Environmentally Friendly Printing

The Age

Tuesday March 18, 1997

GARRY BARKER

KYOCERA has a new range of Ecosys laser printers which, it says, are cheaper to run and kinder to the environment because they do not use disposable cartridges and their drums are guaranteed to last 300,000 pages. They say the Ecosys FS-1700 will print 10,000 pages for $100 against 2500 pages for the same sum from a Hewlett Packard Laserjet 5. The FS-1700 prints 12 pages a minute at 600 dpi has Laserjet 4 (PCL5e) emulation and network and IBM interfaces. Also new is the FS-3700, offering 18ppm, and resolution enhancement to 1200dpi at full speed. The FS-1700 sells for $2580, excluding sales tax, and the FS-3700 for $3340, ex tax.

Free hand all round

DID a Cockney name Samsung's new FreeD cordless joystick, or does someone at Samsung lisp? Either way, the device is said to give PC game players "ultimate freedom of motion", up, down, left, right, forward and back, all by waving the joystick in mid air, like Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic.

The shaped handpiece contains an ultrasonic generator, but also uses infra-red technology to convey x, y and z coordinates to three sensors on a framed fixed to the monitor for games as Quake, Descent, Doom and Duke Nukem 3D. FreeD joystick lists for $150 and is packaged with a shareware version of Descent II on CD-ROM. Oh yes, and it also works as a cordless mouse.