Lexmark's wireless gambit

'The next big thing in inkjets is wireless: declared Jeff Willard, vicepresident of worldwide marketing for Lexmark's consumer printer division. He made the statement during a global media event the company held at its Lexington, KY headquarters in late March. Lexmark gave journalists from the Americas, Europe and the Asia-Pacific a sneak peak at its entire 2007 inkjet printer product line made up of a dozen new models, including inkjets and inkjet-based three-in-one and four-in-one multifunction devices. The first round of products was launched in mid-April, and the fall lineup will be announced in August. Throughout the event, wireless inkjet printing was Lexmark's inescapable message, and Willard gave a snapshot of the reasoning that led the company down this product development path. He said in 2007, sales of notebook computers are projected to grow by 23 percent, and wireless adoption will grow by 31 percent. Meanwhile, printers are expected to grow by a measly two percent.

Notebooks mean computing can happen anywhere, and people are moving around the house, he noted, but connecting wirelessly to devices like printers is still complicated and expensive. So, by developing a line of wireless inkjets that are easy to connect to and affordable, Lexmark expects to revive the printer market by catching the double wave of mobile and wireless. Three quarters of the inkjet products the company will introduce this year will have 802.11 wireless capability.

What does affordable wireless printing mean? In the spring line up is the Z1420. Selling for US$79.99, Lexmark is billing it as the least expensive wireless inkjet on the market. The most affordable three-in-one Lexmark announced is the X4550, which has an SRP of US$119.99. To make it easy, Lexmark has taken a menu-driven wizard approach, which walks the user through the steps of wirelessly connecting to the printer or multifunction.

In the past, Lexmark's printer models have been a patchwork of designs, but this new line-up sticks together as a recognizable family — and an attractive one. The main printer bodies are made of a glossy white plastic with silver coloured end caps and accents, or brushed aluminium on higherend models — Holy iPrinter, Batman! (and yes, Lexmark does ship Mac drivers with its printers).

Beneath the pretty skin are a number of technology improvements. On low-end models, the colour printhead size has been increased from 0.1 to 0.25 inch, and on higher end models, the swath goes from 0.25 to 0.5 inch, which translates into faster colour printing speeds.

With more people printing photographs, the issue of print permanence has become a concern and Lexmark has both dye-based and pigment-based ink sets that have long permanence ratings. Its Evercolor dye inks are rated at 75 years, while the Evercolor 2 pigment inks have a permanence rating of 100 years. Also, to address the digital photography market, some of Lexmark's new line will sport multi-function card readers, colour LCD screens and six-colour photo ink sets.

Lab tours

A large part of the event was devoted to lab tours. Here, we were able to see some of Lexmark's research labs in action, including the quality control area, a colour lab where researchers subject prints to accelerated fading using very bright light sources, a soundproof chamber where printer noise is studied and a chemical analysis lab where RoHS compliance is monitored. RoHS refers to a directive adopted by the European Union in 2006, which restricts the levels of certain hazardous substances in the manufacture of electrical and electronic products. These include nasties such as cadmium, hexavalent chromium, lead, mercury and two polybrominated compounds used in flame retardants. Because Lexmark uses a variety of suppliers for its printer components, it needs to maintain a constant testing program to ensure that the final product that bears the Lexmark name is RoHS compliant.

The spring lineup

Z1420: Lexmark's entry-level wireless (supports 802.11g) inkjet. Output is an impressive 24 pages per minute for black and 18ppm for colour with resolution up to 4800 x 1200 dpi. This model will take an optional photo cartridge for six-colour image printing. The company also introduced the Z1320 — no WiFi, but the lowest priced printer in the spring line-up. X4550: Lexmark's entry-level WiFi-enabled three-in-one multifunction printer. The rated output is 26 ppm for black and 18 ppm for colour with maximum resolution of 4800x1200 dpi. This model also accepts a photo cartridge for six-colour printing, and has a multi-slot memory card reader for PC-less photo printing. The copy portion permits a resizing range of 25-400 percent, and a one-touch button allows PC-less copying. The scan portion supports 48-bit colour scanning and the unit also comes with optical character recognition software.

Below the X4550 Lexmark also has the new X3550 three-in-one (WiFi is optional through an add-in module) and the X2550 three-in-one (no WiFi, no card readers and slower print speeds).

By David Tanaka

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