Whitepapers

Overview:

• Trend: The computer industry is moving to a 4,096 (4K) byte sector size for hard disk drives—called Advanced Format. Some older operating systems that are still in use today expect a legacy 512- byte sector size, and thus need a bridge to the new sector size.
• Today’s Solution: Support the emulation of 512-byte sectors within the new larger 4K sector by allowing the 4,096 byte sector to be transferred as eight 512-byte blocks of data.
• Future Solution: Operating systems will transfer 4K data blocks that match the 4K native sector size on the disk.

Some Historical Information:

In 2006, the storage industry celebrated the 50th anniversary of the first hard disk drive (HDD), the IBM RAMAC. The RAMAC HDD had a capacity of 5 megabytes (approximately 5,000,000 bytes); it was the size of a side-by-side refrigerator and weighed hundreds of pounds. The first RAMAC HDD used 50, 24-inch disks to achieve 5 megabytes of storage capacity. All for a price that only the largest companies could afford.

Compare the RAMAC to today’s disk drives – consumers routinely require 500 gigabytes (100,000 times the RAMAC capacity) in a 2.5-inch form factor that fits in the palm of your hand, weighs about 4 ounces and is readily available in electronic stores for less than $100.

Introduction to Page Description Languages (PDLs)

A non technical explanation of PostScript, HP GL/2, GARO and other page description languages

If you have ever clicked the “print” button on your computer you’ve used a page description language (PDL). If you’ve worked in the digital printing industry, or bought a printer at anytime in the past 20 years, the names of the languages may even sound familiar – PostScript, HP GL/2, PCL, GARO. Yet, unless you are a programmer writing code for print applications or an administrator who manages the printers on a network you are unlikely to have had a reason to give page description languages much thought. Page description language technology is so universal and so reliable that most people are completely unaware that they are using it every time they click print.

So why write a white paper about PDLs now? Because one of the oldest and best known page description languages –- PostScript – is maturing and is slowly being replaced by new technologies. Unlike some technologies that come and go quickly, PostScript has been around for a long time. Some of your large-format printing customers may be reluctant to give it up – even if they don’t need it anymore – just because it is familiar. At the same time because PostScript is so deeply entrenched in digital printing technology (and remains useful for certain applications) it will probably be around for a long time to come. During this period of technology transition, some of your customers are going to look to you for advice. This white paper is therefore intended to help you gain a better understanding of what PDL’s are so that you can feel more comfortable discussing this topic with your customers. Please note however, this is not a technical guide to PDLs, many of the technical concepts are greatly simplified here in hopes of presenting this technology in terms hat can be easily understood by a wide variety of people and customers.

A White Paper

by John Capurso, Vice President of Marketing, Visioneer Inc., a Xerox® Trademark Licensee

Despite the trend toward everything digital, paper has not gone away. And while we have great technology in our offices to capture, organize and share the information we possess in paper form, finding a solution for reliable document capture while on the road has been difficult. A portable scanner is an attractive option with the functionality of being able to scan almost anything, anywhere that you have your laptop. But what if you don’t have a laptop with you, or don’t want to carry it? Or you do, but you are somewhere with no Internet connection and you desperately need to send your scanned file to someone else? You could take a picture with your cell phone, but is that really the best solution?

When given the choice to capture a document with a portable scanner or a phone camera, there are many issues to consider. And many people would simply say, “but, my phone is with me all the time, I’ll just take a picture of the document, it’s good enough.” Maybe...

Portable scanners have taken a tremendous functional leap recently with the introduction of the Xerox® Mobile Scanner. This mobile scanner represents a new category of portable scanners that “talks” to mobile phones and pads. These battery-powered, cordless scanners don’t need a computer to operate. They are simple to use, create a PDF or JPG file of your scanned page and store it on a USB stick or SD memory card. To make it even more impressive, the Xerox Mobile Scanner comes with a wireless SD card that transmits the scanned files to your computer, phone, pad or the cloud over any Wi-Fi network. So now it is possible to not only scan without a computer, but also transfer the files to your phone and share them anywhere. Let’s consider the options and consequences of all this.

Introduction

In schools everywhere, teachers are continuouly asked to do more testing, assessment, and reporting. At the same time, student-to-teacher ratios are increasing, and manual grading can't keep up with demand. Automation helps, but current solutions for automatically grading test forms require expensive specialized equipment and pre-printed forms that must be kept in inventory. IT staff are stretched, and specialized systems require extra maintenance time that isn't always available. Also, as more data is kept electronically and online, privacy and security remain principal concerns.

LexmarkTM Hosted Testing and Grading is a cost-effective solution that automates testing, reporting, and assessment using only Internet-connected Lexmark multifunction printers (MFPs), which, unlike specialized equipment, can be used for all printing and scanning as well. Hosted software minimizes system maintenance, and a robust security architecture protects students' data.