Deconstructing the Computer Report of a Symposium (2005) / Chapter Skim
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Panel IV: Peripherals: Current Technology Trends, continued
Panel IV: Peripherals: Current Technology Trends, continued
Pages 71-86
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From page 71... ...
NVIDIA, for example, was trying to capture more of the value added by migrating software functionality to its chips; component manufacturers were trying to migrate system functionality into the component by adding processing capability to displays, to magnetic-storage components or to networking components; and Veritas was trying to migrate networkor system-management functionality down to the software. An inherently difficult technical measurement problem was thus exacerbated because "who's capturing the value keeps moving around based on changes in business strategy and the ability to execute." The current panel would offer two more interesting and diverse examples.
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From page 72... ...
Walker Despite being "one of the casualties" of Silicon Valley's recent downturn, Mr. Walker said he was "still bullish on the future." He proposed a quick review of the state of the art to begin his talk on developments in optical storage, which he described as an established business that was not so much technology-driven as operationally driven.
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From page 73... ...
The impact of consumer electronics on optical storage could be seen in laser discs. In the 1970s, when the volume of computers was basically nil and the volume of televisions quite high, a great deal of work was done toward creating a video laser player for a long-playing disc designed to rival the LP.
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From page 74... ...
That the different devices were variations of what was all fundamentally digital technology reflects an American view that "did not fit the Japanese view of how consumers use products," he said. The Japanese firms resisted pressure from U.S.
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From page 75... ...
But variation might come in the size of the disc: Companies had been looking at "small form-factor optical," a 3-cm disc using a blue laser in a drive about the size of a matchbook that could accommodate a removable piece of optical storage holding a gigabyte. Makers of advanced phones and digital cameras had shown an interest in the technology, possibly as an alternative to IBM's microdrive.
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From page 76... ...
DVD and CD reader/writers would be pervasive in mass-produced distribution, as the cost of making mass quantities of discs was in the tenths of a cent. CDs also held value for those who didn't want to be concerned about electromagnetic pulses taking out their content and those who created content on their computers that they wanted to play on a home stereo, although this advantage might be attenuated with the advance of pervasive networking, whereby everything in someone's consumer electronics deck would be connected to his or her computer.
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From page 77... ...
Showing a chart that indicated the actual and projected breakdown of market share among various printer technologies from 1998 through 2006, Dr. Taub noted that only a thin line represented color page printers and opined that, despite appearances, the workplace had not made the transition to color laser printers (see Figure 20)
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From page 78... ...
In addition, ink-jet technology was used most often in multifunction printer peripherals, which as a category had passed monochrome laser printers to move into second place sometime in 2001. Sales of thermal printers and wide-format plotters were not large enough even to show up on the chart, while those of impact printers were visible but dwindling into insignificance.
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From page 79... ...
Although he suggested that a corollary to Moore's Law could be imagined for printers, given the foregoing evidence of quality improvement accompanied by price decrease, Dr. Taub declined to predict whether they would indeed get Home & BETTER Large Format · Ink Jet (piezo, thermal)
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From page 80... ...
Faster and more expensive ink jets did exist -- for example, Scitex made a $3.5 million ink jet for print books and high-speed graphics -- but the bulk of ink-jet devices were not at that level of performance. He characterized the laser printer as "faster and cheaper," while the liquid-toner EP, used more for commercial printing, got the designation "better and faster." Each thus had its own niche: Ink jet, delivering high-quality and color at low cost but somewhat slowly, fit well into the home market as well as being the technology of choice for large-format plotters; the laser, leader in the office, was in production printing as well; and liquid EP was the right device for offset-quality commercial printing.
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From page 81... ...
However, while the dry toner laser printer transferred its toner directly to the paper, the liquid-toner printer transferred the toner to a soft-rubber roller which in turn transferred the toner to the paper. This process, which uses an intermediate transfer to a rubber roller, is similar to the process in offset printing where the ink is transferred to a rubber "blanket" before the final transfer to the paper.
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From page 82... ...
But besides having the capability of providing quality indistinguishable from that of an offset press, this technology was digital -- something, Dr. Taub observed, that "really changes things significantly." Looking back a few years, to the late 1990s, at the distribution of work load in the printing market, he cited figures on the order of several hundred billion pages per year each in office printing and office duplication, virtually all of them monochrome; in contrast, the commercial printing and commercial publishing markets reached 3 trillion and 8.3 trillion pages, respectively, with higher-value color accounting for 50 percent
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From page 83... ...
A digital press made such a product possible: Other than on the Indigo press, the only way it could even have been approximated would have been using prints of the photographs themselves, which would have been extremely expensive. This capability opened the door to such unprecedented applications as home-delivered commercial magazines and directmail advertising whose content was tailored to the interests and preferences of the individual recipient, something that would save time for the reader and money for the sender.
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From page 84... ...
In the case of a conventional Heidelberg press, among the needs were an uninterrupted supply of correct plates, rapid plate changeover, and alignment of the plates color-to-color on the various stations of the press, a timeconsuming operation which was what he said "you really pay for when you submit a job for an offset press." With an Indigo press, all that was needed was an uninterrupted stream of correct data after an initial calibration. As many jobs
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From page 85... ...
Taub presented an explanation of how a contemporary direct-selling campaign was developed. Beyond simply printing text or images on paper, the campaign designer needed to integrate customer relationship management (CRM)
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From page 86... ...
Absolutely necessary was convincing them that the correct measure of digital publishing was value per page rather than cost per page, because "you get so much more impact from a customized page than from the standard offset page." Mr. Borrus noted that the personalization techniques described by Dr.
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