New hardware products from Japan
New hardware products from Japan
By Zatni Arbi
JAKARTA (JP): Our friends in the page layout department of The
Jakarta Post added "(mis)" before the word "adventure" that I
used in the title of my article last week. The ripple it created
was quite significant. A handful of e-mail messages have arrived
in my box, expressing their condolences. A friend in Britain even
thought my article was, as she put it, quite "emotional".
The truth was I had a lot fun with the hardware adventure the
entire week. True, I lost a modem in the process, but now I am
enjoying a faster Internet connection. What a difference the
prefix (mis) made!
Anyway, in this week's column we will look at several new and
interesting products from a Japanese company renowned for the
large number of patents that it holds. About two weeks ago, PT
Datascript, Canon's distributor for Indonesia, unveiled a sleek
digital camera, a pair of new printers, a couple of flatbed color
scanners and a color laser printer cum copier, which were worth
taking a look at.
Digital cameras
A recent PC Magazine Online survey found that 35 percent of
respondents said they were ready to buy a digital camera now, 39
percent said that they would buy on next year and only 9 percent
said they had no interest in digital cameras.
What does this mean? Clearly, computer users are accepting
digital cameras more than ever before.
No wonder companies like Olympus, Sony, Ricoh, Hitachi, Sharp,
Toshiba, Canon, Kodak, Epson and so many others are jumping onto
the digital camera bandwagon, regardless of whether they have the
tradition of camera crafting in the past or not. The quality of
digital cameras has improved tremendously since I first tested a
Logitech digital camera a few years ago. Unfortunately, the
prices are moving to the south more slowly than we would like.
Canon, with a strong tradition in camera technology, has been
making great cameras. In the past, its PowerShot A5 won a couple
of awards from computer magazines. During a new product launch at
Hotel Horison, Ancol, two weeks ago, they introduced an update to
the beautifully crafted camera PowerShot A50. I requested a test
unit of this Rp 5.2 million megapixel gadget, and you will
certainly read about it after I have played around with it.
Scanners
In the past, scanners had to be quite tall because the Charge-
coupled Device (CCD) used to capture the image and create the
digital data incorporates a complex configuration of mirrors and
lenses. Today, new technology based on newer Contact Image Sensor
(CIS) technology using Light Emitting Diode (LED) makes the use
of mirrors and lenses no longer necessary. Therefore, scanners
can be made very thin and very light, like the scanners from
Canon. In Canon's lingo, the technology is called LED Indirect
Exposure, or LIDE.
Four models are available from this company: FB 330P, FB 630P,
FB 630U and the FB 636U. The "P" indicates that the scanner
connects to the PC through the parallel port, and the "U" means
it has a USB interface. With USB, the scanner can be used with a
Mac as well.
The resolution capability of the 330P is 300 by 600 DPI, while
the FB 630P and FB 636U can scan at the 600 by 1200 DPI level.
One thing that impressed me was the lightness of these scanners.
My nine-year-old HP ScanJet IIC feels like a behemoth compared to
them.
These CIS-based scanners are good for personal use and small
offices that need to scan pictures to incorporate graphics in
their brochures and catalogs. For better scan quality, however,
the CCD-based scanners are generally still a better bet.
Canon has also been the pioneer in document management, and it
has introduced two high-speed document scanners that will turn
your stacks of paper documents into digital images that you can
save on CD-ROMs.
You can feed up to 500 sheets of letter-sized or even A3-sized
documents into the tray of DR-5020 or DR 5080C Document Scanners,
and they will be scanned at the speed of up to 100 pages per
minute. The DR 5080C can scan and store the image in up to 24-bit
color. With these devices, there should be no more excuse to keep
those stacks of dusty and damp paper documents in the storage
rooms of our government offices.
Printers
We all know that Canon makes decent inkjet printers. Being the
maker of a very popular printing engine in the world, this
company understandably makes its own laser printers, too. In
fact, one of the highlights of the product introduction that
afternoon was CP660, a color laser printer and copier.
Looking more like a copying machine than a printer, this color
laser printer can print 24 pages per minute (ppm) in black and
white or 6 ppm in color. A 100Base-T network port is available,
so that the printer can be used in a network as well.
To temporarily store data that may flow in from multiple
users, a 2.1 GB hard disk is standard. A new type of toner is
also used; it has a microscopic wax core that makes the fusing
process free of oil and the output non-glossy on paper from A5 to
A3 in size.
The good news is that this printer carries a hefty price tag,
Rp 110 million. That makes it not so attractive for money
counterfeiters who have been creating a heavy burden for our
economy in the past few years. A color laser printer is a good
solution for companies that need to print small volumes of high-
quality communication materials.
In the inkjet printer area, two new models were introduced,
BJC-2000SP and BJC-5100SP. These SP printers are equipped with
the capability to print in what the company calls Super Economy
mode, using only one-fourth of ink compared with the
professional-quality mode.
It can also be turned into a scanner just by changing the
toner cartridge with a special scanner cartridge. I test-drove a
Canon BJC 4310SP in the past and found that, while the printing
quality was acceptable, you would still be wiser to invest in a
low-cost flatbed scanner.
The BJC 5100SP can print up to A3-size with the speed up to 10
ppm in black and white and 4 ppm in color. You can even use
special 7-color toner combination for photo-realistic prints at a
resolution of 1440x720DPI.
The choice in inkjet printers in our local market, which has
been traditionally dominated by the three big players Canon,
Epson and Hewlett-Packard, has been made wider by the arrival of
another leading brand, Lexmark. We will take a look at Lexmark
offerings in an upcoming article.