Pixels and Printing
Daniel reports that now, to combat this, a start-up based out of Israel called Preton, Ltd., is out to solve this problem. The company has produced a software agent which is downloadable to a either a computer or server, which will actually trim the pixels you don’t need from the images and text in any document, reducing the cost incurred by the user. Their CEO, Mr. Ori Eizenberg says that the overall print quality does not suffer because of the software and the actions it performs.
Preton, is pronounced PRE-tone, according to the article because of its “pre-toner technological intervention”. Mr. Eizenberg originally founded the company about 7 years about back in 2005 and it is a very small operation. The chief technology officer (CTO) is Yishai Brafman, and the vice president of technology support is Boaz Katz. Based of out Tel Aviv, the company has 13 employees there, five more in Hong Kong, two in Japan, and one U.S. office which is located in Boca Raton, FL which has one.
When he first began Preton, he spoke to some large firms and asked them all if they knew how much of their money was being spent on printing. He says that none of the people he talked to knew specifics, except that it was a high cost for them. Eizenberg noted the same adage about printing that many do. That is that the true profit for OEMs comes from the ink and not the printers themselves.
Daniel points out that research done by analysts at Gartner, Inc. show that ink and toner make up 50% or more of total cost of operation in printing. Further, in the report the authors conclude that if the density of the ink and toner is reduced by somewhere between 10 and 20%, companies could save as much as $30 per user.
Here’s how Eizenberg’s solution can help you out. According to him, computer pixels are actually squares, but because printers cannot render the squares on paper, their respective drivers convert them to circles. The problem with creating the circles is that they are also made to overlap each other which creates the over-abundance of pixels and wastes ink.
