If there is one thing that I can’t stand, it is changing out the printer cartridges. Usually it goes off without a hitch, but there are times where the ink gets all over your hands. Of course, it is impossible to wash off because it’s well…ink.

Xerox has discovered a way to revolutionize printing cartridges with the ColorQube 9200. These cartridges are solid ink, which is a fancy way of saying that they are big crayons.

The user has put these big square crayons into the machine, and the printer will melt and squirt them in the proper places. Three of the slots are for the primary colors, so the red, blue, and yellow should be capable of making any color on the page. There is also a separate slot for black, which will probably need to be replaced often.

Speaking of the replacements, the ink cubes have to be replaced every 55,000 pages. The ColorQube can print up to 150 million drops of ink per second, which is good enough “to print at 38 ppm up to 85 ppm”.

Xerox says that this new solid ink cartridge system can reduce the cost of printing pages by 62 percent. Of course, you have to ask if saving two-thirds is worth it, as the printer for this solid ink system costs about $22,000.

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