Another Personal Die Cutter in the works...

In response to the new Wishblade/Xyron Machine, Provo Craft is introducing the Cricut personal cutter. From what I hear, it is a scaled down version of the Creative Cutter by Pazzles! I have no idea about price and the one picture I have seen looks like an injet printer. Which makes it look more useful than the Xyron one. From what I can tell, the Xyron cutter will only cut smaller sizes of paper (less than 8.5x11). It APPEARS (keep in mind that I haven't seen this machine), that you have to insert the paper into a cutting drawer with a cutting pad. From the info I read, the machine works like a Leap Pad. You have an interactive book hooked up to your machine with the shapes laid out on pages of the pad and you use an electronic pen to select the shape. It then runs it to the cutter. Honestly, that seems cumbersome to me. But, like I said, I haven't seen it, yet.

According the the small snippet of info about the Cricut, it cuts from images on a cartridge - not sure where the cartridge is place, though. It DOES look like it will cut 8.5x11 - which seems more logical. I can get cardstock in that size. Each design on the cartridge can be cut in 12 different sizes.

I really wonder what this will do to personal manual die-cut systems. This seems so exciting and convenient. And, now that the technology is out there, it will get better and more convenient and cheaper over time. I mean, the Quickutz tool was $100 when it was introduced and now it's $79. Over time, the price will drop on these and pretty soon we all won't know how we ever scrapped without them!