drupa Day 1: From Landa to HP
WOW what a first day…
drupa is living up to its reputation of bringing new technology to the industry. Historically companies have introduced new technologies to drupa that will are expected to hit the market by the following drupa (4 years out). Depending on where products are in their development cycle the 4 years could be 2 or even one year away. This is what we saw today. Unfortunately, due to flight delays our time on the floor for day one was cut to about 3 hours, but what a 3 hours! First we met an old client who is working on a new technology which will be ready to be shown in a year or two (with technology this could be twice that). This company is well under the radar of users and most technology developers as well but the promise of this new digital printing technology is quite interesting (which is a step or two before ‘promising’). I can not say much about it but we promise we will be keeping our eyes on it for you.
After seeing the ‘future’ we went to the place on the floor that seemed to be BUZZING, you guessed it, the Landa booth. Unable to catch the entire presentation by Benny Landa, due to our arrival delays, we were able to see the new presses that all the hype is surrounding. We have to say we were impressed!
The user interface strikes you right off the bat, it looks like the workstations that Jordy and Data worked at on the Enterprise. The whole front panel is the screen. The user interface is similar to a big iPad with icons that move by using one or two fingers, so clean and simple a child could operate it. Short of its sexiness, it will be up to the market to tell us if it is practical in a production environment.
