Art Post
Last week we saw two major stories from Toshiba with the press release of copier/MFP that has disappearing toner (erasable), and then a program that will magically reformat your pre-printed pages along with claims to save toner and paper (Adobe LeanPrint). Erasable toner, great idea, but who the heck wants to print in blue? Do you get the feeling that this is may be the last hurrah for Toshiba? What happens if LeanPrint and Erasable Paper do not increase Toshiba’s MIF (machines in field)?
Existing Toshiba copiers will not be able to erase the toner on the paper, in order to have the erasable toner feature you’ll have to shell out some shekels for a new Toshiba MFP. Plus, it’s been reported that a latent image will still remain on the page even after the toner has been removed. Personally, I don’t think the Feds will be buying any of these systems.
I’m not sold on either one of these new releases from Toshiba. It seems Toshiba has created some traction in recent weeks, but I doubt either of these new features will increase sales for the long term. Adobe Lean Print at $99 per user seems a little pricey and what happens if you don’t like the way LeanPrint will magically reformat your pages, you’ll have to print the documents again and again. Where the heck is the savings now? One of the videos that show the reformatting of twelve pages to four, Adobe LeanPrint reformats the single pages to three columns per page looking more like a newspaper article. You can get a better view here of what the pages look like. I’m finding it hard to believe that the font size will not be smaller from the original document. I going to give the 30-day trial a shot and see what happens. More importantly I’m trying to think of applications that I would use this for. As of right now I got nothing.
As far as the erasable toner goes, when was the last time you ran the same sheet of paper through a copy machine five times? The Toshiba MFP system uses heat to remove the toner image, I can only think after using the same sheet of paper five times there’s going to be some degrading of the paper.
Here’s a paragraph from House of Japan about the erasable toner:
“This is a special kind of toner that loses its color when heated, so this technology makes it look as if the printing has disappeared. With this system, one sheet of photocopy paper can be used at least five times, so this product combines economy with ecology.”
So back to my initial thoughts, both of these releases have a “Wow” and sizzle factor to them. With Toshiba at a paltry 3 percent of the U.S. market share I’m thinking it’s more of a flash in the pan and Toshiba may finally wave the white flag when it comes to manufacturing copiers.
Good selling.
