This morning I left the house and had just finished locking the door behind me, when I realized that I had forgotten something inside.  When I reopened the door and went inside, my dog, Sonny, was jumping and tail-wagging with excitement as if I had been gone all day.  Sometimes we can all be a bit like Sonny.  We get so involved with our day to day issues that we forget that we live in a cyclical economy.  When things are trending down, we forget that it will come back, as it always has.  When we are busy and things are trending up, we forget that that too will change.We do all we can to cut the expenses and streamline our process, but there has come a point at which we have to make serious and sober choices.  After having have retrenched and recharged, with clear eyes and focused determination, we rededicate ourselves to drawing on our courage and good name to carry forward through the anxious times. I know of few industries that have been unbruised by the economy. It is the brave and the proud that stand against the wind.  So, with the strength of our reputation, conservative financial position, and eager anticipation, we reaffirm ourselves to carry on– aggressively, honestly, and humbly.

Keep your chin up.  Be focused, and remember that the measure of character is not getting over the tough times, but rather getting through them.  Feeling sorry for yourself changes nothing and negative affects everything around you.  Choose to be positive and optimistic.  Not Pollyanna, but brave and strong.In every downturn there is always someone who profits.  Consider this a buying opportunity.

NEWS:InfoPrint Solutions Company extends its continuous-forms laser printer portfolio with new entry-level models InfoPrint 100 and InfoPrint 75.  Finally something to offer clients in the middle market. The troublesome IP62 can now be replaced without moving up into huge machines or down to “toy” machines.  Haven’t seen prices yet, as it isn’t due until fall 2008, but I suspect it to be aggressive, as InfoPrint Solutions has been very focused on market share growth.

–Approximately 1,200 IBM employees will join InfoPrint?s professional services team around the world, as agreed during the establishment of the joint venture, which is exciting because the highly regarded IBM on-site service personnel are now directly dispatched and focused on your printing infrastructure.

–IBM announces an addition to the 4247 line of industrial dot matrix forms printers: 4247-X03. 800cps.  The new units replace the -003 and V03 models and offer some minor tweaks and are now black instead of beige.  The shape is odd and maybe familiar to those whom have bought machines from other vendors who had used the same Compuprint engines.  You may also want to consider the Printek or Tally options
–Special Promotion: Buy a new IBM High Speed – up to 135 pages per minute – Cut Sheet 2707 Family (2190, 2210, 2235) and you can get IBM 9×5 Next Day On-Site Repair for THREE years for only $ 1,650 plus 0.0057 per impression. That is no typo! Boy, if this isn’t proof of aggressive marketing, I don’t know what is.

–InfoPrint Solutions Company extends its cutsheet solutions portfolio with the high-speed InfoPrint EMP156 printer.  Up to 156 duplex impressions-per-minute.Breaks new ground in speed and cost-effective printing for cut sheet middle market.

–New InfoPrint Color 1767 models offer twice the number of input drawers of current models. These new models feature twice the number of input drawers of current models. Each new model offers 2,180 sheets of input capacity. Duplex printing standard. Finisher and Booklet Finisher options available.

–The InfoPrint Color 1764 MFP was named BERTL’s Best 2008 honors: Best User Friendly Color Printer Range; InfoPrint Color 1764 was named Best Color Workgroup Printer; and InfoPrint Color 1769 and InfoPrint Color 1759 MFP were named Best User Friendly Workgroup Family.

–Lexmark International Inc.’s X560n color laser MFP has earned a Spring 2008 “Pick of the Year” award from Buyers Laboratory Inc. The Lexmark X560n was selected for its ease-of-use, good feedback to end-user workstations and comprehensive management utilities.  It also offers the highest toner yields of competitive products tested, which contributes to further improved productivity and an attractive cost per page.

–BERTL’s Best 2008 honors: Lexmark C500n: Best A4 Toner-Based Small Office/Workgroup Color Laser Printer. Best User-Friendly Color Printer Range: Lexmark C780n, C780dn and C780dtn, while the Lexmark C782dtn was awarded Best Color Workgroup Printer.  X940e and X945e were named Best User-Friendly Workgroup Family which “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.” 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.

–Looking for a Replacement for discontinued Code Rangers?  Try a PrintekMobile Label Printer for 30-days – at no cost! Cognitive announced the discontinuation of the Code Ranger and its accessories, effective March 28, 2008.

–NEW Internal IPDS/Ethernet option for the PRINTEK FormsPro, FormsMaster, and PrintMaster printer models. IPDS/Ethernet (Part# 91781) Drop-In replacement for IBM 4247 series printers

The printer division, located in Lexington KY was one of the casualties, when IBM “hatched” Lexmark in the early 1990’s. [They have since sold off other manufacturing and engineering divisions such as Hard Drives (Hitachi), Communications (Cisco), PC’s (Lenovo), etc.] One would have assumed that IBM’s next generation of printers would be an IBM branded machine made by Lexmark. (Made an ass of me) So, just as we all were getting our arms around the idea of this new company, “Lexmark”, we were surprised by IBM’s next move. They chose, oddly enough, to use Fuji-Xerox as their manufacturer for their own next-generation IBM-branded printers. It seemed strange that IBM would spin off its venerable engineering and manufacturing infrastructure, only to go with another vendor. (Did IBM and Lexmark have a tiff and decide to not see each other anymore? Or did IBM walk because they couldn’t get a “deal” from their offspring? ).

It was not without bumps, but the dealer community embraced IBM’s moves while continuing to support Lexmark’s products in competition. There were new product families which were not evolutions of intellectual capital and improvement, but were instead all different from IBM’s continuity developed in their Lexington plant. We dealt with new documentation, technical publications, error resolution, design and manufacturing execution, etc. It was rough, but I enjoyed the challenge of the broader offerings. We settled in for the long-run, and then…

IBM’s next move? In the late 1990’s IBM unveiled its newest generation of printers. And they were back to their Lexington roots. IBM, like many others (Unisys, Decision Data, Genicom, etc.) were buying their printers from Lexmark, but putting their own name on them. IBM and the other manufacturers loved the idea that Lexmark’s technology made the on-going supplies revenue proprietary. That is, you couldn’t use a Lexmark toner in an IBM machine, even though both were the same engine. IBM could sell printers, guarantee their supplies revenue, and not need production, engineering, parts, or inventory. Good deal!

Now it seems to have come around again, but this time, IBM is actually exiting the printer market, at least directly. IBM has sold off the entire printer division, forming this Ricoh/IBM joint venture called Infoprint Solutions Company. I see the overall move as an excellent decision; combining IBM’s vast technical support and maintenance assets, with Ricoh’s engineering, manufacturing and printer-focused future. Clearly there will be a learning curve but I expect it will be rather benign.

IBM’s older Fuji-Xerox gear is still chugging along out there even seven years later, so there is no reason to doubt that IBM’s newer Lexmark-based printers will be running for a long time to come. So, users will have to choose a path based on the questions: “Should we continue with the technology pedigree of printer engines designed and manufactured by Lexmark”, or “Should we move into the expanded Ricoh line?”

Clearly, Ricoh has a strong incentive to turn over the installed base of older equipment into their robust product line. Ricoh has a very long and hard-earned history of success in the world market. The relationship between IBM and Ricoh goes back quite a long way. Ricoh has had a strong market penetration in the copier and fax markets for many years, but had little “in” with the IT community. IBM employed Ricoh’s engines and technology in their mid-range laser printers, and probably negotiated to keep Ricoh from competing in the lower end market. (Why is Canon Corporation not selling hard into the laser printer market? Because that’s who makes HP’s lasers). But now Ricoh is in control, and I would be amazed (no assumptions this time) if they didn’t use their own technology and engines for the lower end of the market in lieu of the Lexmark stuff today.

There is a strong case to be made for uniformity in infrastructure including printers. The installed base can be easily migrated to newer versions made and supported by Lexmark. As I see it, there is more to gain in keeping consistent with the existing installed base than from a lateral move over to Ricoh’s gear, at least marginally. Ricoh’s products have typically sold at higher price points because their sales model favors lower supplies costs, which is certainly in the interests of long-term users. But a flick of the pen and Lexmark’s toner supplies could easily undercut that advantage.

So what to do now? Since Ricoh hasn’t even announced any new products, keep buying Lexmark or IBM printers. Once Ricoh’s products become available, wait it out a bit and see how it performs. Not until problems arise can one adequately determine the responsiveness and supportability of the new lines. I would think that the users really don’t care all that much, as long as their gear is working.

My philosophy is as it has always been: properly maintained, the installed base should last for many years, and uniformity over the long run is the least expensive and problematic paradigm. Either way things pan out, we’ll be there to support you.

Say you heard it here first. Intel has a major problem. They cannot make their processors smaller (faster), so they are instead making them multicore. That’s wonderful, but show me the plethora of software applications, present or past, that can truly take advantage of multithreading. The dual and quad core processors are still clocking at less than 3Ghz. Watch out for the PowerPC. Interesting, don’t you think, that Apple moved their Macintosh gear to Intel (away from PowerPC) just as we reached this point? Also note, if the older Macintosh gear ran natively on the last generation of PowerPC, then we may consider that it will also run on the latest PowerPC. The latest PowerPC will run iSeries frames. Do IBM and Apple have a venture to replace PC’s with Mac’s for the enterprise? Let’s see: the Mac OS is a UNIX variant. Linux is like UNIX. Linux runs on iSeries (and zSeries). Macintosh on IBM?