I recently had the privilege of spending two days at the PRINT 18 show, and while this is not a complete review of the show, several things stuck out in my mind that I wanted to cover.

Ink was everywhere

My first impression was that everywhere I looked, there were inkjet devices. PRINT 18 is a show tailored to commercial printers, and I didn’t see any traditional presses. I saw both toner-based and inkjet-based digital presses from the traditional copier manufacturers and many inkjet devices from nontraditional manufacturers. This move to inkjet was especially noticeable in the wide-format arena. It seemed like every aisle had inkjet wide format printers from manufacturers that were new to me.

 Manufacturers moving to industrial print

One trend that has been progressing over the last few years is moving to industrial print by the major copier manufacturers. The pace of that change is increasing, and it is understandable. For most manufacturers, the opportunity...

This article originally appeared in ENX Magazine

An old curse says, “May you live in interesting times.” The idea being that boring times were times of security and peace and interesting times more associated with trouble and danger. In our industry, I am concerned that interesting times lie in our near future.

Portents of the Coming Change

I have had the opportunity to visit both GraphExpo and the BTA meeting in Asheville recently, and I walked away amazed at the things I saw and heard. At GraphExpo, it seemed that several of the manufacturers devoted more booth space to devices outside of the traditional production print environment. There was also a significant shift toward inkjet devices both in the high-end industrial printing environment as well as toward specialty devices like wide format.

At the BTA meeting, one recurrent topic was Managed Network Services (MNS). Both during the dealer roundtable discussion and during presentations this subject was addressed as...