DESPITE all the talk and promises of new computing power, the real changes in computing are occurring in the area of peripherals and none more so than colour printing.
Yet again, a comparison of the typical colour output of only a few years ago with that of today's technology looks like night and day.
Xerox and Hewlett-Packard, two of the world's leading creators of colour output solutions, have recently made dramatic improvements in colour output devices.
Xerox recently put on display a range of its products that included over 30 printers and high-end copying machines that can work as output devices as well as scanners.
The market for colour output has changed radically in the past few years, with in-house output up strongly.
The Xerox Acolor 935/930 uses a colour imaging technology called highlight image enhancement screen technology (HIEST) to improve the reproduction of highlight colours. By staggering the dot patterns of lighter colours, it is possible to create subtle shades of colour.
For outputting colour from a personal computer, usually an Apple Macintosh, a PC or a UNIX machine, Xerox has subcontracted Electronics for Imaging (Efi) to produce the Raster Image Processor (RIP).