An Inkless Printer?

For years I have been reading articles about the future and ‘the paperless office’.  These articles started appearing in the late 80’s as computers started appearing in the office space.  Well, it is 2009 and it doesn’t even appear that we are close to a paperless office yet.

In 2003 Xerox announced that it was working on a new printing technology that it called an ‘inkless printer’. Basically the technology ia based on a reusable paper that could be printed and erased dozens of times by applying light of a certain wavelength to it.  Allowing  the paper to hold information for a short period of time.

This is still in its early stages.  So far the technology allows for each sheet to be used about 50 times with the paper showing the printing for only about 16 to 24 hours before returning to a blank form. If Xerox was able to keep the price of the paper down to the current paper prices, the savings in ink and toner would be tremendous and worth looking into.

But for now, this is still only in the labs. Let me know what you think about this.