MBM Corp.

BY CHRIS BAUER The anticipation is over. PRINT 01 has come and gone. Printers from around the U.S. have headed home—although, for many, actually getting home after the terrorist attacks wound up being even more eventful than the show—with a full plate of information to digest after spending several days on the show floor in Chicago. But distributors of collating equipment are banking on the PRINT show as being the appetizer that whet the appetite of printers hungry for collating gear. The equipment offered today includes a full menu of features and options to satisfy all of the industry's yearnings. "The hot buttons

BY ERIK CAGLE The evolution of book publishing has some parallels with that of the computer. Smaller and quicker are the operative words in this comparison. Before the PC became a household fixture, computers were hulking boxes with reel-to-reel tapes and other round objects that made those cute little concentric circles. And they weren't the sharpest knives in the drawer, boasting the processing speed of a can opener. Book publishing was also big and scarry—1,000-page megatomes were loaded onto presses to churn out millions of copies. "War and Peace" was followed by hundreds of thousands of 500-page copies of biology books. Obviously, they

BY ERIK CAGLE Imagine a superstore that sold all makes and models of commercial printing equipment—from prepress to press and finishing gadgets. Obviously, this store would be rather large, with freight trains taking the place of shopping carts, making it a tad impractical. But that would ruin our story line. Anyway, today is your lucky day. The store is having a CMYK-light special on finishing equipment, and there are collating systems galore to be had at the right price. You take the aisle 1,700 trolley and get off in front of a procession of collating systems looking very nice in their display boxes. Cost