From News-Press.com:

vLittle did Joe Heidecker know that an after-school job would turn into a lifetime love.

But more than 70 years later, he feels the same thrill he did when he got his first handful of postcard printing.

“When I was 10 years old I used to scrub floors and cut grass for a woman and she paid me 10 cents and 10 postcards,” says the 86-year-old North Fort Myers resident. “After about a year, I had a little collection.”

That “little collection” is now a major hobby that fills shoe boxes, albums and whole cabinets. And even though one might assume he’s had his fill, Heidecker plans to attend the upcoming collectible post card printing show Jan. 14 in Fort Myers.

Organized by Sarasota resident Peter Cleaves, the show will offer something for all levels of collectors, Cleaves says, whether they’re just getting into the hobby or serious connoisseurs.

In addition to card printing on display, there will also be many for sale — and postcards can be a nice investment. Cards that once sold for a penny can fetch tens of thousands of dollars, Heidecker says.

Of course, most enthusiasts simply enjoy them for the window on the past they provide. In Florida, especially, old postcards are some of the only historical images that still exist, says Cleaves — especially in this region, where the waterfronts have undergone huge changes.

The book “Fort Myers in Vintage Postcards” by Gregg Turner bears witness to that fact.

Available at area printing companies, bookstores and online, it includes long-lost looks at the City of Palms — from pineapples piled high at a downtown grocer to views of the now-razed Royal Palm Hotel — images that helped shape the town’s image.

As Turner writes in his introduction, “It is not known when the first postcard appeared about Fort Myers, nor what the subject matter was, who produced or sold it, to whom it was sent or what the postcard may have cost. But what is known is this: that the golden age of postcards started around the very time that Fort Myers was shedding its image as a frontier cow town.”

A Labour council was at the  centre of a race row last night after custom printing a leaflet print targeted at  Muslims that invoked the name  of Allah in urging them to stop  littering the streets.

Bradford City Council was accused of inciting racial hatred by publishing  leaflets that showed rubbish-strewn pavements – and appeared to place the blame on Muslims.

The pamphlet, titled ‘Be proud of your environment’, used the Koran to lecture them about breaking the law and making a ‘horrible’ mess of the city.

It was aimed at an area of the city boasting a high concentration of Muslims and which the council says has a problem with messy streets.

‘The pamphlet said: ‘Muslims are able to pray anywhere in the world?.?.?. we always have to keep our place of prayer clean – so why not start with the streets and neighbourhoods that we live in?’

Conservative councillor John Robertshaw said he was ‘mortified’ to discover 16,000  of the ‘full-colour, glossy’ leaflets from the printing services provider.

‘If the flyer printing had gone out, the council could have been charged with inciting racial hatred, suggesting that litter dropping is exclusive to, or more  prevalent among, Muslims,’ he said.

‘A leaflet encouraging people not  to drop litter, specifically targeting believers in Islam, is so outrageous that I still find it hard to believe that this has happened.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2063766/BINNED-Anti-litter-poster-insult-Muslims.html#ixzz1fEIF1p2O

How do you decide which technology and function level are best for your business? How much can you afford to spend? Take time to think about what you print, how much you print, what are your business printing habits,  and whether you need extra features or room to grow. Remember to check the cost of consumables to make sure your ongoing costs will be bearable.

The Cheapest Printer for the Job

Of course, you don’t want to spend more than you can afford. But before you commit to buying the cheapest printer you can find, let’s examine what “cheap” really means, and why the cheapest printer may not be the most affordable printer.

The business model used by most printer vendors works like this: The lower the initial price tag of the printer, the higher the cost of replacement ink or toner. As a result, the only person likely to benefit from a low-cost printer with high-cost consumables is someone who prints very little, and thus stretches out the time between replacements as long as possible. Unless you are among the sparsely printing few, you would do well to check a printer’s ink or toner costs before you buy (specially if you do most of your printing services in-house), to avoid budget-busting surprises later. For a how-to, consult this guide to doing the math to determine ink and toner costs.

Inkjet, Laser, LED, Solid Ink…They’re All Good (or Better)

Choosing a machine for its underlying technology is less problematic than it used to be, as differences in speed and output quality have narrowed. If you normally print plain text–letters, spreadsheets, documentation–with nothing more graphic than a simple logo or a few straight lines, a monochrome laser or LED printer should suit you just fine. The consumables for these printers tend to be the cheapest around, too. See our Top 10 Monochrome Laser Printers chart for a ranked list of our top-rated models.

Color laser or LED printers may seem like the natural evolutionary step forward from monochrome models, but the transition is happening slowly. One major reason is that color printers cost more to buy and resupply; as a result, businesses must manage access to color printing to avoid overuse or misuse. Another significant factor is photo quality: Most laser and LED printers struggle to print smooth-looking images. Check out our current favorites on our Top 10 Color Laser Printers chart.

Superior photo quality is only one reason that inkjet printers are worth considering for many businesses. Various office-ready models can deliver competitive speed and print quality, too (you can print labels and tri fold brochures with super quality in them). Media flexibility is another selling point, as some models can print on specially designed canvas, iron-on transfers, or even CD/DVD media. Check out our top-ranked models among single-function inkjet printers and multifunction inkjet printers.

Solid-ink printers, available only through Xerox, use a unique technology that melts waxlike blocks and then squirts the semiliquid fluid through tiny holes in a printhead onto paper. Unlike toner and ink cartridges, the ink blocks use no plastic packaging, and therefore impose less of a shipping, storage, and environmental burden. Photo quality is about the same for a solid-ink printer as for a laser or LED printer: adequate, but not quite as good as for a typical inkjet. This technology is worth considering for a small office or department that wants something faster than an inkjet, but less complicated than a color laser or LED printer. Because solid-ink printers compete most closely with lasers and LEDs, you’ll find our top picks in this color laser chart.

Fit the Printer to Your Office Size and Volume

How much output do you need your printer to print–a few sheets a day, dozens, or hundreds? Do you do poscard printing for your customers and staff? Are you the only person who’ll be printing, or will your coworkers use the machine, too? To avoid getting stuck with too much printer or too little, you have to figure out which features are relevant to your needs.

Choose a personal inkjet or laser printer only if you’ll be its only user and you plan not to print more than a few dozen pages a day. The machine will be slow; it will lack useful features such as automatic duplexing (two-sided printing); and it will likely have pricier consumables. USB is the typical connection type, but wireless is a forward-looking feature worth considering.

For a printer that multiple people will use, ethernet networkability is essential for easy sharing. Wireless networkability can be useful with smaller workgroups, but its speed and reliability tend to vary.

A simple way to evaluate the print volume you need is to ask yourself how often you want to refill the paper tray. For most people the answer probably is no more than once a day, if that. Track your paper usage for a few days and look for a printer whose standard input tray exceeds that average daily volume by a smaller or greater margin, depending on how often you want to refill the tray. Another rule of thumb is to keep your volume well below the printer’s specified monthly duty cycle. This number represents a maximum stress-test level, rather than what the printer can handle comfortably on an ongoing basis.

How Much Speed Do You Need?

Your anticipated print volume also helps determine how much engine speed, processing power, and memory your printer should have.

It’s wise to take engine-speed specifications with a grain of salt, as they may not reflect your usage pattern. Nevertheless, they provide some indication of what the printer could accomplish under optimal conditions. A printer with an print output speed of less than 20 pages per minute will probably be pretty slow; a range of 20 ppm to 40 ppm is adequate for most offices; and a speed greater than 40 ppm is ready for higher-volume use (and such printers are priced accordingly).

Host-based printers lack their own image-processing power. Instead, they depend on a connected PC to handle the job for them. For any printer that has a dedicated processor, the higher the megahertz (MHz), the faster the machine can receive, interpret, and print a job.

The number and size of expected jobs will dictate how much memory your printer should have. A typical amount for a business printer can be anywhere from 64MB to 256MB. Higher-end models have room for expansion.

Paper-Handling Choices Abound

The printer you choose should offer the paper-handling capabilities appropriate for what you do now–and it should be expandable to accommodate subsequent growth. Some entry-level business printers have a standard input capacity of as little as 150 pages, which may suffice for a small, low-volume workgroup; unfortunately, most such models aren’t expandable. The more typical minimum capacity is 250 pages. Some printers provide a slot or secondary tray for feeding envelopes and other thicker media, or let you add input trays or feeders at additional cost. If you feed more than one kind or size of media regularly, having a dedicated tray for each type will save you time and aggravation.

Automatic duplexing (two-sided printing) is a feature to seek on your next printer. Using this feature can slow print jobs somewhat, but the money and trees you’ll save by halving your paper usage are likely to outweigh any time lost.

Is there a kind of document that you’d like to be able to print but currently can’t? Modern printers can handle envelopes, labels, and index cards virtually trouble-free, thanks to straighter paper paths on most inkjets and some lasers, and to manual-feed slots that bypass the toughest turns on others. High-end laser printers even offer special feeding and finishing units for collating, stapling, and stacking envelopes or postcards. A wide-format printer lets you print in a larger size than the typical letter (8.5 by 11 inches) and legal (8.5 by 14 inches) dimensions.

Some of the benefits of using digital large printing are shown below:

• Saving Time:

By going directly from your computer to the printed publication and printing exactly the quantity you want.

• Increase accuracy:

Everytime you print you can update your documents.

• Customize documents:

Your marketing communications go from standardized and impersonal to targeted and personal.

• Print on demand:

Whan you need something you just print it.

• Distribute and print:

Print your documents virtually  anywhere through a worldwide network of digital printers (like 4over4.com).

• Achieve high quality:

The quality of digitally printed documents is defined and evaluated not only from printing but also by the overall quality of the final product’s appearance.

• Increase flexibility:

You could select papers and formats that suit your applications and appeal most to your audience.

• Increase effectiveness:

You’ll experience a great increase in sales, marketing  and profits especially when the printing company produces new and unique printed materials.

• Realize added value:

In terms of quality, convenience and overall value-added, it is a fresh and a whole new way to communicate.

Digital large printing isn’t just a way to print; it’s a revolution in effective communication and marketing.

Source: http://tusaw.com/2010/10/05/colleen-davis-28/

4OVER4.COM is an online printing firm that practices GREEN PRINTING. They have recently announced their “100,000 Trees for Humanity” initiative which is their commitment to plant 100,000 trees. Please spread the word. One tree will be planted for every link back to www.4over4.com. I am showing my support by creating this link to http://www.4over4.com

Find out more at http://TREES.4OVER4.COM

A great digital printing on any of your advertising products will help you to get more possible customers than usual. Using great quality materials and great quality printing method you will get fabulous advertising products to your campaign. You also need to remember that you need to choose a great design for your campaign, all these topics will contribute to raise your sales.

With 4over4.com you will get the best online printing service for your prints, all you need to do is to have a great design and 4over4.com will make it real for you.

Be part of the change and use 4over4.com’s green printing service.

You have a huge network full color laser printer in your office, its quality is the best you have seen. You need to do some printouts for your company. Some brochures for the sales force, presentation cards for the tech support team and some presentation folders for general use.

Can you print all this in your network laser printer? Maybe. Will you get, if you choose to do it, good quality prints? Probably.

They why not? Simple. Because even though your printer MAY deliver acceptable printouts for brochures, fliers, business cards and such, it will not deliver the high quality you could get if you choose to go for a Digital Printing Service. 

This services will not only help you get the kind of printouts you look for in terms of quality, gloss and delivery time. They will also help you choose the right kind of paper for the job. Remember that in your office printer you have an every-day kind of paper. A Printing Service will have several types of paper to choose from depending not only of the use you want (brochure, presentation folder) but also the right card stock (material used to make presentation cards that is more thick than normal bond paper) to print not only your business cards but also rack cards, rip cards and so on.

They also have professional equipment to provide full color prints on both sides of the paper simultaneously, this will get the work done in half the time it would normally take. This is also very important because for this kind of printers the correct choice of paper is a must. Since it’ll be printing on both sides of the paper then the choice of a paper that has the right ink absorbing capabilities is crucial not only because it will keep the paper from ending soaked but also because it will ensure that the proper gloss level is achieved.

Now you see why you should go to a Professional Printing Service when it comes to print your office marketing supplies.