The biggest scam in home computing has to be the printing. Sure printers are cheap, but you’ll fork over your kid’s college fund to print the family album. Plus, it’s a total pain to manage since half the ink cartridges get clogged and don’t last that long. ZINK technology, or Zero Ink technology, removes the ink and bundles it in a piece of paper. No word on cost just yet (probably not cheap, though), but Polaroids got a mobile printer using the technology. Here’s how it works:

ZINK Paper™ is at the heart of ZINK™ Zero Ink™ Technology. ZINK Paper is an advanced composite material with cyan, yellow, and magenta dye crystals embedded inside and a protective polymer overcoat layer outside, enabling true ink-free prints. Before printing, the embedded dye crystals are colorless, so ZINK Paper looks like regular white photo paper. A ZINK-enabled device uses heat to activate and colorize these dye crystals.These crystals, named Amorphochromic™ crystals, represent an entirely new class of molecules, invented by ZINK Scientists through a rigorous discovery process. The properties of each dye crystal were finely tuned to achieve the color palette and image stability required for beautiful, full-color digital prints. ZINK™ scientists also invented a way to activate each of the crystals independently using heat pulses of precisely determined duration and temperature to achieve any color under the rainbow. The printing process is now radically simple.

More info here and originallly found here.