Xerox Reveals Transient Documents

Heartless Gamer writes "Xerox has lifted the veil from some of its research and development work in the field of printing. They demoed the very intriguing 'transient documents.' These offer the prospect of reusable paper in the sense that the content is automatically erased after a period of time, ready for fresh printing. Inspired by the fact that many print outs have a life-span of a few hours (think of the emails you may print out just to read, or the content you proof read on the train journey back home), the specially prepared paper will preserve its content for up to 16 hours."

Comments

Nothing new, Concept-wise

[ackthpt]

I've got receipts which fade if left exposed to air, off those stupid thermal printers. And, as a bonus feature, they turn utterly black if you set something very hot on them. Possibly useful for taking pictures of the sun with a magnifying glass, if done with care.

We have a practice in our shop of taking non-sensitive documents and flipping the paper over and running it from a tray for re-use on the blank backside. Fine if people haven't scribbled on it or added a staple.

1 major prob...

[Brad1138]

After you run a piece of paper through a printer and then handle it, even a little, it isn't suitable to run through the printer again. Usually it causes jams.

How long will the paper survive?

[iansmith]

Interesting, but how many times can you reuse paper that has been out in the real world?

Spilled drinks, people drawing on it with pen, folding, crumping, tearing, chewing.

I know most printers can't handle the paper if it's not in 100% perfect condition.. I can just imagine the kind of paper jams this thing could produce when someone thwoes in 6 pages stuck together with bubble gum, corners torn off and grease from their lunch calzone smeared all over it.

Neat idea with the UV though. I love the idea of inkless printing, as long as the paper doesn't end up being more expensive than gold.

Re:How long will the paper survive?

[cyberianpan]

I wonder could the paper be made more robust, the primary problem is curling or small pieces of dirt (spills, chewing gum etc would be a lot less common). So they could try plasticising the paper- yes that would produce problems re heat , & possibly make paper less susceptible to ink... whole set up is beginning to sound as far away as e-paper :-)

Re:How long will the paper survive?

[cptgrudge]

Assuming it's costs $1.00/pg, you would need this to last at least 16 iterations, on average, to make it worth your investment.

Or, you don't use it as a replacement for all of your paper, but as a compliment. Imagine, for a moment, if this paper occupies one of the trays on the office printer, and your print server software knows about it. Maybe you have certain sensitive emails or other documents that are cleared for short-term print, but not to be in print forever. Have your email software, office suite, or whatever be forced to use that tray for those types of documents. Then it becomes more of a CYA thing to avoid potential costs due to the release of information in the future.

Of course, I can think of at least a dozen ways to bypass that, but it's another possible use for this tech.

Re:How long will the paper survive?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you have certain sensitive emails or other documents that are cleared for short-term print

This paper isn't designed to make it impossible to recover old printouts. You'd better stick with a shreader for that.

This sounds like...

[Jsutton1027w]

A really good way to play a practical joke on someone...

- Term papers
- Contracts
- I could go on forever :)

I'm worried

[raptor_87]

This seems like it can (and therefore will) be used to add "DRM" to paper.

Excellent!

[Bender0x7D1]

Now I can make sure all of my important financial documents are printed on this paper. When the IRS or SEC come after me they will have nothing but blank pages. MUAHAHAHA! (I'll take the fines for improper document retention, but it is better than going to jail for fraud.)

Seriously, think how bad some of the OOPSes will be....

I printed off your email before deleting it, but now I can't find it!

What happened to those photos I printed?

If you don't have your receipt, we can't take it back.

No, that section of the contract never existed. Can you prove it did?

Re:PAPERLESS OFFICE

[geekoid]

It's not FUD.

not all paper products come from tree farm, probably not even half.

Of course, the paper farm also destroy the local trees to make way for special trees.

Also, you can pull things out of the soil for so long before nutriens are used up. What's their plane for maintaining the soil?

Insert appropriate Inspector Gadget reference here

[Atmchicago]

Xerox must be using inspector Chief Quimby's (gadget's boss) technology: "This message will self-destruct in 5... 4... "

Re:An interesting application...

[ampathee]

People would probably just print the coupon on normal paper though.

A solution without a problem

[Kohath]

Just throw away the used paper and print on new paper.

Paper is a crop. It grows on trees that are specially planted by paper companies on paper-company land. They're chosen to grow quickly and produce good paper pulp. Cotton is also used in most papers. Cotton is also a crop that's specially planted for this purpose. Paper is also extremely inexpensive.

This technology reminds me of waterless urinals. There are places locally that have them. They don't work well. I live within 5 miles of the 5th largest river in the world. Water is not scarce.

There's no reason to invent expensive, new technologies to be inferior substitutes to the use of cheap abundant resources. Why not fix a real problem instead?

Re:copying on the same paper over and over

[Kenyon]

Enter key. Use it.

The content you proof-read on train home?

[munpfazy]

That assumes you either need no corrections, or you annotate using a UV pen. And, that you are able to carry a stack of papers around the subway without creasing and wrinkling them.

There are only two good reasons to print a document:
* you want to scribble on it.
* you want to carry it somewhere that its likely to get lost or damaged or where an electronic reader is inappropriate.

In either case, this paper is unlikely to be useful.

Personally, I'd much rather see the Xerox R&D folks working on light weight, high-contrast electronic readers with robust note-taking features.

Is the data really "lost"?

[Covalent]

I see serious problems with the idea that the information on this paper is "lost" after 16 hours. We all know how hard it is to "lose" data on a hard drive. It seems to me that if a printer has printed on this paper, then some kind of indelible information is now stored on this paper. How long will it be until this paper is thrown away and that data is then stolen?