Lexmark to Exit InkJet Business

On Aug 28, 2012 Lexmark International, Inc. announced restructuring actions, including the exiting of the development and manufacturing of the company's remaining inkjet hardware, which are expected to result in annualized savings of $95 million once fully implemented. Lexmark will continue to provide service, support and aftermarket supplies for its inkjet installed base.

"That announcement represents difficult decisions, which are necessary to drive improved profitability and significant savings," said Paul Rooke, Lexmark chairman and chief executive officer. "Our investments are focused on higher value imaging and software solutions, and we believe the synergies between imaging and the emerging software elements of our business will continue to drive growth across the organization.

"As we move forward, we remain confident in our strategy, competitiveness and ability to create value for shareholders," added Rooke.

Taking Actions to Improve Profitability

The restructuring actions announced on Aug 28 are expected to result in reductions primarily in inkjet-related infrastructure as well as positions in research and development, supply chain and other support functions.

The actions include closing the Cebu, Philippines, inkjet supplies manufacturing facility by the end of 2015. The actions also include eliminating inkjet development worldwide, including costs related to facilities, tooling, equipment, contract termination, and scrapping in process inventory, which are expected to be principally complete by the end of 2013.

These restructuring actions are expected to result in the elimination of approximately 1,700 positions worldwide, including 1,100 manufacturing positions.

The company is working with its strategic advisors to explore the sale of the company's inkjet-related technology.

These actions are expected to generate $85 million savings in 2013, increasing to ongoing annualized savings of $95 million beginning in 2015. Savings should be split approximately 65 percent to operating expense, and 35 percent to cost of goods sold. The company expects the majority of these savings to favorably impact pre-tax earnings.

The total program pre-tax cost for these actions is expected to be $160 million, with $110 million incurred in 2012, $30 million incurred in 2013, and the remaining $20 million incurred in 2014 and 2015. The total program cash flow impact for these actions is expected to be $75 million, with $40 million impacting 2012, $30 million impacting 2013, and the remaining $5 million impacting 2014 and 2015.

Maintaining Capital Allocation Discipline to Deliver Shareholder Value

Lexmark is continuing to execute on its previously announced capital allocation framework of returning more than 50 percent of free cash flow to shareholders, on average, through dividends and share repurchases, while building and growing its solutions and software business through expansion and acquisitions.

Lexmark announced that it plans an additional $100 million of share repurchases in the third and fourth quarter of 2012. With this action completed, Lexmark will have returned, through paid and declared dividends and share repurchases, more than $500 million to shareholders since mid-2011.

Lexmark's Board of Directors approved an additional $200 million of share repurchase authority. Total share repurchase authority remaining after the additional $100 million repurchases will be $251 million.

Visit our web store for Lexmark inkjet cartridges and Lexmark toner cartridges

Source: Lexmark announces restructuring

How to build a house? Now you can print it!

One of the every first human needs has always been food and shelter. Each and every day more and more houses are being built around the world to provide the population with shelter. The complexity of the current ways of building houses include the following problems:
· Labor-intensive and inefficient
· Slow process
· Wasteful and emission causing
· Most hazardous job
· Corruption prone
· Costly and always over the budget

Take a look at the video below to see how professor Behrokh Khoshnevis explains how Contour Crafting can print a custom design house for less than 24 hours.

However if you use more traditional printers and you need supplies for them, visit our web store and order the printer supplies you need!

Even on Mars, they need printer supplies!

Never run our printer supplies, you never know when you are going to need additional printouts!
Visit Priceless Ink & Toner and get all inkjet cartridges and laser toner cartridges you need!

Ricoh and Brother are Best in A3 InkJet Printers and MFPs

We are firm believers in a hardware strategy that is based on our notion that the need for color printing and large format 11” x 17” (ledger) printing and scanning is traditionally overstated.

For small workgroups and companies, our strategy instead would be to deploy fast, secure and economical B/W A4 MFPs for a majority of the heavy lifting (copy/print/fax/scan), paired with a lesser numbers of color A3 printers for when users need to print in color, print documents larger than 8.5” x 14” (legal), and scan documents larger than 8.5” x 14”. However, the cost of a toner-based A3 color printer or MFP may be prohibitively expensive for many small offices and workgroups.

What to do? For smaller A3 print volumes, consider an inkjet A3 color printer or MFP. Ultimately, the image quality is equal if not sometimes superior, and the acquisition cost can be a fraction of that of toner-based A3 MFPs.

In this Head2Head Comparison, we compare the latest A3 InkJet Printers and MFPs from every vendor – seven models in total – from Brother, Epson, Hewlett-Packard and Ricoh. After completing our requisite data analysis and performance ratings based on our extensive product-evaluation experience, we determined:

Best in Class A3 MFP - Brother MFC-J6910DW ($299.99 MSRP)
A surprising but worthy winner, as Brother has recently stepped up its game to make their devices more SMB friendly. Key considerations include:
· Automatic duplex printing on media as large as 11” x 17.” It’s one of two devices in this class that can do so (the other is also a Brother model).
· Duplexing automatic document feeder.
· Secure Function Lock (password-protect print, copy, fax, color print, as well as scan; set print page limits).
· Compatibility with Brother’s BRAdmin fleet management solution and Driver Deployment Wizard.
· Brother iPrint & Scan mobile printing and scanning solution.
· Low Cost per Page Inkjet cartridges and Total Cost of Ownership
· Color touch screen and wired/wireless networking.

Although it has an 11” x 17” (ledger) platen glass, the duplexing document feeder can only handle originals as large as 8.5” x 14”. Consequently, users who need to scan high volumes of larger originals will need to consider the equally competent Epson WorkForce WF-7510, but it has a considerably higher Cost per Page and Total Cost of Ownership.

Best in Class A3 Printer – Ricoh Aficio GX e7700N (Web price-$1,117.99)
We’ve always been fans of Ricoh’s GelSprinter line of printers and MFPs. Because of their business-class construction, they cost more than competitive inkjet products, but make up for it in the long run due to the lowest Cost Per Page in this class. Business-class performance is what sets this printer apart from the others:
· Business-class design, construction, software and feature set.
· Compatibility with Ricoh’s @Remote and SmartDeviceMonitor/Web SmartDeviceMonitor network- management solutions. Web Image Monitor embedded Web server.
· Fast-drying gel-based ink cartridges provide superior duplex printing productivity.
· High-yield ink cartridges yield 4,000 pages each.
· Lowest Cost Per Page in this class, and lowest Total Cost of Ownership at monthly print volumes exceeding 2,000 pages.
· Expandable media supply (up to 600 pages).

Visit Priceless-InkJet.com for inkjet printer / MFP print cartridges.

Source: Review: A3 Ink-Jet Printers and MFPs – Ricoh and Brother are Best in Class