One of the most eye-catching devices on show at CES Unveiled – the curtain-raiser for the world’s biggest tech show – was the Lexmark Genesis.

This highly unusual all-in-one focuses on something that gets very little attention these days: scanning. Lexmark are rather cheesily referring to it as the “Now-In-One Printer” because of the speed at which the scanner operates.

Pop a document in the scanner tray – which unlike your traditional flatbed scanner, stands vertically rather than horizontally – and a preview of the scan appears on the Genesis’s 4.3in touchscreen LCD almost instantly (or within 750 milliseconds, according to a Lexmark spokesperson).  A full scan is completed within a couple of seconds.

How does it achieve such speeds? Well, it’s not really “scanning” in the traditional sense of the word. Mounted behind the glass is a 10-megapixel CMOS sensor, flanked by two banks of LEDs that fire in sequenced RGB (as you can just about make out in the shot below). In other words, it’s taking a digital photo of the page.

While the speeds were very impressive, it was difficult to get a sense of the scanning quality on the bustling CES showfloor, so we’ll have to reserve judgement on this techinque until we get our hands on a full review unit.

One thing we did observe, however, was the difficulties caused by the vertical scanning plate. Anything other than a full A4 document has to be clipped to the frame of the scanning plate, making it a little tricky to precisely line up multiple photos, for instance, or overlap one document over another.

However, the Genesis looks very smart, the touchscreen-driven controls were very simple and intuitive, and it’s refreshing to see somebody attempting to do something different in the hideously static all-in-one market.

The Genesis will cost $399 in the US; UK pricing is yet to be confirmed.

But the real news for me – and for anyone who ever has trouble choosing a printer – is the way Lexmark’s eight-product line has been assembled.

Currently, buying a printer is a confusing experience, with too many competing manufacturers, each with too many printer ranges that contain too many similar models and accept too many different cartridge types. Even within a single manufacturer’s product range, the variation in quality and speed can be staggering.

So Lexmark is taking a different approach, one that makes choosing a printer so simple for consumers I can only beg and plead with Canon, HP, Epson and the rest of the inkjet world to flagrantly copy it.

Put simply, whether you buy the base consumer model for $99, the premium $399 business device or any of the six models in-between, you’ll get the same underlying print engine.

Yes, that means the cheapest budget model will print at the same speed and produce the same quality prints as the dearest premium all-in-one. They’re essentially the same printer. They’ll also all accept ‘XL’ high-yield cartridges to cut print costs.

Where Lexmark will differentiate is in features, beginning with a basic all-in-one and progressively adding document feeders, ports, LCD screens, a 4.3in touchscreen, fax capabilities and all the usual extras as you move up the price scale. So, if you don’t want to pay for Ethernet and extra print trays you don’t need, just don’t buy them – the price you’ll pay is determined solely by the feature set, with quality and speed a reassuring constant.

That delightful approach aside, Lexmark was here to show off its touchscreen interface more than anything, and I have to say I came away impressed. It’s only on the top models, but the large 4.3in panel has room for nice, clear icons, and the designers have ensured the main copy, scan and fax menus contain the bare minimum of major options. Should you need to dig deeper, standard list menus can be accessed from there. (Click the image for a closer look.)

But many business users have specific copying tasks that they repeat on a regular basis, so Lexmark has come up with an innovative PC-based time-saving solution. Create an account on the website and, in a browser-based version of the printer’s menu, you can pre-select all the settings for a particular print, scan or copy job. Give it a name and save it; it will be pushed out across the internet to your associated Lexmark inkjets where it will appear in the custom job menu as an icon.

For example, if you regularly copy and resize your day’s invoices two-to-a-page and in draft mode to save paper and ink, you just choose those settings online, save the job as ‘Invoice Copy’ and it’ll be sent to your office printer’s menu. Next time you place your two invoices on the platen, instead of going through the copy menu you simply press the Invoice Copy icon and the settings are chosen for you. It’s exceedingly simple and saves both time and money.

There’s also a range of Eco options that can be enabled to save paper and ink, along with a similarly pre-configurable scan-to-email option that goes one step further by actually sending the email itself – no PC required.

It remains to be seen if Lexmark has significantly redesigned its laboured menu system on the non-touch devices, but premium users will certainly see a huge improvement. And the move to individual inks has long been required; sample photo prints I was shown looked promising but only our tests will tell for sure. A claimed 90-second top quality 6 x 4in print also piqued my interest.

They’re due to launch officially next week, and we’ve been promised a top-end Platinum Pro905 as soon as Lexmark receives them in the UK, so look out for a full review in the next few weeks. I didn’t think I’d be saying this following our last Canon-dominated group test, but Lexmark could well be stepping up to the plate at last.

Of course, some conveniently shorten into a series of letters that can actually be said as a single, new word. Think acronyms like NASA, SCUBA, laser. Think VAIO.

Today I read of Sony’s redefinition of the famous VAIO brand, and it occurred to me that I had absolutely no idea what it had stood for since its creation.

Very Attractive If Overpriced, perhaps?

The truth, it turns out, is not as exciting as I’d hoped. The original Video Audio Integrated Operation will now become the vastly more descriptive and creative Visual Audio Intelligent Organiser. The laptop world can exhale again.

But Sony isn’t the only brand with a famous abbreviation; a fairly obvious one is the use of HTML in the name of HoTMaiL. There are plenty of other IT brands with abbreviated product or company names – and they range from the interesting to the truly cringe-worthy. How many of these did you know?

Starting off gently with places…

Lexmark, a spin-off from IBM’s printer-manufacturing division, was so named after its base in Lexington, Kentucky. Kyocera is abbreviated from the original Kyoto Ceramics Co, while CISCO isn’t actually an acronym, despite appearances – it’s short for San Francisco.

Onto merging company names…

The two companies Shibaura Seisakusho and Tokyo Denki merged in 1939 to form Tokyo Shibaura Denki, nicknamed Toshiba. It took nearly 40 years for the now-famous name to be made offical.

LG, thankfully, comes from the merger of two Korean companies, Lucky and Goldstar. Far less saccharine than the oft-used “Life’s Good”.

Word meanings…

Samsung comes from the Korean word meaning “three stars”, while Sony itself is derived from Sonus, the Greek goddess of sound. Asus is another abbreviation, and fairly obvious once you know it; it comes from Pegasus, the mythical winged horse.

Finally, the Greek root xer means “dry”, so inventor Chester Carlson used it to distinguish his dry copying device from the wet copying devices of the time; thus Xerox was born.

Place names, merging companies, ancient words and mythical characters. But, much like VAIO once you know what it actually stands for, some acronyms sound exotic but are just plain bad.

Can BenQ really stand for Bringing Enjoyment and Quality to Life?