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New IBM Ultra Fast Printer

avxo writes "CNN/Money is reporting on a new IBM printer, that can print Tolstoy's "War and Peace" in less than a minute, by delegating pagination to a separate unit." Fully loaded it runs a million bucks. Plus the 330 pages it can print in a single minute is probably triple the pages I printed so far in 2005. I'm probably not the target audience *grin*

10 of 277 comments (clear)

  1. So much for the paperless office by gelfling · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Weren't we all promised that at the dawn of computing?

  2. oh goody by rootofevil · · Score: 2, Insightful

    From TFA:

      Cooper said IBM sees growth opportunities in large-capacity printing as marketers increasingly use direct mail to target customers. "Mail remains a very good way to market your business," he said, because consumers are overwhelmed by unsolicited e-mails, or spam, and don't like getting called by telemarketers.

    Tis a shame that IBM is going to be marketing this printer for evil. I get enough junk mail, and the forests of our planet dont need anothe reason to be cut down.

    --
    turn up the jukebox and tell me a lie
  3. Maybe it's just me, but... by DarkVader · · Score: 3, Insightful

    wouldn't it be more cost-effective to use a bank of 10 33ppm printers?

    You get your output just as fast, initial cost is lower, maintenance cost is likely to be lower, and if you get a failure on one unit, you're only down 10% of your printing capacity, instead of 100% of your printing capacity.

  4. Re:Printers these fast are very dangerous. by stienman · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Print admins should have had a process in place to place jobs that required more than an estimated 500 pages into an administrative approval queue.

    They probably do now...

    -Adam

  5. Re:Maybe it's just me, but... by back_pages · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Yes, yes, and one of these to combine the resulting 10 stacks of paper! Brilliant plan!

    (Ok, so I'm being a smart ass, but seriously, how would you combine the output from 10 printers efficiently?)

    This is also interesting to me because it's not uncommon for me to print 500 pages in a single day, and I share a printer with ~35 similar people. There's nothing worse than waiting 25 minutes for someone else's 500 pages to print.

  6. Re:Indeed, it was a costly mistake. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Yep, implementing new procedures to prevent similar situations was also part of the cost of this accident.

    That's not a cost - it's an investment. And the head that needs to roll is that of the idiot who didn't think of implementing that kind of precaution before.

  7. Printers these fast have kill switches. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    "They couldn't just pull the plug on the printer array, as it'd take a day just to get the system back online."

    Printing equipment the size of what IBM's showing has a big red kill switch. You know? Just in case you decide to fall in.

  8. Re:Maybe it's just me, but... by jonbryce · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Do you need to combine them?

    Think of a bank producing bank statements, as long as all the pages for one customer come out the same machine, it doesn't matter that the statement for another customer is sitting on the out tray at the other side of the room.

  9. lol omg by Goaway · · Score: 2, Insightful

    "*grin*"? What is this, an AOL chatroom?

  10. Re:head spinning by brother+bloat · · Score: 2, Insightful

    330 feet / minute * 12 inches / foot = 3960 inches / minute

    3960 inches / minute / 11 inches / page = 360 pages / minute.

    --
    (( (CRAYON) )) >