Jay Leno and his NextEngine 3D Scanner. Courtesy Popular Mechanics

Need a replacement part for a decades-old or exotic car? All Jay Leno does is get the part he wants to replace, and use a 3D scanner to convert into information his 3D printer understands. He then waits a few hours while the printer reproduces a plastic facsimile. After printing’s done (which can take as long as 33 hours), Leno checks if the newly-fabricated plastic part fits as a replacement properly. Once everything checks out, the plastic is used to create a mold to create a real (usually metal) replacement.

The gadgets in use? The NextEngine 3D scanner and the Dimension 3D printer. Priced at $3,000 and $15,000 respectively, it’s clear that the Jay Leno way requires lots of money—which he probably has in spades anyway.

Source

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In fact, the longest part of the setup was installing the drivers (which work nicely on Windows 7 by the way). 5 minutes later, the Windows printer test page was out. Being a B/W laser printer, with less colors to process and worry about, does have it perks after all. At least the built-in scanner does color, which is all that matters in my eager-to-print-reports opinion.

At an average price of over $200, the HP M1120 MFP is one of the most affordable laser printers today. Locate a shop online.

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Not bad at all: a $200 printer retailing for only $92? There must be a catch right? Well, no rebates sighted, and free shipping promised. Even if the checkout process reveals a sales or state tax or some sort, that’s still around a hundred bucks for a WiFi-capable device that can print, scan, photocopy, and fax. Of course, you’ll have to figure out how to deal with refills.

Check out the deal at buy.com! (Thanks Crave)

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1. We get road trip directions on the cellphone instead of printing them.
2. We share photos online at sites like Flickr or Shutterfly rather than printing them.
3. Rather than print out an article to read later, we hit “Read Later” or Read It Later, ShifD or Google Notebook and read the article on any computer anywhere.
4. Instead of printing out tax forms (the one time of the year the home printer gets heavy use), we do our taxes online, file electronically, save the file on the PC and back it up.

Not all of the above may be applicable to everyone, but this fifth reason does: printer manufacturers switched to the wrong business model!

Once upon a time, printers were significantly more expensive, to the point that buying one was weighty investment. However, in an apparent attempt to boost sales, manufacturers turned their products into loss leaders. They started pricing printers lower than the cost of production. That’s a reason why more people started buying printers.

So what did they do to stay profitable? Printer manufacturers raised the prices of ink cartridges. While they’d lose money for each printer sold, the idea was that the pricier cartridges would more than make up for it—especially since users have to replenish on a regular basis.

Unfortunately, that turned off customers, and created a new market for those who sell cheaper, “unofficial” cartridges, or offer refilling services. Manufacturers had to spend some money going after these third-party providers, no doubt.

It looked good on paper, but forcing people to pay more for ink cartridges have helped consumer-level printers become more irrelevant, as people share more and more soft copies of content. Printers may have been expensive before, but at least users weren’t penalized for their loyalty. By making ink cartridges prohibitively expensive, manufacturers opened a pandora’s box, and may never recover from that.

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In what some would quickly label as propaganda for printer manufacturers and their business model, PC World recently tested several printers with OEM and aftermarket ink cartridges. Test showed that the former, which are more expensive than aftermarket variants, leave less ink in their tank before displaying low ink-level warnings. In the case of the Canon Pixma MP610, the difference was as much as 19 percent—24 for the OEM and nearly half for aftermarket variants.

Despite the (mostly) clear lead of OEM cartridges over their aftermarket counterparts, I wonder why most printer manufacturers don’t let their customers get every last drop from each cartridge. Put simply, why prevent owners from using up their ink? In the case of HP, the printer may flash low-level warnings, but will allow the user to continue printing, right until they start seeing the telltale signs of low ink.

In the end, PC World’s article is a boon for HP, highlighting the company’s “unique” setup: “The HP printer will continue to print until the cartridge is completely dry–but since the print heads are part of the cartridge in HP’s design, running out of ink does not damage other parts of the printer.”

(image from hp.com)

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Joining is real easy. All it involves leaving a comment on this post before Monday, October 20, at 11:59:59 p.m. ET. Kristen will be announcing the winner via a virtual random draw. So what are you waiting for? Comment now!

Bonus Feature: The post detailing the giveaway also contains Kristen’s short review of the printer.

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