Your office keyboard- home to tens of thousands of bacteria; telephone handsets- veritable filth stations; door-handles- too hideous to even think about! And then there’s that photocopier; sitting there in the corner of the room, millions of bacteria swarming about it, lunging for officer workers’ throats whenever they get within a few feet. No one is safe from its field of infection!

(This, ladies and gentlemen, is British sarcasm. Or ‘humour’, as we like to call it back home.)

Japanese electronics giant Sharp Corporation, hot on the heels of the success of their Plasma-cluster Ion-equipped refrigerators, humidifiers, washing machines and the like, has launched a new line of office-use photocopiers that include their patented technology.

Plasma-cluster Ion technology, for those of you who have had better things to do recently, is a swish new high-tech method of making the air around electronic goods sterile, in essence killing off nasty bacteria that can lurk around it, just waiting to be picked up by unsuspecting humans. Since food contamination is a serious business, the inclusion of the technology in Sharp’s fridges and kitchen utensils is a welcome addition, and the company has seen increasingly strong sales of its Plasma-cluster Ion-equipped products, with more and more new models featuring the distinct black and white “Plasmacluster” mark.

Perhaps Sharp can explain it better…

Their latest offering, however- a photocopier with a huge, plasma-cluster ion emitting unit affixed to the top- smells just a little of overkill, and has been the object of much derision on social networks and technology sites, with many commenters leaping to their (filthy?) keyboards to express their amusement.

“Sharp really are on a different page to everyone else, aren’t they?”

“Cue the sound of the wind whistling and church-bells in the distance…”

“Ha ha ha! They’ll be shoving plasma-cluster into their TV sets next!”

“Is there really nothing else they could be doing with their time?”

“Companies do tend to go a bit crazy before they collapse…”

“Is this Sharp? The Sharp? The once mighty company that everyone loved?? Oh, Sharp! Shaaaaaarp… sniff sniff”

But Sharp maintains that it’s simply looking out for ordinary folks like you and me, listing its new range of office equipment alongside its other Plasma-cluster Ion products, and proudly telling us, in prose that seems awfully laboured, it has to be said, of their tremendous benefits:

“Because the workplace is where people spend so much of their time, we want to devote our energy to improving the quality of their air they breathe.”

Oh, Sharp. We’re sure that you mean well, but we can’t recall the last time anyone died because the office lacked a Plasma-cluster ion diff–  (thud)

Source: Hamster Sokuhou

Images: Sharp Corporation

Sparkly halo of awesomeness: Me