Tektronix Inc, the networking, measurement and printing company hopes to revolutionize the practice of color printing with a family of new machines and solid, wax-based ink due to be launched next week. The Wilsonville, Oregon company, which generates a third of its annual $1.94bn revenues from its color printing and imaging division, has introduced an updated version of the Phaser 350 and a new 360 model. Tektronix believes it will be able to change the practice of black and white printing, persuading people that color printing can be just as simple and cost effective. The Phaser 350 and 360 have the capability to print black and white or color pages, with color pages generated at a rate of six pages per minute or 24 black and white pages per minute. The printer ink is generated from wax-based blocks known as ColorStix which are different shapes, depending on their color, and fit into corresponding holes within the printer. The company claims the ink dispensed on to the page is more evenly distributed than ink in a laser printer and is not affected by the temperature of the room the printer is kept in. Tektronix is so convinced that color printing will rule supreme over black and white methods that it is offering customers who buy one of the new machines a life time supply of free black ink. Working on the belief that the phenomena of color and black and white printing will change as televisions did, Tektronix is aiming to build a $2bn color printing business by 2002. The Phaser machines have been designed to take the fuss out of color printing, both coming with an installed web server enabling the user to monitor the printer and its state and the 360, for instance is capable of emailing the printer monitor to notify them if the ink is running low. Both machines have a 33MHz RISC processor and 24Mb of memory. The 360 operates Adobe systems Inc’s Postscript 3, the first printer on the market to do so, says Tektronix. The machines are due to be available worldwide from Monday.
