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Get ready for innovation in printing:
HP said the acquisition would help it to "disrupt and reinvent" the $55bn copier industry, a segment that "hasn't innovated in decades". It is buying a big printing presence in Asia, as well as Samsung's laser printing technology and patents. The deal comes days after HP's sister company sold its software business to rising UK tech champion Micro Focus.
[...] Samsung's printer business made $1.4bn in revenue last year and includes more than 6,500 printing patents as well as nearly 1,300 staff with expertise in laser printer technology. Meanwhile, shares in Samsung fell 9% after it urged customers to hand in Galaxy Note 7 phones as they risk exploding.
Also at TechCrunch and Bloomberg.
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HP to Buy Samsung's Printer Business for $1.05 Billion
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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Graduate life: It's not just a job. It's an indenture.
(Score: 1) by sendafiolorkar on Monday September 12 2016, @04:37PM
Do we really need paper?
Email, servers, data redundancy, smartphones, tablets, cloud(other people's computer)...
Fridges, toilets, seats, cars, waste bins... every freaking thing has a screen now.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by dyingtolive on Monday September 12 2016, @04:44PM
In the modern world of DRM and takedown notices (and even just the "here today gone tomorrow" nature of the internet), I'd argue that the usage of paper has become less frequent, but more essential.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 4, Informative) by bob_super on Monday September 12 2016, @05:12PM
We need paper because I can't find a cheap e-ink display which would show lots of information at once.
Gimme a tablet with a 15+" e-ink screen, I don't care if it weighs a kilogram. I just don't like to scroll all the time.
(comment typed on a 40" 4K screen)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Monday September 12 2016, @05:22PM
I'm sad to report the corporate world is still full of "print this out of program A and type it into program B" manual labor. Also at work, training classes and formal presentations still signal how important they are by printing out the powerpoints that'll be tossed out at the end of the meeting. The copier/scanner part of the multifunction device gets used a lot for expense reports, try to scan some useless little piece of thermal paper to get reimbursed for a business lunch or whatever.
At home and at work in areas under my control, I no longer use paper. Its too convenient to carry piles of engineering datasheets or manuals or tutorials on my tablet or phone.
Medical and Medical Insurance racket still rely on FAX. That's incredibly inconvenient. I have to call in favors at corp HQ to email edited pdf files to someone to print them out and feed them thru the only legacy fax machine left in the building so someone on the other side at the insurance company can receive the FAX and scan them in and email them internally for OCR and processing. Sometimes its quicker and less painful to print out and postal snail-mail.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 12 2016, @06:48PM
Government agencies and military use faxes heavily too. Sometimes these are "virtualized" (fax-to-email etc) but not usually.
When I was doing major shipping 2-3 years ago, still needed printing for Bills of Lading and stuff. It needs to be something that can travel with the driver, and when the drivers are often under short-term contracts, need something cheap and disposable. The system that spit these out required dot-matrix printers that were hard to find parts for though; it was working fine since the 80s, and working, so never replaced.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 13 2016, @01:59AM
Government and financial forms should be exclusively digital because the ratio of bytes to information is minuscule.
Contrast that with a book that's good enough to reward multiple close readings. Paper is your best bet, unless you're 26 or under and still have hawk eyes.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 12 2016, @06:15PM
Do we really need paper?
Email, servers, data redundancy, smartphones, tablets, cloud(other people's computer)...
Fridges, toilets, seats, cars, waste bins... every freaking thing has a screen now.
The quote I like is that the paperless office is like the paperless bathroom. It's possible, but far more trouble and far messier than you think.
From a philosophical point of view, I don't like the fact that if everybody is electronic then it's too easy for "them" (whoever "they" happen to be) to have ownership instead of you. For example, look what happened with Amazon and the book "1984", where they remotely removed it from all Kindles.
Also, when I'm traveling, I'd rather have some paper printouts which cost a couple of dollars than a multi-hundred-dollar device. If I forget a draft of a paper on a plane I get a bit annoyed. If I lose my $300 laptop then my trip is ruined.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday September 12 2016, @06:51PM
I don't know about you, but if I read lengthy text on a screen my eyes start hurting. If anything over a page long it important, I print it so I can read it.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Monday September 12 2016, @07:57PM
My pet peeve is that computers are inherently insecure.
Imagine for a moment that you wanted to design a secure computer. Where would you store your correctness proofs?
The solution I am leaning towards is microfiche. It is compact (260 pages per post-card sized sheet), has a long shelf-life (250 years when properly stored), and most importantly: it can be read using optical equipment (meaning I don't need to trust a black-box for reading my correctness proofs).
(Score: 2) by driverless on Tuesday September 13 2016, @07:19AM
Do we really need paper? [...], toilets, [...]... every freaking thing has a screen now.
Tried wiping my arse with the screen once. We definitely still need paper.