non-negotiable – quality,” said Markus Wirth, managing director, Ifolor AG. “The iGen4 had what we needed – the best digital print quality in the industry combined with an overall increase in productivity.

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