How to Reset the Cartridge Level After Filling Up the HP Print Cartridge ?, Refilling HP print cartridges is a great way to save money on printer ink. Besides being profitable, refilling ink cartridges is environmentally friendly. There is a feature that comes with most HP printers that provides estimated ink level. You will find this feature very useful because it alerts you when ink is running low. However, sometimes problems can occur. After filling the print cartridge HP can get a "low ink" or "No ink" message when trying to print. Top up the printer cartridge HP can help solve this problem.

Instructions
Tools: Tape

1 Put a piece of tape over one of the copper-colored square contacts in the HP print cartridge. Carefully place the cartridge into the printer. You may receive an error message that should be ignored.
2 Allow the printer to print an alignment test page, then remove the cartridge from the printer.
3 Leave the first piece of tape on the cartridge, then place a small additional piece of tape over the second copper-colored contacts. Place the cartridge into the printer and print another alignment page.
4 Remove the cartridge from HP, then carefully remove the tape and placed in the copper-colored contacts. Place the cartridges in the printer and resume normal printing. At this point the ink level status should be zero, which shows "complete."

Tag: How to Reset the Cartridge Level After Filling Up the HP Print Cartridge

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The first sessions (before the morning break) are history and heres a brief synopsis:

Following Frank Stefanssons opening welcome, Keynote #1 was a strong effort, by Senior VP Corporate Communications, Product/Solutions and Channel Marketing, Ron Potesky.

His theme? Change can be good (renamed from “change is good”).

And a great point -- just what does a guy from Ricoh know about change? Plenty! Potesky’s outlined a brief history of Ricoh’s activities including acquisitions of Savin, Gestetner, Lanier, Hitachi, IBM (Infoprint, actually currently still a Joint Venture but leading to a full-fledged acquistion), and ending (for now?) with IKON in 2008. He likened the IKON acquisition to Xerox’s 2007 acquisition of Global Imaging, a large non-prorietary base of customers.

Potesky covered trends in channels (Ricoh/IKON, Xerox/Global, Konica-Minolta/Danka, Canon Grows CBS, Independent Dealer Valuation Bubble, Dealers selling at 10X earnings, Direct vs. Dealer), technology battles (Copier-based A3 vs. printer-based A4, Ink vs. laser, Print vs. display), and the business model shift (Lease and Purchase vs. Managed Print Services/Facilities Management, Break/Fix “Copier” Service vs. Cartridge Based end-user service.)

One Conclusion: Supply outweighing demand, significant consolidation. A question though -- are we in the industry DRIVING OUR OWN DEMISE?
Were offering to solve many customer problems, like lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), a focus on the environment, printing less, controlling color, all with the underlying theme of "Spend your money with us, not them…"

Potesky offered examples of brands that have adapted and those that haven’t. Andthen a good personal story of a bad example: Linotype-Hell – a market leader that didn’t pay attention to signs of change (ignoring emerging threats like desktop Postscript printers and Direct-to-Plate) in their business environment. (Hell in this case is not a place but rather an acquired company that helped take Linotype there.)

His final thoughts were:

*EMBRACE CHANGE
*SEIZE OPPORTUNITIES
*THINK BIG

And If You Take One Thing Away…
“It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” - Author unknown

And unlike the later presentations, there was time for a couple of questions.

Q – What makes a good acquisition? A – didn’t integrate fast enough (Savin/Gestener took seven years, Lanier also; faster integration is easier. Going much better with IKON!)

Q – A3 and A4, does Ricoh see A4 MFPs taking away A3 placements? A – Absolutely! Esp in mid- and low-end markets (sements I and ii especially). Will continue, but service model for A3 is still a good economic model, with individual parts replacements. With ink technology improved to mean less “throw away” that could change.

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Ann Priede, VP of Publications, and Charley LeCompte, president and founder of Lyra, publisher of The Hard Copy Observer and The Hard Copy Supplies Journal, then presented the first of two “Making the Grades” – Marketing and financials – based on the printer/copier portions of the business, with todays (Tuesday) based on the copier side of things. Priede offered developments and grades in sales and marketing, products, and technology, and LeCompte countered with financial metrics and grades based on revenue growth and operating profit. Companies covered included Canon, Konica Minolta, Kyocera, Ricoh, Océ, Sharp, Toshiba, and Xerox. A relatively short presentation, it was packed with data and very interesting grading outcomes! Tomorrows promises to be interesting when the eight top printer vendors are examined.

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Opportunity in Adversity: Finding The Way Forward, Willem Appelo, President Global Business and Services Group, Xerox Corporation

Look ma – No slides! The first presentation to go without the usual visual aids, but a carefully prepared pitch nonetheless.

Appelo started with the popular theme of how the economy has affected our industry, and in an optimistic view sees the benefit of the current woes as representing a catalyst to change for the better for the world economy. There’s “no business as usual” anymore and the Xerox exec drew on the company’s own near-death financial crisis of the early decade, eight years ago. He offered examples of how Xerox was forced to change and how those changes ultimately bolstered the company, in ways that are very observable today in the company’s strength (remember it’s relative, given their “C” grade for operating profits, as covered in LeCompte’s prior presentation.)
Appelo pointed to the historical customer focus among the founding leadership of industry stalwarts Ricoh and HP, along with Xerox.

Ownership of document output is typically spread across the organization – Xerox has an assessment that helps customers design a more efficient and less wasteful copying and printing, based on customer needs. Bottom line -- adapt to the customer! Trends include single function to multi-function machines, a “window to the world”. Another example is EIP, Xerox’s open platform for development, which makes it easy for partners to develop tailored solutions for Xerox machines. Lean Six Sigma is the tool Appelo credits for helping transform Xerox.

In the area of “green” Appelo described one example -- Xerox’s efforts to create a
more environmentally sensitive paper. With usage of seven hundred pounds of paper a year, per person, worldwide, and growing at least in some geographies, the making and usage of paper is an opportunity. Xerox developing a “digital paper” that would be more environmentally friendly, by using mechnanical rather than chemical means, using more of the tree and less water in the process.

Partnerships were a recurring theme in the speeceh. Outsourcing of cartridge manufacturing of cartridges to Flextronics, evolving from a simple outsourcing deal to a deep partnership today. The company’s work with UPS and creative applications was mentioned, and also their partnership in document management with IBM was touted. Sourcing around the globe is key – keeping things the same is not an option.

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also published in The Hard Copy Observer, May 2011

For the last month or so, I have had the opportunity to use a prototype Memjet home-and-office printer, first in my downtown office, and then more recently in my home office. While not a rigorous or official, full-blown evaluation or review, I have a number of observations about my printing experiences that I would like to share in my May 2011 Observations column. I will also offer a little marketing advice for the somewhat mysterious almost mythical company that sprang onto the industry scene in 2007 from Down Under (originating from Australia’s Silverbrook Research) with a formidable threat to seriously disrupt the printer industry.

In the full disclosure department, Lyra Research and the Hard Copy Observer were among the earliest in the industry to be on the Memjet story and have followed the company’s somewhat circuitous march to market with great interest ever since. For me personally, prior to be being employed by Lyra, I was an independent consultant and did some marketing work for Memjet in its very early days. Also, like with many other companies in the industry, I have a number of friends and acquaintances currently employed by Memjet.

Getting hold of an evaluation unit, however, was more of a personal favor on Memjet’s part combined with curiosity on my part about what it would be like to have this oft-discussed super-fast printer at my immediate disposal. What would I think, and would the printer’s performance change my behavior relative to what I print and when? As far as the charge for the marketing advice to Memjet and its go-to-market partners, this time—strictly gratis!

I received the previously used prototype unit via the Eagle, Idaho-based Home and Office division of the San Diego-based company, and this machine already showed 35,000 pages printed on its “odometer,” which came via standardized out-sourced reliability testing prior to my use. So my unit is a bit of a scratch-and-dent model, which I found I appreciated—much like I have learned with buying a car, as I have often remarked that I would rather start with a year-old, “pre-dinged” model because that first little flaw incurred in a brand new car can be so emotionally painful.

Putting Print Speed into Historical Perspective

Memjet’s original promise of delivering 60 ppm color printing to the home and office for $200-$300 has morphed into a machine that offers the same breakthrough speed but at a price point that is multiplied by a factor of two or more. Note that Memjet has not identified any U.S. partners, and of the firm’s Asian and European partners, only Lenovo in China has published target per-page costs of 0.1-0.15 Yuan (2 cents) for monochrome and 0.3-0.5 Yuan (6 cents) for color, compared to color laser printing costs of 10-15 cents for a color page and 1-2 cents for a monochrome page. Early indications on hardware pricing for the Lenovo RJ600N point to a range of $770 to $925 in U.S. dollars.

During the last decades, unlike in semiconductor-driven areas, like computer memory and processors, printers and their technology curves have remained somewhat constrained by factors in the physical world. The speed of drying ink and melting toner and the physics of moving paper comprise some of the factors that work against a pure Moore’s Law progression among printers. So we do not see the many-orders-of-magnitude changes we have seen over the decades with processors or storage. Nevertheless, if Memjet can deliver on even its revised price/performance goal, the impact to the home- and office-printing market could be significant.

Handouts for university classes are potentially a great application for 
the speed and economy of Memjet-based ink jet printers

My Positive Experience

Unquestionably, having the Memjet printer has increased my interest in printing. I have enjoyed printing full-page photos (and confirmed the company’s advice that media type is a huge determinant of photo quality, as with every other product in the industry). I print articles and book sections for my teaching work and have also had good results printing from my Apple iPad using EuroSmartz Ltd’s Print n Share (see “Observations: Interview with Ian Schenkel of EuroSmartz”).

However, my most positive or at least most dramatically positive experience with the printer came one morning a few weeks ago. I was running behind, getting my final presentation materials in place for a university-based event where I was lecturing on using social media for marketing. My handouts, based on my slides, were the last thing I needed on the morning of the presentation, and I was at least 30 minutes behind schedule, with a colleague depending on me for a ride. I needed 60 pages of color (mixed text and graphics), and I had only minutes to print the pages before leaving my home office and making my appointed time for the pick-up. Quite frankly, this seemingly risky schedule, was not really so accidental, as I knew I had a very fast printer that I could use. And so, within the time it took to click “OK” on the print dialog box, which issued the command to print the 60 pages, and move from my upstairs laptop to my downstairs office printer, those 60 printed sheets were peacefully waiting for me on the Memjet printer’s output tray.

On a side note, the prototype printer I am testing is not always quiet, as the ink-management system involved in keeping the page-wide print head ready to go at 60 ppm requires quite a bit of hydraulic magic—even seemingly on an intermittent basis while idle—but the company assures me they are working to minimize the noise. Size-wise, all the fluid and paper movement clearly requires an industrial design that at first look seems quite a bit larger and more substantial than the commonly seen low-end ink jets and lasers of today. A closer look, however, reveals this size issue to be more in reference to the printer’s overall mass (height, weight, and depth) rather than its footprint. In terms of desk space, my HP Officejet Pro 8000 takes up nearly the same square footage. Finally, although supplies cost are not my concern at this point, the company has stated that the average cost per page will be half that of a typical ink jet or color laser printer (see above for target per-page costs of the Memjet-based Lenovo RJ600N).

Print speed demos via video have created excitement around Memjets print speed capabilities

Of course, speed is not the only consideration, but it is the main focus of Memjet’s promotional materials (see below). The printer’s 60 ppm performance, whether viewed via the company’s many videos, but especially in person, is almost other-worldly. However, given that HP OfficeJets (including one I have been using for several years now) have a rating of 30+ ppm, is a doubling of that speed combined with a potential halving of the supplies cost going to transform the home- and office-printing market? My answer is a big “yes,” at least for situations like the morning when I needed a big stack of handouts in a hurry. Granted the raw (theoretical) speed comparisons indicate only a minute’s time-savings, but setup and processing time and the variability of print speed among competitive printers based on the content of the page should also be factored into the equation. The Memjet printer roars through all pages with the same gusto, and as can be seen from the comparison videos, others do not. 

Memjets current tag line and branding emphasize the breakthrough print speed of the firms technology

The reality, based on my recent experience with the Memjet and in the past with myriad inkjet and laser printers from other suppliers, is that the 2:1 theoretical performance improvement could actually net out at something more like 10:1. And what if I needed 600 pages and not just 60 pages? Regardless, the fact that the necessary pages appeared almost instantly made a big difference in my day.

Marketing Basics—Benefits Versus Features

Thus we near the end of my Memjet observations, and I cannot end without offering a little marketing, specifically product positioning, advice that applies to Memjet and its partners, and equally well to everyone else in our industry: Understand and stress the unique benefits of your technology, target those customers who will appreciate and reward you for those benefits, and try to remember the features are just enablers to deliver those benefits.

Regular readers will know I devote quite a bit of time and energy these days to teaching university-level marketing, and in actuality, devote even more time and energy in thinking about marketing and related subjects. After consulting the experts, here’s what perhaps the world’s most consulted marketing text (Kotler & Armstrong, 9th edition, “Marketing: An Introduction,” 2009, Prentice-Hall) says about putting benefits into market positioning.

“[Positioning based on] Benefits Sought: A powerful form of segmentation is to group buyers according to the different benefits that they seek from the product. Benefit segmentation requires finding the major benefits people look for in the product class, the kinds of people who look for each benefit, and the major brands that deliver each benefit.”

So Memjet (and partners), who are the buyers that value knocking out reasonably large volumes of color pages in rapid fashion? The team at Memjet includes marketing pros who are top-notch thinkers and practitioners, so none of this analysis is new to them, but I cannot resist reinforcing the idea that finding enough of those users and communicating the benefits of print speed will go a long way toward success for Memjet and its go-to-market partners – by no means an easy challenge, but one worth pursuing nonetheless.

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by Jim Lyons

The Hard Copy Observer, December 2007

Amazons Kindle Stirs Up E-book (and Printing and Imaging) Excitement

As readers of the year-end issue of The Hard Copy Observer [where this column appears in print form] can no doubt attest, 2007 has been a very big year for the printing and imaging business. The promises of newcomers like Zink and Memjet and new product categories as represented by HPs Edgeline have been exciting to cover. Innovation outside the purely technical, including the formidable challenge to the razor-and-blades business model mounted by players like Kodak and Xerox, have made 2007 a year to remember. Nonetheless, the pinnacle of tech-industry buzz seems to still be reserved for products and services tangential to printing (at best), with Amazons Kindle, introduced on November 19, as the latest example.

Earlier this year I was quoted in a Printer Pundit interview on the DataBazaar blog as describing our industry as "quietly going about our business", a comment that was stated frankly but also with a spirit of pride. Yes, we do great things in this business and have hundreds of millions, if not billions, of satisfied customers, but we are the strong, silent types, right? But truth be told, this stealth approach can sting a little in vain moments—after all, among all the 2007 announcements mentioned in my opening paragraph, only Kindle graced the cover of Newsweek magazine.

So, in an unapologetic attention-getting move, I am claiming the Kindle as one of our industrys own. Electronic book readers are not new after all, and many of our businesss leading companies have covered, discussed, and even invested in these devices. Since at least 2000, the Observer has covered various E-book readers and related products (e.g. see Observer 3/00). As one of the principal ways we use printed paper in our society, books are of great interest to the printer-oriented world, and in Kindles case, as noted in its voluminous press coverage in both the traditional and "new" media, the content solution offered by Amazon goes beyond books to include a selection of newspapers, magazines, and blogs. Even considering e-books primarily as a threat that have the potential to someday supplant the need for the physically printed page, these devices are undeniably an important developing area in the broader "information collection, dissemination, and consumption" industry, and serve as a caution to avoid falling victim to marketing myopia and think about ourselves as "just being in the printer industry."

And, in keeping with my ongoing theme of marketing successes and failures, I would like to point to what I believe Amazon has done right on the "product" side. For all the attention it has garnered, much of the Kindle commentary has been rather negative, starting with its retro (to be kind) industrial design. On the positive side, Amazon has put together an innovative solution. We learned from the iPod/iTunes example earlier this decade that cracking an industry, the portable digital music industry in Apple’s case, was not just about the gadget. As the E-book is about so much more than the reader itself, there are definitely some parallels.

The Kindle solution could not do better than Amazons e-commerce infrastructure for its online bookstore, and the Whispernet connectivity seems to solve the Wi-Fi hot-spot problem I have encountered with my iPhone (and its AT&T Edge network backup that has been roundly criticized as inadequate). The resulting stand-alone nature of the Kindle (no PC required) is a big plus in terms of usability and convenience compared to 2006’s Sony Reader. Closer to our printing world, Amazon had the foresight to include the handling of user-generated documents like PDFs and Word files along with books, newspapers, magazines, and blogs, which are added to the Kindles memory via e-mail. (Conversely, the Kindles inability to print snippets of books and other files is one of the knocks on it that reviewers have highlighted.)

By staying away from engineering a multi-purpose laptop-PC wannabe, Amazon seems to have nailed the design for a dedicated reading appliance that includes a monochrome, e-ink-based display and limited graphics but weighs in at well below one pound (10.3 ounces, to be exact). Of course, behavioral patterns will have a huge impact on market success in the end, and the battle still rages between dedicated (and thus multiple) specialized devices and convenient (but compromised) all-in-one machines.

To complete the marketing analysis, the Kindle has a fairly reasonable pricing scheme, including an acceptable price for the machine and aggressive prices for best sellers (though customers may soon tire of the nickel-and-dime scheme of paying for blogs and e-mail). The Kindle also benefits from the ultimate "place", i.e. distribution channel, as Amazon is one the one of the world’s most heavily trafficked and most popular e-commerce sites. So with the great promotion (including the PR blitz) still ongoing and attention to product, make that solution, details, I predict success for Amazon’s Kindle, and welcome it to our larger printing and imaging family!

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Per my post yesterday ("Entrepreneur Symposium Tonight"), I am pleased to report that the event came off like clockwork, and made me very proud to be associated with both the University of Phoenix Idaho campus as well as a member of the Boise-area entrepreneurial community.

The outstanding panelists, along with an audience which was a mix of University of Phoenix staff, faculty and students, and also a large variety of business community members, made this a very stimulating evening.

My personal thanks to panelists: the serial entrepreneurs (Faisal Shah, Steve Hodges, Aaron Stanton) and up-and-coming entrepreneurs (Lee Flinn, Alina Vaynberg and Peter Vomocil), and panel moderator and event organizer Dr. Krissa Wrigley, of the University of Phoenix.

And now? So much to think about!!!

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