8 replies to this topic

[BuffaloHelp]

The cost of ink cartridges these days are just too much for poor economy. And even when you can pay for $15-$20 per cartridge you still wonder is it really that efficient?

Introducing Prepeat, a greener printer for today's troubled climates



This printer's special thermal head can render images (text, graphics) on a specialized plastic paper that requires no ink or toner cartridges. The reason for specialized plastic paper is because this printer can reuse the same paper 1000 times writing and rewriting (erase and then print). The ultimate green, environmentally friendly solution for today!

But it will be heavy on your wallet for now. The printer is estimated to be around $5500 USD with plastic papers as much as $4 dollars a sheet. Like all new technology the price, hopefully, will come down. But if there's not enough demand for it who knows.

[mm22]

And will the "paper" be able to support writing on it with a pen/pencil/marker? The way I see it one of the reasons we still print is that we like to sketch things, circle words, etc on the sheets of papers we print on. So if that possibility isn't there it might not be so useful to have a reusable paper. If on the other hand the plastic paper can be written on, and then completely erased (i.e. the printed part and the handwritten part) before feeding it to the printer again, then it is a viable solution and a great idea. Personally I try to take as much as possible of my notes in electronic format (it is also much easier to archive them and search through them), but for quick drafts and jotting down ideas sometimes paper is still the way to go.

[Zagubadu·]

My dad is currently paying almost thirty dollars for a cartridge of ink for his printer. But, the last time we bought ink was at Circuit City and they went out of business so hopefully at maybe Best Buy its not as costly. That seems really cool to bad it costs so much. True though just about every piece of new technology when it first comes out has outlandish prices. Hope it comes down. I also want to know if you can write on it normally with pencils / pens or any other writing utensil. If your unable to do that well this is kind of useless. I believe this kind of technology will be used in schools and such so it will need to be written on normally. Its just when I think of "plastic" you don't really think you'll be able to write on it easily. Still cool nonetheless.

[Todd200]

I think it's great the people are going green! Someone would have to do the math about how long one of these things last. Then add in how much paper and ink you use in that time. Then see if it ever makes the price even or less than to the regular printer. Bottom line: will it ever pay for it self or even close?

[Zagubadu·]

Todd200, on Feb 5 2010, 03:04 PM, said:

I think it's great the people are going green! Someone would have to do the math about how long one of these things last. Then add in how much paper and ink you use in that time. Then see if it ever makes the price even or less than to the regular printer. Bottom line: will it ever pay for it self or even close?

If the paper stays at the price it will take a while for it to pay for itself. I don't like math but I think ink costing around twenty bucks now it could pay for itself. I just don't think it would be in your life time. It is still pretty cool. Then again depending on what your using it for the paper is reusable. So hell maybe it could if you use the same paper over and over again. That's the part I think is the coolest the fact that you can erase.

[sheepdog]

While I am certainly not good at math, I really am not getting how this would be a "green" improvement. Where does plastic come from? We know paper is made from trees, and is a renewable recourse. Ink can come from soy beans, which in my humble opinion is an excellent way to use them, they certainly aren't fit to eat. And when you print something you generally want to keep it as a permanent record, so why would you be erasing it to copy over? When the plastic sheet was done with what would become of it? Plastic does not biodegrade like paper does.

I hope this doesn't end up like those stupid energy saving light bulbs they came out with awhile back that were supposed to be so good for the environment that used TOXIC mercury in them. Which is more of a serious health threat and a danger to the environment than what we were using.

[anwiii]

that's an interesting piece of technology there. i doubt i will ever have anough money to afford one though. i'm pretty cheap when it comes to my printing needs. i buy printers where the ink cartridges are already included in the price. when i run out of ink, i buy a whole new printer because it's actually cheaper depending on what you buy and i have exclusively stuck with lexmark for years.

now although plastic isn't biodegradable like paper, you can use the sheet 1000 times over so you really wouldn't be producing a lot of those sheets. i have to wonder how convenient it would be though since when you copy something, it's usually for important records and information that one would save and not want to copy over so i am curious what use this printer would be for convenient printing especially when printouts from printers are going to be as absolete as the microfiche soon when comptuer technology advances since all we would need in the future would be a scanner.

[puneye]

The technology growing day by day and I really think Inkless printer is great for use. But it costs huge this times $4 per sheet and $5500 for printer (this could buy a house here). As it can print only 1000 times so what to do plastic paper after 1000 times. It is difficult to destroy for healthy environment. As our papers easily can reuse.

[Quatrux]

I don't really understand this technology and the point of it, everyone who needs to print on a paper needs to save those printings, I mean big companies, universities and etc. They print different documents and put them in a folder and archive it somewhere that it would be easy to find them..

So lets say that plastic paper is like a CD-RW, which you can print, show to someone and erase ant use it again.. In my work this is done using PDF and DOC format, firstly you use a system, where you can put files, usually PDF and DOC, if everything is alright, you print the documents and put them to a folder and categorize it for future, if some day you'll need to look at the documents.

I don't really see any benefit for this or maybe I'm missing something? On a computer to can use tools like Primo PDF, to print to PDF file and show it to friends, colleagues or something like that? and no need for any paper, it's only good for personal use, the same as an DVD/CD-RW disks, because after erasing and writing something new, you loose data you had on that disk, same with this plastic paper? And one sheet of that paper is so expensive?

Also I like the post of sheepdog, that it's made out of plastic and paper out of trees.