[HN Gopher] Xerox to acquire Lexmark
___________________________________________________________________
Xerox to acquire Lexmark
Author : taubek
Score : 182 points
Date : 2024-12-23 12:57 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (newsroom.lexmark.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (newsroom.lexmark.com)
| lexicality wrote:
| oh no
| TomMasz wrote:
| This is unfortunate for Lexmark employees.
| silisili wrote:
| Lexmark is unfortunate for Lexmark employees. Knew a guy who
| worked there - constant layoffs and train-your-replacement
| offshoring, nearly every year. It's a shell of what it was 20
| years ago, but that's probably to be expected for a printer
| company.
| tecleandor wrote:
| Spun off from IBM to end up at Xerox 30 years later.
|
| I haven't followed Xerox in the last - 20? years, so I don't know
| how terrible could this be.
| ryao wrote:
| Xerox is essentially a Lexmark reseller at this point. You can
| look at what Xerox technicians are posting on reddit if you
| need evidence:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/printers/comments/15sa0q4/why_do_th...
|
| As per a comment there, even the toner cartridges are the same,
| with the only difference being the chip used.
|
| This acquisition should make Xerox into a company that builds
| its own printers again.
| tecleandor wrote:
| Ah, interesting. I guess they were manufacturing the bigger
| corporate machines, and rebranding this medium/small sized
| printers. They also had solid ink printers (we had one in the
| office a long time ago) but I think they aren't doing them
| anymore.
|
| I bought past year a bunch of Xerox branded toners for an HP
| printer, and I didn't know they had diversified the business
| that much. I wonder if they manufacture them.
| bradfa wrote:
| Xerox still manufactures a lot of toner. It's where all the
| money is in the market. They have a massive plant making EA
| toner and then a packing plant next door in Webster, NY USA
| at the main campus.
| drewda wrote:
| Intersting, I didn't realize there's a relationship.
|
| But Wikipedia says:
|
| > Lexmark was formed on March 27, 1991, when investment firm
| Clayton & Dubilier completed a leveraged buyout of IBM
| Information Products Corporation, the printer, typewriter, and
| keyboard operations of IBM
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexmark
| ryao wrote:
| Lexmark being IBM's former printer division is well known.
| Former employees purchased the keyboard business from Lexmark
| and made Unicomp.
|
| Meanwhile, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies was IBM's hard
| drive division and Lenovo was their PC division. IBM has sold
| off so many parts of itself over the years it is surprising
| there is much left.
| tecleandor wrote:
| Yep, I still have a couple or three Model M keyboards, and
| although all are IBM branded, if you disassemble them
| you'll find that, depending on the year, they were IBM or
| Lexmark manufactured.
|
| Also, IBM laser printers from the 4019, 4029, 4039...
| series started to appear branded as Lexmark. At least if I
| remember correctly from when my father worked at a bank.
| Our equipment at home was a less fancy IBM Proprinter XL24.
| Noisy!
| epc wrote:
| This was the pre-Gerstner era of the "Baby Blues": Lexmark,
| AdStar, Pennant, Eduquest, Advantis/ISSC, and some others
| I've forgotten. In the end IBM spun off Lexmark, Federal
| Systems (to Loral), AdStar never spun out but was the
| division sold to Hitachi. Lexmark was "small" printers and
| keyboards, Pennant was the room sized beasts. Advantis became
| IBM Global Network, sold to AT&T in 2000.
| echelon wrote:
| The IBM / Lexmark relationship persisted for years after
| this. IBM Thinkpads would be cross-sold with promos for
| Lexmark printers.
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/19990423063310/http://www.direct.
| ..
| humanfromearth9 wrote:
| And in a few years, IBM will buy Xerox and own Lexmark again.
| geraldwhen wrote:
| This may be devastating for the small city of Lexington,
| Kentucky. Seems like this was one of the only major businesses in
| the area.
| malfist wrote:
| Lexington has a surprising amount of employers, we should be
| fine. I doubt they're going to close the HQ anyway.
|
| Did you know Tempur-Pedic is Lexington grown? Fast food chain
| fazolis is based here, long John silver's was. Valvoline moved
| here a long long time ago.
|
| Hall Rogers is trying to make "silicon hallow" a thing so
| there's a lot of funding for tech companies to setup shop in
| Kentucky
| parpfish wrote:
| Fazoli's is still around? I don't think I've seen one in 20
| years
| DHPersonal wrote:
| I have a Fazoli's and a Xerox facility within 20 minutes of
| where I sit. I'm unsure I should see that as sign of a
| healthy economic situation for my neighborhood.
| joshstrange wrote:
| Yep, land-locked Lexington, Kentucky, home of Long John
| Silvers though we don't even have one in town anymore. The
| last one closed a few years ago.
|
| But yes, a Lexmark sale won't make a large impact even if
| they shut down the HQ. There are local and remote (obviously)
| opportunities and the CoL is low here.
| rgreasons wrote:
| Lexington is the home of the University of Kentucky. Lexmark
| shuttering their plant wouldn't be _good_ for the economy, but
| Lexington is first and foremost a "college town."
| PAPPPmAc wrote:
| I'm local, I know a ton of former Lexmark people, because
| they've already been all-but dead in Lexington for some time.
| They mostly only did R&D here for decades, and that group has
| been dwindling.
|
| Large groups of Ex-Lexmark folk have ended up in other local
| tech companies, many ended up at OpenText (via HP via Exstream,
| the eventual successful startup from a local serial
| entrepreneur that basically makes the tools to do semi-
| individualized bulk mailing like bills), Badger (robots for
| doing retail work) was founded by folks leaving Lexmark, etc.
|
| Amazon has been buying up their old buildings (long, long ago
| it used to be a sprawling IBM campus that did typewriters,
| printers, keyboards, compilers, EMI testing...) as they
| contract.
|
| Like much of the US, Lexington has lost a bunch of
| manufacturing, but IBM/Lexmark as a major entity is already
| long gone.
|
| It is funny that they've been bought by a cartridge cloner, and
| foreign private equity, and are now being bought by a
| competitor, they keep dying in new ignominious ways.
| mrweasel wrote:
| > many ended up at OpenText
|
| I really want to know what the deal is with OpenText
| (formerly MicroFocus). If you're not careful they will
| eventually buy your business and you will disappear.
| rrr_oh_man wrote:
| > OpenText offers cloud-native solutions in an integrated
| and flexible Information Management platform to enable
| intelligent, connected and secure organizations.
|
| That... wow...
| mrweasel wrote:
| I mean I'm sure they do, but they also offers Cobol,
| GroupWise and a fax solution, so I... I don't know where
| to start.
| stickfigure wrote:
| Lexington is 320k people, the second biggest city in the state.
| It's the only major shopping destination for eastern KY. It'll
| be fine.
|
| (I lived for a year in Morehead, drove to Lexington regularly)
| dgatwood wrote:
| _shrugs_
|
| Most of the time, all you need is Walmart and Meijer, and you
| can also find those in Richmond, along with a decent number
| of other big-box stores and clothing stores and stuff. But
| yeah, Lexington is definitely a popular shopping destination.
|
| Back when my grandparents lived in Richmond, we would go to
| Lexington for the mall (not the green roof one, the real
| one), because Richmond's mall was a decaying husk even in the
| 1990s, before Walmart moved out next to it, Sears went under,
| etc. I was surprised to see that it is still open, but I
| digress.
|
| For context, Walmart employs about as many people in
| Lexington's three superstores and one neighborhood market as
| Lexmark does. Losing 2k jobs in a city of 320k people would
| not be catastrophic. And most of those jobs probably don't
| overlap with Xerox's business anyway, so I wouldn't expect
| that to happen.
| quink wrote:
| >
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_employers_in_Lexington...
|
| Apparently Xerox, out of all companies in the world, is in the
| small list of even bigger employers than Lexmark there.
| joshstrange wrote:
| I live there and while I know people who used to work there and
| have friends of friends who do work there it's not considered a
| major player in my mind. Toyota leaving would be a much bigger
| deal and we have a decent number of local tech jobs not to
| mention remote work from elsewhere.
|
| That's not to say I don't care or am happy they got bought but
| Lexmark has been circling the drain for a solid decade.
|
| Lexington, Kentucky will not be "devastated" by this at all. I
| doubt Lexmark is even in the top 10 of businesses people would
| name for being big players in Lexington.
| primeradical wrote:
| Toyota just announced a massive paint facility expansion so
| they're not going anywhere.
| _xerces_ wrote:
| I remember Lexmark just before things started to go bad for
| them, back when they still had a huge campus with multiple
| buildings, developers had their own office or shared with one
| other person and they owned their own huge park with a disk
| golf course. They even built a new building on campus for an
| employee daycare and acquired multiple software companies to
| add services on top of print.
|
| We had huge teams of software engineers, embedded software
| developers, mechanical engineers, electrical engineers chemists
| and specialists in microfluidics. We designed our own image
| processing ASICs, had specialists in color and perception, had
| a whole team dedicated to just Linux and dedicated software
| librarians. There was a team working just on Android. We
| contributed back to Linux as well as Yocto/Bitbake. The first
| sign of decline was when suddenly (for me anyway) they
| announced the closure and sale of their entire consumer inkjet
| division followed not long after by commercial inkjet. They
| sold all the inkjet assets off to a partner manufacturer
| company a bit like Foxconn.
|
| It was wonderful for a while and I am sad to see things get
| potentially worse for them.
|
| When they hired me out of college, they paid me a $5000
| relocation bonus, paid a specialized company to organize the
| move (even offered to find me a realtor and help sell my house
| if I had one), paid the moving company in full, paid to have my
| car relocated there, paid for hotels during the move and then
| paid me another $5000 to cover any miscellaneous costs from
| moving that I might incur. They also paid the taxes for me
| somehow, I guess by adding extra to my paycheck. Never seen the
| like before or since.
| acjohnson55 wrote:
| Those were the days! I have great memories playing in the
| basketball league and playing pickup soccer on the giant
| fields.
|
| I worked one internship in the color / image science lab,
| which was super interesting. I learned a lot about the human
| visual system and theories of image reproduction technology.
| One of the guys in the lab reached some legendary engineering
| status ("laureate", I think) for inventing a form of
| dithering that improved perceptual image quality.
| tecleandor wrote:
| Lexmark has been progressively closing their facilities there
| for years. They even sold some buildings this year [0]. Thay
| have only 14 positions open for their Lexington location, so I
| don't think they're a huge employer there anymore.
| 0: https://www.opi.net/news/region/001-north-america/ninestar-
| offloads-lexmark-assets/ 1:
| https://www.lexmark.com/en_us/careers/job-
| locations/lexington.html
| i80and wrote:
| I got a Lexmark for their driverless IPP Everywhere support and
| it's the best zero-fuss printer I've ever owned.
|
| Xerox doesn't have _any_ IPP Everywhere devices, so I hope this
| isn 't Lexmark's death knell.
| nottorp wrote:
| I don't know what an IPP is but I bought a networked Xerox all
| in one, plugged it into my network and it just showed up on all
| my devices (mind, they're mostly Apple). So whatever they're
| doing, it ain't so bad.
|
| I did have to cover the power led with black nail polish
| though. It was lighting up the whole room.
| MrMcCall wrote:
| I use black electrical tape for those ever-more-common
| nuisances.
| xattt wrote:
| Painting the printer in Vantablack is also an acceptable
| answer.
| rrr_oh_man wrote:
| That might be the one thing more toxic than toner powder
| particles.
| vidarh wrote:
| You can also get sheets of hundreds of small little black
| dot stickers that are perfect to use on LEDs. Some of them
| are thin enough to let some light through an individual
| one, so you can choose to dim or entirely block by adding
| one or 2-3...
| layer8 wrote:
| https://www.lightdims.com/
| nottorp wrote:
| You can get a lot of toys but if your or your significant
| others' cosmetic habits include black nail polish why not
| use it?
| layer8 wrote:
| You can't remove the nail polish (without likely damaging
| the base surface) when you want to sell or gift the
| device to someone else, and it doesn't look good on non-
| black devices. (Even on black devices you might not like
| its glossiness.) Black nail polish also completely blacks
| out the light, whereas one might only want to reduce the
| brightness (which the product I linked to supports).
| nottorp wrote:
| I don't see myself selling a printer; most likely bring
| it to recycling when it dies in 10 years.
|
| As for gifting, if they object to my aesthetic choices
| that can always wait for someone else to gift them one.
| layer8 wrote:
| Well, you asked for reasons. They may not apply to you
| specifically.
| imp0cat wrote:
| Current Xerox printers definitely do support IP, but you need
| Windows to configure them (the proprietary app that will
| connect the printer to the network only runs in Widows).
| i80and wrote:
| See, that's what I'm avoiding with IPP Everywhere[1]: no
| configuration required.
|
| It just magically shows up instantly as a printer on Linux.
| It's the best printing experience I've ever had.
|
| [1]: https://www.pwg.org/ipp/everywhere.html
| imp0cat wrote:
| I may be misunderstanding, but it seems to me that you're
| talking about a printer that is already connected to the
| local network? But in my case, the software was needed to
| connect the printer to the wifi.
| nottorp wrote:
| I configured the internal IP via the printer's control
| panel actually.
|
| But of course, you need a printer with a control panel on
| it.
|
| I got the cheapest b&w laser (i print so little that inkjet
| is out of the question) all in one that had ethernet
| (B225). It has a tiny display and some buttons. You can set
| it up and use it like a copy machine at the least from it.
| onemoresoop wrote:
| I wasn't even aware Xerox was still around..
| astura wrote:
| Not only are they still around, they are a Fortune 500 company
| with over 7 billion dollars in revenue. They offer not only
| printers and copiers, but they are also a a business services
| company.
| ghaff wrote:
| Basically there are a ton of very large companies that even
| people in at least adjacent spaces just aren't aware of. Way
| back in my product manager days, we'd have companies into our
| executive briefing center who made 80% of the country's <fill
| in utterly pedestrian product you never even think about>.
| addicted wrote:
| So many people have and are making so much money just doing
| mundane business things.
|
| It's quite a change from the fast moving world of tech
| startups.
| Y_Y wrote:
| It's probably a market failure if you can make loads of
| money (profit rather than revenue) doing mundane things.
| If your moat isn't something like novelty or patents or
| concentrated unique expertise then you should be just
| scraping by in an ideal scenario. You might say they have
| trust or brand recognition or whatever, but that
| shouldn't prevent new entrants in a market where the
| products aren't developing quickly and you can undercut
| them by taking a smaller margin.
| linksnapzz wrote:
| Doing the mundane exceptionally well is...exceptional. No
| reason why that shouldn't also be profitable.
| Y_Y wrote:
| Nobody has ever made a printer exceptionally well.
|
| But seriously, you'd have to say how it is that your
| maker of mundane widgets can do a much better job than
| any competitor. Maybe the company is run by a printer
| savant, ok. But if it's just because you have good
| practices they should be copyable, if it's the best
| employees it should be possible and worthwhile to coax
| them away, etc.
|
| A reasonably defined "efficient" market is one that will
| chip these differences until you have only normal profit
| being made while making an acceptable product. A long
| term super-normal profit making a commodity is the
| opposite of efficiency.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| >Nobody has ever made a printer exceptionally well.
|
| My first job (in 1982) was writing barcode software for
| Printronix printers. They still make them now, largely
| unchanged [1]. They were built like a tank.
|
| [1] https://printronix.com/line-matrix-printers/
| philistine wrote:
| > Nobody has ever made a printer exceptionally well.
|
| Brother.
| ghaff wrote:
| At least as a consumer printer, they do seem to have
| emerged as a can't really go wrong option. I finally
| junked my inkjets because I didn't use them enough to
| keep the ink from drying out. I don't print _a lot_ but I
| find it useful to have a printer in the house to casually
| print out recipes, travel info, and the like.
| ghaff wrote:
| I'm not sure anyone is saying there's an extraordinary
| profit _margin_ being made. But if you 're the dominant
| supplier in some niche and your customers don't have any
| real complaints, you can still make a lot of money and,
| as a potential new entrant, your niche probably doesn't
| have a lot of appeal to me unless I have a genuinely new
| idea that would have broad customer appeal and I can
| execute on it.
| freedomben wrote:
| Brother has made exceptional printers. I have one of
| their small office lazer printers/scanners and it is the
| first time I've ever enjoyed a printer. Works great in my
| Linux-only house. I have it hooked up as a network
| printer.
| aryonoco wrote:
| I take it you haven't had Brother printers
|
| My SO also loves her Brother sewing machine.
|
| And I recently bought myself a Brother label maker, which
| again is proving excellent.
|
| I've come to the conclusion that if it's got moving
| parts, and Brother makes it, I'll have the Brother one
| thanks.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| Meanwhile Xerox is making little money or even a loss
| doing mundane things.
|
| Look at their share price over the last 25 years if you
| want to see what a dismal company Xerox is.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Fortune 500 seems irrelevant these days.
|
| Xerox market cap being $1B while their revenue is $7B means
| investors are pricing quite a bit of downsizing in their
| future.
|
| https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/XRX/xerox-
| holdings...
| jolt42 wrote:
| Same. I had to look them up, apparently PARC is still a thing.
| I had no idea.
| cowsandmilk wrote:
| PARC isn't part of Xerox any more.
| https://www.news.xerox.com/news/xerox-announces-donation-
| of-...
| philjohn wrote:
| Yep - I bought a Xerox colour laser printer a few years back
| (C405) and it's legit one of the best printers I've ever had,
| and runs circles around the last colour laser printer I had (a
| Canon).
|
| Just works on any computer that sees it on the network, print
| quality is fantastic, never jams, just all around brilliant.
| It's also got a warranty that extends every year that you buy
| Geniune Xerox toner. An onsite parts and labour warranty at
| that.
| casenmgreen wrote:
| Wonder why it happened? anyone know the back story?
| mritchie712 wrote:
| Maybe the both had a similar AI strategy
| rbanffy wrote:
| And the AIs decided they should merge.
| jasoneckert wrote:
| While many here will note the potential downsides for Lexmark
| here, the strategic fit statement of "Xerox and Lexmark have
| complementary sets of operations" likely means that Xerox will
| keep Lexmark operating as usual in the short term. And in the
| long term, there is a greater possibility of them growing the
| Lexmark side with their resources because Lexmark is an
| established brand, was already an existing partner/supplier for
| Xerox, as well as focused on certain growth areas (e.g., IoT,
| WFA) that Xerox did not.
|
| Now, if Broadcom were to acquire Lexmark, they'd likely get rid
| of 70% of the people and focus on extracting more money from the
| top 10% of Lexmark users via a subscription model that would make
| HP look tame by comparison.
| ryao wrote:
| If I recall correctly, Xerox printers are rebadged Lexmark
| printers, with the exception of the highest end models.
| mastax wrote:
| Dell printers are also rebadged Lexmark's. Or at least they
| were 20 years ago.
| bayindirh wrote:
| Nope, at least some of them are built in collaboration with
| Samsung. I remember using the same Samsung 1710 drivers to
| drive similar looking Xerox models. Information pages and
| everything are similar too. Only the logos differ.
|
| It's also same for Samsung MD2825 series. Xerox builds the
| exact same network enabled printers, but also they add WiFi
| on top of it. They're very reliable too. I have one and it's
| working without any problems for a decade.
|
| OTOH, Xerox's high end printers and "digital presses" are a
| different beast altogether.
| mrighele wrote:
| I think Samsung sold it printer business to HP a few years
| ago. If you search for a driver you will most probably find
| a page on HP website.
| bayindirh wrote:
| Yes, they sold it to HP. The latest toners I got for my
| MD2825 have HP hologram stickers on them.
|
| However, both MD282x series, and ML1710 are designed and
| produced way before the transfer. I remember seeing the
| Xerox printers first, thinking "Sweet", then finding the
| same device with a different color scheme, only under
| Samsung brand, and just buying it, because an extra
| Ethernet cable was not a problem at that time (Plus
| Xerox's one was unobtanium).
|
| For the ML1710, I remember seeing the Xerox one at the
| university, taking an "info" page from it and saying
| "this looks similar to my 1710, what happens if I just
| use with 1710 driver?", and I was printing 35 seconds
| later.
|
| Now my parents are using the 2825, and I have enough
| spares to let them use it for another decade at their
| usage volume.
|
| For the driver thing, it's good that the 2825 supports
| both AirPrint and Google Cloud Print (while it lasted),
| and is just an IPP printer with an open PPD file. So it
| can be used with toaster or a server or a phone, as long
| as it talks AirPrint or IPP.
| ryao wrote:
| If you disassemble their C series printers, you should find
| Lexmark parts. Even the plastic enclosures are the same
| shape as Lexmark printers.
| bayindirh wrote:
| Interesting, so, maybe they started to work with Lexmark
| after Samsung went to HP? Because The 2825 had an "exact"
| copy in the Xerox lineup, sans the color scheme and
| wireless capabilities.
|
| Or maybe they were working with different manufacturers
| for different series for a long time. IDK.
| Y_Y wrote:
| Apparently WFA stands for Wi Fi Alliance. Or maybe Wilderness
| First Aid, which makes more sense in the context of a "growth
| area".
| jasoneckert wrote:
| It stands for Work from Anywhere
| layer8 wrote:
| WFA stands for workflow automation.
| Clubber wrote:
| >"Xerox and Lexmark have complementary sets of operations"
|
| To me that means, "we can save money because we now don't need
| 2 marketing departments and 2 accounting departments and 2
| support departments, etc. for the same amount of combined
| market share."
| pessimizer wrote:
| Pretty sure that's what it means to everyone and that's what
| they meant to say.
| hk1337 wrote:
| Partly true but I don't think they would (or should) just ax
| those departments. By merging those departments will be
| taking on more work too, so they will not need everyone but
| they will likely let some people go.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| Even if they're purely complementary, which they're not, when
| one of them can only "survive"by being bought by the other,
| that's not survival. Let it fail, and then sell off all the
| parts to not yet established companies who are trying to make
| it in, or move into, that space. Mergers and acquisitions of
| established businesses puts a stranglehold on the market and
| should be illegal. This is the kind of bullshit that's resulted
| in four media conglomerates and three ISPs for a population of
| 300+ million.
| lukevp wrote:
| I haven't heard much about Broadcom before. Is this why Rally
| is so awful? They just rent seek on old software and don't
| improve it at all? Like the people who bought Heroku?
| acedTrex wrote:
| You havent at least heard about them gutting and draining
| VMWare?
| delfinom wrote:
| They also gutted and drained Symantec a few years earlier
| too.
|
| Strange how much they hate money because they made it
| difficult to even renew the Symantec endpoint.
| bigfatkitten wrote:
| Just about everyone who was worth keeping left
| immediately.
|
| A have a bunch of ex Symantec colleagues who put their
| notice in as soon as the deal closed, who were then paid
| _very_ handsomely by Broadcom to stick around and keep
| the lights on for another year.
| bluGill wrote:
| Rally didn't really change much before the purchase either.
| But the price going up by a lot is why we dropped it.
|
| don't count on whatever work tracker you have is my advice.
| I've never seen a company stick with one for more, than 10
| years. And now I have a lot of code comments about something
| weird that should not be simplifed because of some bug in the
| old system. And since closed bugs don't move - and even if
| they did they get new numbering - I have no ability to look
| upthat bug and ensure it doesn't break if I need to change
| the code.
| systems wrote:
| i dont get it, how is that a .. downside?
| agmater wrote:
| Why would Ninestar sell off Lexmark, is it just that they got a
| good price? I thought the pantum and printer business was an
| interesting move, but maybe they just couldn't make it work.
| tecleandor wrote:
| Ninestar was already having problems in the US. In 2023 they
| got an import ban by the DHS [0] and Lexmark had to find a new
| supplier for whatever Ninestar was sending them. Lexmark had to
| sell some assets this year to add a bit of liquidity [1].
|
| I guess this is Ninestar "just" getting rid of Lexmark because
| it was getting a bit messy for them. 0:
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-puts-chinese-company-with-
| kentucky-ties-on-forced-labor-ban-list-ce2e8d00 1:
| https://www.opi.net/news/region/001-north-america/ninestar-
| offloads-lexmark-assets/
| numbsafari wrote:
| T-Rex feasts on Triceratops carcass, Asteroid Nears Earth, ...
| all that and more Dino News just ahead... but first, why are some
| brontosaurus investing in these new small fuzzy creatures?
| rrr_oh_man wrote:
| Brontosaurus and T-Rex are separated by 80 million (!) years.
|
| To put it another way:
|
| We are closer to the the asteroid than Brontosaurus is to T
| Rex.
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| ...and they both will sell rebadged Samsung printers happily ever
| after.
| ryao wrote:
| HP brought Samsung's printer division, while Lexmark makes most
| Xerox branded printers, so that seems unlikely.
| bentt wrote:
| Growing up in Rochester, NY, where Xerox was founded and has/had
| the most employees... I'm just glad to hear they have enough
| resources to acquire something. Been a rough couple decades.
| chiph wrote:
| Lexmark was the supplier of Model M keyboards for a while, after
| IBM spun their printer & keyboard business off. Which they later
| spun off into Unicomp (pckeyboard.com) who still manufacture them
| in the town of Lexington.
|
| If you've never used a Model M, they're beasts. Great mechanical
| feel (they have buckling spring technology). And they're heavy
| enough to not slide around on your desk.
| onre wrote:
| I have the 122-key version and a ton of Emacs bindings to make
| the most out of the 24 function keys and the 12-key panel on
| the left. It is simply the best.
| kstrauser wrote:
| I bought a Unicomp Type M once to replace my IBM because it had
| USB, more keys, etc. It was Model M "Lite": same key feel, same
| delightful clicky, but much lighter and more flexible.
|
| You could march into battle with an IBM Model M. I don't think
| you could take on more than one local thug with the Unicomp
| version.
| jhickok wrote:
| New keyboard testing metric just dropped over Christmas
| break.
| kstrauser wrote:
| I mean, this is the keyboard people use to run through the
| dishwasher to clean it. You have to come up with more
| advanced criteria to really tease them apart.
|
| (I just realized that "flexible" above might be interpreted
| positively, like "applicable in more situations". No, I
| mean "flexible" as in "may not be satisfactorily used as a
| bridge over a pothole in case of emergency", which the
| original would be able to pull off and still be used to
| write a blog post about the experience afterward.)
| wholinator2 wrote:
| Is that, is that true? A dishwasher? Was this a regular
| occurrence? Did they have to turn down the water heater
| before hand? Did they take the keys off or leave them on
| and how did they dry if so?
| kstrauser wrote:
| That is true. I don't think anyone routinely did that
| instead of using canned air or something like that, but
| it was absolutely on the table for more substantial
| messes. Spill a can of soda into your keyboard? Run that
| sucker through the washer.
|
| I have not personally done this, but google "ibm model m
| dishwasher" and you'll see lots of anecdotes.
| a2tech wrote:
| You can do it today. Don't run the heated dry and put it
| in with the keys facing down. Run it and take it out and
| leave it upside down over night on a towel. Let the
| connector hand down as well.
|
| Should work perfectly in the morning.
| michaelsshaw wrote:
| Basically: no. The construction of the Model M disallows
| removing the backplate after the assembly is removed from
| the case. On the Model F, however, the backplate is not
| attached with plastic rivets, and had no rubber membrane
| that could trap liquids, so after the electronics were
| removed, it is feasible to wash it in a dishwasher.
| Inadvisable to say the least, if you want your PCB to
| remain non-warped.
| chiph wrote:
| I've done that a few times but not "regularly". Use the
| top rack, no soap, no heated dry, zip-tie a plastic bag
| over the connector. Afterwards let it sit on the counter
| face-down for a couple of days to air-dry. Comes out
| sparkly clean.
| bluGill wrote:
| Most electronics are run through a 'dishwasher' as part
| of manufacturing. Hot water removes a lot of gunk that if
| left causes earay failure. chips are plastic, the board
| is fiberglass, the resisters are ceramic or plastic most
| capacters are ceramic, the conductors are metal - none of
| that cares about water once it dries. The only thing to
| worry about is impurities in the water since they can
| leave something conductable behind. Some capacters
| however cannon take water. Likewise I'm note sure if LCDs
| are sealed enough.
|
| be careful of what soap you use though, dishwasher soap
| is too harsh. Manufactures are using deionized water and
| if any soap it is specific to electronics. Your house
| water isn't pure enough to do this often but once ever
| few years and you will normally get away with it.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Yes, electronics are _often_ washed...in _ultrapure_
| water. Very briefly, and then immediately dried.
|
| LCDs are definitely not sealed enough, many capacitors
| are electrolytic, and fiberglass is not impermeable to
| water (in fact, water-logged fiberglass is an issue for
| boats in areas where weather causes freeze-thaw cycles.)
|
| Your dishwasher is full of mineral deposits, food waste
| particles, and likely quite a bit of mold. Getting rid of
| all of that would involve dissolving deposits with
| vinegar or citric acid, then running some lye or
| similarly aggressive treatment to get the mold and
| organic waste out. That's a lot of hassle.
|
| You can't put "soap" in a dishwasher unless you want a
| giant bubble factory. So now you're looking at trying to
| find a specialty cleaner.
|
| Most people's water is not nearly pure enough for the
| keyboard to not have issues afterward. You MIGHT get away
| with it if you thoroughly blasted it with compressed air
| and then dunked it in distilled water.
|
| That's a huge amount of hassle.
|
| Unless something has been spilled on the keyboard, just
| periodically brush out debris and then hit it with
| compressed air...
| bluGill wrote:
| Many have proven you wrong with the model M. For other
| electronics your point stands beware that some will have
| no issues and some will
| nhecker wrote:
| I've not run the whole keyboard through the dishwasher,
| but I certainly have taken off all the keycaps and washed
| them in boiling, soapy water. I did that to another
| keyboard thinking I could clean up the key funk and
| instead the keycaps just melted and deformed. Turns out
| not all keyboards are created equal. (Or use the same
| plastics.)
|
| That reminds me that once as a kid I got a free Apple II+
| and the main board was really dusty. So, like any
| enterprising kid I unconnected and unscrewed it, washed
| it in the sink with soap and water, and then set it in
| the oven at 250F to dry for a few hours. It worked great!
| I wonder how many modern consumer products could take
| that same abuse?
| saulpw wrote:
| I was all excited for the TKL Unicomp keyboard they
| introduced a couple years ago. I bought one the second it
| went up for sale, and plugged it in right away when I got it.
| I had to ditch it after a few hours. It turns out that
| certain keypresses won't register if another key is pressed
| at the same time, and I type fast enough that it was losing
| keypresses regularly. I haven't had a keyboard with this
| problem since about 1985. An unconscionable design mistake
| which tarnishes the entire Unicomp brand for me.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Nearly all Model M keyboards have horrendous key rollover
| issues, supporting as little as 2-key rollover _and_ only
| between certain sets of keys; within a set, the keyboard
| will only register one keypress or the keyboard will
| generate garbage keypresses.
|
| It sounds like Unicomp designed the newer keyboards to have
| better PCB designs, but had firmware issues with key
| rollover on the mini (is that yours?) and may have fixed
| it: https://www.reddit.com/r/modelm/comments/13o0jkr/raspbe
| rry_p...
|
| The microcontroller they had been stuck on for ages became
| unavailable so they started producing models with
| Rpi2040's, which can run QMK. If you still have it kicking
| around, maybe it is one of the QMK supported keyboards or
| they've released a fixed firmware for it?
|
| Unfortunately the Model M and derivatives have long been
| eclipsed by the market. Better electronics/firmware,
| mechanical switches with choices in travel, force, noise
| level, and tactile feel... designs with lower profiles,
| different grid arrangement and almost every key
| count/layout imaginable...
| saulpw wrote:
| Interesting, thanks for the link. I'll investigate and
| see if I can get it working more better.
|
| But FWIW, I have multiple Model M classic keyboards (from
| 1992), and also other Unicomp full-size keyboards, and
| I've never had this issue with them.
|
| I also know the story that the market has "better"
| options than the Model M. Maybe it's just nostalgia but
| I've never found anything with the same feel as a
| buckling spring. The Model M just feels nice to me.
| MisterTea wrote:
| My 1986 M is still going strong.
|
| > If you've never used a Model M, they're beasts.
|
| I jokingly call it the preppers keyboard as it can double as a
| clubbing weapon when SHTF.
| ryao wrote:
| That is only the older ones. The newer ones are mostly made
| out of plastic to save money.
| MisterTea wrote:
| It's amazing how they had a whole stamped metal frame in
| there to stiffen it up. Like what was the design criteria
| that made them think they needed all that steel? Violent
| cavemen users?
| Wohlf wrote:
| They may have expected typists coming over from
| typewriters to hammer on it for 8 hours a day, or to give
| them a similar feel to ease the transition and limit
| complaints.
| gosub100 wrote:
| Perhaps injection molding and plastics in general weren't
| as advanced at the time?
| ryao wrote:
| My unicomp model m died after a few years. I never found time
| to return it to unicomp for repair and ended up discarding it
| to clear my long to do list. Reportedly, there were cost saving
| changes over the years that reduced weight and reliability. The
| weight reductions are definitely real. I might have just been
| unlucky with the keyboard failure, although I assume it
| involved the circuitry for making it work with USB, which the
| original model m keyboards did not have.
| bluGill wrote:
| a couple years ago they redid their tooling. They were
| getting bad because the factory was worn out. Reportably
| things are much better now.
| gosub100 wrote:
| might want to check out the Daskeyboard. Modern NKRO but
| built in the extremely rugged style.
| acjohnson55 wrote:
| I used to work at Lexmark in the same lab as the son of Neil
| Muyskens, who founded Unicomp.
| philistine wrote:
| They're wonderful things, unfortunately Unicomp has not
| introduced the latest keyboard layouts that have been
| introduced since 1988. So I can't get my beloved CAN/CSA
| Z243.200 for a battle-capable keyboard.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| They're not so great if you have an open office. You can hear
| the person with the Model M clattering away from across the
| room.
| nhecker wrote:
| Former Lexmarker here; I bought a Unicomp keyboard to
| compliment my beastly Model M that I've used on every single
| computer I've owned. The Unicomp is good but I keep coming back
| to the IBM M. It's fun to have something physical that ties my
| childhood, job, and employment together like that. I like the
| fact that I can use a piece of electronic equipment on a daily
| basis and it still hasn't died yet.
|
| As another commenter said, there are more modern keyboards
| available but the feel (and yes the nostalgia) of the M is yet
| to be beat in my mind for daily use. Although a few of the
| current ones come close...
| volkk wrote:
| this headline feels like i'm in 1996 again
| dangoodmanUT wrote:
| > Lexmark creates cloud-enabled imaging and IoT technologies that
| help customers worldwide quickly realize business outcomes.
| Through a powerful combination of proven technologies and deep
| industry expertise, Lexmark accelerates business transformation,
| turning information into insights, data into decisions, and
| analytics into action
|
| Great, so I have no idea what they do.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I'm convinced only CEOs know how to translate that into
| English.
|
| Company descriptions like this ought to be written as if you're
| explaining what your company does to a 6 year old. Imagine
| explaining your job to a class of first graders and telling
| them "I accelerate business transformation!" Yea, they'll be as
| lost as the rest of us.
| rrr_oh_man wrote:
| Everyone at the top is clueless, faking it, and anxious
| they'll be found out.
| deskr wrote:
| And based on social media, taken out.
| echelon wrote:
| > Lexmark creates cloud-enabled imaging and IoT technologies
|
| We make printers
|
| > that help customers worldwide quickly realize business
| outcomes.
|
| To help you do business
|
| > Through a powerful combination of proven technologies and
| deep industry expertise,
|
| We've been doing this for a while
|
| > Lexmark accelerates business transformation, turning
| information into insights, data into decisions, and analytics
| into action
|
| We help your company get important work done
|
| On this last point, a company is more than just its products,
| technology, and IP. It's people. People that are hopefully
| empowered and educated to make nimble decisions and rapidly
| respond to changing conditions.
|
| But yeah, they sell printers.
| gausswho wrote:
| Someone please turn that into a the backing vocals of a techno
| song.
| layer8 wrote:
| It seems that they can only turn stuff into other stuff if it
| starts with the same letter. That space is ripe for disruption!
| lifestyleguru wrote:
| They help realize business outcomes.
| elorant wrote:
| Bought a Lexmark E232 laser printer back in 2006. 18 years and
| 110k pages later the damn thing still works flawlessly. I have
| nothing but admiration for their printers.
| rrr_oh_man wrote:
| How do you know it's been 110k?
| layer8 wrote:
| Printers maintain a page counter.
| elorant wrote:
| Laser printers print a status page that describes most of
| their settings, how many toners you've changed and also
| includes the total page count.
| sunnytimes wrote:
| I used to fix Lexmark printers , they are "PC load letter"
| printers. not as bad as HP but lexmark printers stop working for
| various no reasons. Most of the time the trays would mess up due
| to a little dust or you would have to get the person to smack the
| drum over the phone and that would usually help. they never stop
| working but they will crumble 10 pages into a ball inside the
| machine ha..
|
| side note . HP printers are the worst for PC load letter. I've
| fixed HP printers my whole life. I love reading the manuals and
| they use "might" or "maybe" to describe fixes or errors.
| Shakahs wrote:
| Counterpoint: I also used to fix Lexmark printers as a field
| tech servicing pharmacies. It was routine to see Lexmark
| MS711dn printers with page counts in the millions. They did not
| need more than basic maintenance.
| sunnytimes wrote:
| no fuckin way .. i used to work for Kroll Pharmacy in
| Toronto!! where were you!?
| Suppafly wrote:
| >They did not need more than basic maintenance.
|
| The other guy was probably working on ones that didn't get
| the basic maintenance. People always skimp on preventative
| care and then are surprised when things break.
|
| When I worked in a computer lab 20ish years ago, being
| consistent about which side of the paper we loaded when we
| loaded paper made a huge difference. They are always stacked
| on the pallet the same way and had a little indicator on the
| flap of the wrapper around the ream that pointed down.
|
| I'm always surprised when schools want people to donate reams
| of paper, instead of just ordering a pallet of paper,
| swapping between a bunch of different weights and qualities
| is going to cause more way more costs in repairs than just
| ordering paper by the pallet.
| sunnytimes wrote:
| one of the main ones with the tray printers is dusty
| rollers . the rubber rollers that roll the paper out of the
| tray will get dirty and the paper will slip and cause jams
| or miss printing. of course theirs no error code for dirty
| rollers so the printer would say all kinds of shit because
| it would end up being a paper jam. we also used labels in
| the pharmacy and those would peel off and end up stuck all
| over the inside of the printer, good times haha.
| tssva wrote:
| Schools still want people to donate paper? My local school
| system got rid of most printers/copiers years ago and it
| takes administration approval to print something on the few
| that remain. My daughter is a senior and I don't think she
| has brought home a piece of paper from school since 5th
| grade.
| Suppafly wrote:
| The grade schools do, high schools barely seem to use
| paper.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| in the US we just generally underfund schools. Asking
| parents to donate supplies is not that normal elsewhere for
| reasons like these.
| bigfatkitten wrote:
| I had a client who had a T640tn with a forms card that did
| somewhere around 1000 pages a day every day, pretty much
| trouble free.
|
| It was in a pretty dusty environment too, in the weighbridge
| office at a fruit juice plant.
| rrr_oh_man wrote:
| PC Load Letter: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_LOAD_LETTER
| acjohnson55 wrote:
| I spent some of the formative time in my career at Lexmark. They
| sponsored my GEM Fellowship for grad school, and I worked there
| for 4 internships in 4 years in the mid 2000s. It was an
| interesting window into the business world.
|
| - Lexmark came into existence when IBM wanted to spin off their
| declining printer, keyboard, and typewriter businesses, which
| were headquartered in Lexington, KY, hence the name.
|
| - According to some of my coworkers, IBM brought all the most
| dynamic leaders back to the mothership, so Lexmark was left with
| whoever stayed behind or was left behind. These folks weren't
| highly respected by the engineers I knew, but I can't really
| judge, personally.
|
| - As many of you all know, some IBM/Lexmark manufacturing folks
| arranged a deal to take the keyboard business independent, as
| Unicomp.
|
| - In a major settlement with HP over patents, the two companies
| had a full exchange of printing technology, resulting in Lexmark
| gaining cutting edge laser printing tech. According to people I
| know, this turned a moribund company into a player.
|
| - Lexmark became most well known for bringing the "razor blade"
| business model to consumer inkjet printing. They would literally
| give printers away with a manufacturer's rebate, hoping to make
| the money back on supplies (e.g. ink cartridges). Unfortunately,
| there were so many printers floating around that many people
| would just throw out the old one when it was out of ink. It was a
| catastrophe.
|
| - When I was working there, one of the major initiatives was to
| create the cheapest possible inkjet printer. On the other hand,
| there was still a lot of pretty cool R&D going on. Just nowhere
| near the level of investment HP was making.
|
| - Lexmark became infamous for attempting to enforce DRM on its
| supplies to prevent people from refilling ink cartridges, forcing
| them to buy high margin supplies. While I was there, we were
| shipping cartridges with write-once memory for tracking usage.
|
| - In parallel to consumer inkjet, Lexmark had an almost
| completely separate business unit doing business printers, based
| on laser printing technology. In this market, you sell full on
| documents capabilities and services, with the printer merely
| being the central piece of hardware.
|
| - A few years after my last stint there, Lexmark exited the
| consumer inkjet business and became solely B2B. I didn't follow
| the company closely after this point.
|
| Working at Lexmark was one of the things that convinced me to
| leave tech for education. I enjoyed my short stints there, but
| just found the environment completely uninspiring as a place to
| really establish my career. Being my main exposure to the tech
| career (along with previous internships at manufacturing
| companies), I assumed that this was what the whole industry was
| like. (I returned to tech a few years later, but that's a whole
| other story.)
| linotype wrote:
| Now I want to know why you left education for tech! :)
| selimthegrim wrote:
| I also wish to subscribe to this thread.
| Narishma wrote:
| TIL both Xerox and Lexmark still exist. I haven't heard those
| names for a couple of decades.
| hipadev23 wrote:
| Is this comparable to when two extremely old widowers decide be
| roommates and live out their remaining days?
| ks2048 wrote:
| Is there any printer company that is not 30+ years old? What is
| stopping a start-up from making a printer people actually like?
| thinkingtoilet wrote:
| People speak highly of Brother printers and I've been happy
| with mine. On top of it, lots of people don't really print
| anything day to day.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Print is dying. It took a while to realize the "paperless
| office" and we aren't quite there yet, but in my office, the
| amount of stuff people print has really dropped in the past
| decade. Stores offer email or text message receipts, doctor's
| offices have you fill out forms online.
|
| Printers are not a growth market, so not very attractive to a
| start-up.
| starik36 wrote:
| Even back in the last decade, the only thing I ever printed
| in the office was return labels to slap on a package.
| hollerith wrote:
| Printers are a shrinking market.
| noprocrasted wrote:
| Consumer and small-office print is declining, so there is not
| enough money to be made making non-shit printers from scratch.
|
| Making shit printers (those that are sold below cost with the
| profits recouped from cartridge sales and other user-hostile
| measures) is the only thing keeping the market afloat.
|
| However, that segment of the market is already captured by the
| existing manufacturers (which have the existing patents and
| supply/manufacturing chain - aka economies of scale) that a
| newcomer would never be able to enter said market profitably.
| sedatk wrote:
| I didn't know these brands still existed. The title felt like
| "East India Company to acquire Silk Road".
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Especially among drug dealers game recognize game.
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