So what is the 3Doodler exactly? Well it's basically a 3D printing pen with which you can draw physical three dimensional objects by hand. Have a look at the video below to fully understand what the pen does and how it works:

The 3Doodler uses the same technology as many 3D printers, it melts ABS plastic filament which then rapidly cools into whatever shape you desire as seen in the video. It's simple really, but non the less a great idea!

Like I've stated above, this is one of the only 3D products so far that I have seriously considered buying as it looks like good fun and it's affordable! I can't find any specifics on what the device will cost when released, but donating $50 or above on the Kickstarter for the project will get you one which probably means the device will cost less than $100.

You can see the Kickstarter project right here, the project ends on March 25th so if you are interested in backing it make sure you're quick.

HP ThinkJet
First off we have the HP ThinkJet personal printer. It was the first of the personal inkjet printer of its kind and it went on to conquer the personal printing market, leaving older printers like the dot matrix, behind in the dust.

The invention was thought up accidentally and while larger scale inkjet technology did exist  for industrial use, HP thought that they could make the technology smaller and more accurate and revolutionize the printing industry.

The printer itself was superior in most ways to its printing competitors. It was faster (it could do about 150 characters a second), better quality, cheaper to print with, quieter, has lower power consumption and had was compatible with most personal computers of the time. It was all this combined that made the inkjet truly popular, and the basic technology is still used today in all of the HP inkjet printers.

HP Laserjet
The first HP laser printer and the first laser printer of this kind to hit the market. Also released in 1984, HPs previous experience with working on laser technology for Canon combined with their new-found knowledge of inkjet technology allowed them to create a laser printer that would be both more affordable and smaller, making it the perfect size for professional and personal use.

Again they had bettered their competitors and made a printer that was superior in quality, speed and price. The LaserJet printer was priced at about $3,500, which was a huge drop compared to other laser copiers and printers on the market at the time.

Beween the ThinkJet and LaserJet, HP had conquered the market and revolutionized the technology. One thing that helped was the fact that both printers had a superiority over previous printers when it came to printing graphics and font variations. Both printers we're truly perfect for office even personal use.

HP DeskJet
Released in 1988 after the success of their previous inkjet printers, the Deskjet was created as a separate line of new and improved inkjet printers. With the printer only costing around $1000 on release, and then dropping in price to around $350 by 1993, the HP DeskJet printers became a truly affordable option for home users.

The printer used ink cartridges just like the ones we use in modern day printers: disposable ink cartridges with the print head built in, meaning that every time a new ink cartridge was installed, the print head was also being replaced, which allowed a constant high quality of printing.

In 1994, HP released a printer upgrade that allowed colour printing, again revolutionizing the home printing market. Again, colour printing was already available prior to this, but this new addition to the HP range made colour printing in the home a norm.

It was the three printer ranges we have talked about today that evolved into the products that most of us use today. While there have been many changes and additions such as in-built scanners, quality improvements, WiFi capability, duplex printing, etc; the technology behind it all remains pretty much identical to those very first HP printers.

All images featured in this post are edited versions of images found it the the HP Virtual Museum (Check it out, you can have a look at a lot of past HP products).

Well we've done a bit of calculating for you and have come up with the following HP versus soy sauce Infographic.

What we've compared here is an genuine HP 932 black (which is actually quiet cheap for a cartridge at approx. £0.0375 per page) to some Amoy Dark Soy Sauce.

While it would be interesting to see if you can print with soy sauce, you probably can't, so all the above are purely estimations of how much it would cost if you could print with it. However, if you wan't to re-fill cartridge with soy sauce and destroy your printer, then don't say we didn't tell you.

Want to put this elsewhere on the web? Here's the embed code:
<a href="http://www.hpinkcartridges.co.uk/technology-blog/2013/01/hp-ink-versus-amoy-soy-sauce-what-would-it-cost-to-print"><img src="http://www.hpinkcartridges.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/HP-Ink-VS-Soy-Sauce-hpinkcartridges-co-uk.jpg" alt="Ink Versus Soy Sauce - www.hpinkcartridges.co.uk" width="704" height="2879" /></a><br />

It's pretty obvious that HP really do put a lot of effort and thought behind their branding and design, especially when it comes to their logo. If we go back to the origins of HP and look at their original logo from 1954, we can already see the effort being placed in creating the logo alone. They originally planned on creating a small spin off company of HP called Dynac that would deal in digital equipment, which they cleverly integrated into their original. As you can see below, after turning their HP logo 180° it reveals 'dy' which would have been perfect for their spin off company. However Dynac was folded back into HP in 1959.

Throughout the years there have been a huge number of subtle changes to the logo as there are with most companies. While they have changed their logo with the times, the fundamentals behind the image have always stayed pretty much the same with the italicised letters surrounded by a circle.

One important details that has always remained in the HP branding is the exact 13° italicisation present in their logo, a lot of type, UI design, advertising design and even product photography. Supposedly, the angle is a representation of the companies aim to progress and invent, whether or not they intended that back when they first designed the logo is another case.

Presently, the companies logo is the one seen below, although with so many products on the market, it's common to see a mish-mash of older logos here and there.

While I imagine that HP logo will probably remain fundamentally the same in the future, the company Moving Brands did have a shot at redesigning the brand and logo for them not too long back. There seemed to be a bit of controversy and confusion after HP contracted the company to propose new ideas for various elements of HP’s brand identity, including fonts, graphics, and logos in 2008. Moving brands later released a case study on the work they had done for HP, including a logo that probably will never see the light of day. HP requested that they take down the case study to halt confusion, however it seems that it has since been put back up on their site.

Personally I really like the logo that Moving Brands designed, but I can understand that HP don't want to change their image that much as HP is already a well recognized and iconic brand.

So that's the story of the HP logo, it's past, present and future. What do you think about the HP logo? Let us know on twitter.

Once you know the cartridge model, the choices of what to buy can still be overwhelming with standard cartridges, XL cartridges, photo black cartridges, compatible, re-manufactured, original and many more variations. So to help you make the right choice when it comes to purchasing your printing supplies, we're going to run through the basics of what you need to print!

Original, Genuine, Re-manufactured and Compatible
Let us start with the differences between the aforementioned original, genuine, re-manufactured and compatible cartridges. These all refer to the manufacturer of the ink or toner cartridge that you are purchasing.

Original and Genuine are the same thing. They are cartridges that are made by the same original manufacturer as your printer. For example, if you have a HP printer then a cartridge manufactured by HP themselves would be a genuine or original cartridge.

Original/Genuine HP 350 Cartridge

Re-manufactured cartridges are slightly different. They are basically re-filled cartridges. Usually they are empty original cartridges that are then emptied, cleaned, re-filled and tested. Generally re-manufactured cartridges are cheaper than original or genuine cartridges and are a great alternative if you want to save some money without sacrificing the quality.

Compatible cartridges are a whole different thing. They are cartridges that are manufactured from scratch by a 3rd party (not by the original printer manufacturer) but that are compatible and are made to function in the same printer. In the previous example any cartridge that is made by a 3rd party, i.e: not HP, that is created as an alternative to the HP cartridge is a compatible cartridge. Again these cartridges tend to be cheaper than the original or genuine cartridges, so you can save money buying these too.

Photo Cartridges
Some newer printers have the option or, in some cases, requirement to use a secondary black that uses slightly different 'photo' ink. These photo cartridges are used to give you an improved quality when it comes to printing images.

Not all printers have a photo black cartridge and at the other extreme, some even require a photo cartridge to print anything (even text). So make sure to check in the manual that comes with your printer, or on the printer manufacturers site to see if your printer takes a photo black.

Standard, High Capacity and XL Cartridges
In some cases, cartridges for your printer can come in different sizes or containing different amounts of ink or toner dust.

Let's use the example of a HP 350 cartridge. There is a regular or 'standard' HP 350 cartridge that contains approximately 4.5ml of ink. For use in the same printer there is a 'high capacity' or 'XL' version of the cartridge, which in this case is the HP 350XL which contains approximately 25ml of ink.

Again be sure to check your printer manual or on the manufacturers website for compatibility. Even if there is a 'high capacity' version of the cartridge your printer takes, it doesn't mean that the 'high capacity' version will fit in your printer, so always double check.

Now that you know what's what when it comes to cartridge variations you can find exactly what you need to print when the time comes! If there are any questions or queries left unanswered by this post then don't hesitate to contact us, we're always happy to help.

Invisible ink of one sort or another has been available to buy for years too; you can buy special marker pens that contain ink that is almost invisible to the naked eye but once you shine a UV or Ultra Violet light over it the ink becomes visible, this is commonly used in the home or office to mark valuables with a post code in case of a burglary but I doubt protecting their DVD player or boxed set of Friends DVD’s is what the Iranians have in mind.

The Iranian company Sakht System has been testing the ink using an HP printer and software although it’s not clear at this stage exactly which model or which cartridges if any are involved. It could be that they have developed their own system utilising HP technology.

I have seen information on research of a bio cloth that incorporates invisible ink into the cloth that once activated by a special chemical turns the ink that’s impregnated in the cloth invisible to the naked eye, maybe and this is only my own little conspiracy theory, but just maybe this is what the Iranians are up to and this is what they meant by invisible ink. Making a bio suit out of “Inviso” cloth would pretty much render your army and heavy artillery invisible to an enemy and in the words of Mohamed Ali the famous boxer, “You can’t hit what you can’t see”. Below is an image of a whole platoon of men testing  “Invisio” cloth bio suits.

Testing the Invisible Ink Bio-Suit

Concerned about this we contacted the company and asked them what their plans were, below is an official statement from them:

“                      .                               ,                                     ".

Well thanks for the response guys, but not really helpful!

When technology advances, a wake of outdated products are often left behind. This, now more than ever, is seen in many different industries, some totally destroyed by new and exciting tech.

One of the greatest examples I can think of right now is that of photo printing and consumer level film. The photo industry was once a huge one, in which owning a Polaroid camera or going to the local Kodak store to get your holiday pics processed was common among most. But with the arrival of the digital camera much of the above became redundant. People could now take as many pictures as they like and save every single one on to a disk or computer. Once the likes of camera phones and the instant sharing of photos on social networks arrived, that was pretty much it.

The latest example of this, while not quite as extreme, is the way technology is affecting the printing industry. People are just not printing as much as they used to. HP themselves have even noticed the drop, yet still insist that "printing is not going away".

So what is the cause of this drop in printer and ink sales? Well there are a multitude of explanations that could explain this decrease...

As mentioned above, social media has had a huge impact in consumer photo printing, meaning that a lot of those holiday and family photos that were being printed at home are now simply being uploaded to Flickr, Picasa, Twitter, Facebook or one of the many other sites in the sea of social networks. While it's still nice to have physical photos, most choose to simply share them with their friends digitally one way or another.

It's not just social media either. Handheld devices such as smart phones, tablet computers, e-readers and even GPS devices have created quite a dent in the need to print both at home and in the office. There's not much need to print notes off for a meeting when you can have a much better and probably more interactive version on your iPad. There's no need to print off a voucher, boarding pass, cinema ticket or confirmation of any type when you can access most of these from your phone with much more ease. There's no need to print out a map of a driving route to a new location when you can have the likes of Patrick Stewart in digital form direct you verbally to wherever you need to go.

Those are just a few of the ways this new age of technology have and will continue to impact the printing world. Whether or not it will destroy it all together is something I do not know, but I imagine that some technology (possibly something like this) will come along in the not so distant future and totally get rid of the need of printing.

The new range of ink tanks utilises the separate colours and print head system. The HP 932XL (CN053AE) is the Black Ink tank, the three colours are HP933XL Yellow (C056AE), Magenta (CN055AE) and the Cyan (CN054AE) completes the range of new additions to the HP Officejet 6000 series.

THE HP 932XL (CN053A) Black ink tank has an estimated page yield of 1000 pages* per tank with the HP 933XL colours offering 825 pages* per tank. The range of printers that are compatible with these ink cartridges are HP Officejet 6100, Officejet 6600 and Officejet 6700. This range of printers are competitively priced with the Officejet 6100 on sale direct from HP for just £90.00 inc VAT and the All in One 6700 available for less than £130.00 inc VAT.

HP’s other new release is to the 8000 series of printers which again utilises the separate colours and printheads. The set consists of the HP 950XL (CN045AE) which is the Black Ink tank, the three colours are HP 951XL Cyan (CN046AE), Magenta (CN047AE) and the Yellow (CN048E) completes the range.

The HP950XL (CN045AE) Blank ink tank has an estimated page yield of 2300 pages* with the HP 951XL colours offering 1500 pages* per cartridge. The range of printers that is compatible with these tanks are the HP Officejet Pro 8100, 8600 and the 8600 Plus and are quite reasonably priced at £100.00 inc VAT for the entry level Officejet 8100 and the higher spec All in One 8600 can be bought direct from HP for £170.00 inc VAT.

*Page yield is based on industry standard tests ISO/IEC 24711.It is important that you understand how the page yields are calculated as it is a contributing factor to the value and running costs of the printer. This is quite complex so I have added a link to HP’s own page on page yields and ink levels, there is also lots more information on printer cartridges and expiry dates etc.

Visit HP's Page Yield section for more information on ink levels and page yields.

What is interesting about these new additions to HP’s ever expanding range of products is that they are totally new technology, as the image below shows they are different in every way from the other ink tanks in HP’s range.

The ink cartridges or ink tanks below are for the HP 6000 range,and are Set Up or Starter Cartridges. Most ink tank type printers come with these set up cartridges and they are very important. The first time you install the printer these cartridges must be installed before you can print. Amongst other things the micro chips contain information about the region or global area in which the machine was purchased and other settings for the printers installation process.

These cartridges are not available to buy separate from retailers, they are only available with a new a printer so it is recommended that you keep these safe while you own the printer and do not discard them, should you need to reinstall your printer on a new computer you may need these cartridges again to allow set up.

For more information on these cartridges  and to learn why they are needed visit HP's page on Set Up Cartridges.

What on earth is a print spooler or spooling?
First of all let's have a look at what the 'print spooler' is and what purpose it serves. Spool is an acronym for simultaneous peripheral operations on-line.

Printers can only write one document at a time. Print spooling (sounds like some weird printer sport doesn't it?) allows multiple processes to write documents to a print queue without waiting.

Let me give you a brief example that will explain it better. Say you have a 20 page document open in word that you want to print. A regular printer can only print one document at a time, meaning that without a print spooler, word would have to wait until the first page is finished before the printer would retrieve to information for the second page and so on. This would mean that word would be in demand through out the whole printing process of those 20 pages and the CPU and memory would be tied up in the process to until all 20 pages were printed.

Thanks to the print spooler, word would write the 20 page document to the print spooler device for the printer to retrieve it at its own pace, freeing up the process allowing it to perform other tasks.

How to fix a print spooler problem?
If you are receiving this error then do not worry too much, it is a fairly easy problem to fix and there are a couple of things you can try to get it sorted.

Windows XP
The most common problem that causes the print spooler to stop working is when the printers drivers have been corrupted. So the very first thing you should do it simply to re-install or update the drivers. You should be able to find them on the website of the printer manufacturer (e.g: HP, Lexmark, etc.).

If this doesn't work then you can also try restarting the print spooler. Let me walk you through that process:

• Click on the Windows start button
• Select 'Run...' and once open, type in 'services.msc'
• Once you have the services window open. Find the print spooler service in the list.
• Select the print spooler service, and then you should be see the option to restart this service, click that option.

The printer driver corruption could also be the problem when using Windows 7, so again, try re-installing or updating your printers drivers first.

If that didn't work then you can also try the following:

• Make sure you are logged into an account with administrative access.
• Click the Windows/Start button and then Control Panel>System and Maintenance>Administrative Tools.
• Double click on services.
• Right click on the print spool service and select properties.
• Within the 'General' tab, make sure that the start up type is set to 'Automatic'.
• If the print spool service is not running then select 'Start' under 'Service Status'.

Hopefully using one of the suggestions above you will have sorted your problem and will be able to print again. If not, let us know and we will do our best to help you some more.

So what is a 'Closed Loop Recycling Scheme' and what are the Pro's and Con's?

As you can see from the diagram above the recycling loop is closed when the original manufacturer, in this case HP, reuses the item, in this case ink cartridges, to manufacture the same item again. This eliminates the need to send any cartridges to landfill.

HP's closed loop recycling start with the customer returning the empty cartridges to HP using a Freepost bag or label. Not any cartridges are accepted, they must be HP brand. Once the cartridges are received at the HP recycling centre they are put into what can only be described as a state of the art and pretty amazing automated recycling process.

When the cartridges arrive in their little bags they are put through a machine that de-bags them, then they are passed along a conveyor belt to the x-ray machine. The x ray machine is an impressive piece of machinery that sorts the cartridges into family types at a very quick rate, a job that can take loads of man-hours if done manually.

From there the cartridges are passed to a shredder which shreds all the cartridges into small pieces, they are then passed through a separator that separates the metals from the plastics. The cartridges have now become a raw material, the plastics are mixed with other PET plastics, usually from recycled water bottles and made back into HP ink cartridges. New HP cartridges have between 50 and 70% recycled materiel.

Have a look at the video below for a peek behind the scenes at HP's Closed Loop Recycling Scheme in action at their Nashville,Tennessee recycling plant.

Now; if you are environmentally conscious and have just watched the short video above you are no doubt thinking what a great job HP are doing here shredding all these cartridges, and in fairness from an environmental point of view its good, from the point of lowering the need to make new plastics then its great too but if you have read my previous post on shredding cartridges you will know that I have slightly different opinions on this subject. Not that I disagree with the recycling process, how can you disagree with something that's as streamlined and efficient as HP's process? its not that,  its the stage that the cartridges have been shredded.

The fact that HP have to date shredded 250 million cartridges worldwide does not fill my heart with environmental joy. In fact it has the opposite affect on me, it makes me frustrated and sad!, as I said in my earlier post it frustrates me because the cartridges could have been passed through the charity recycling schemes first and then into HP's Closed Loop so for me HP's closed loop recycling scheme is great but it has a step or a stage missing, the stage that would allow the charities to sell the cartridges on the open recycling market to generate funds, then the cartridges could find their way into the closed loop and the cycle could turn again.

HP, possibly have a valid economical reason why they don't want the empty cartridges circulating in the open market, precautions against counterfeits is probably one of them but in the ideal world my suggestion is a good one but sadly we don't live in an ideal world do we?