HP Launches New Web/Email-Enabled Printers 66
HP, the soon-to-be-Palm-parent-company is moving quickly and strongly into Internet-enabled printers with its new ePrint Platform and four new "e-all-in-One" printers. These products will enabled users to send print jobs via the Google Cloud (Docs, Photos and Calendar), using new apps from partners like Crayola and Live Nation, and most relevantly for this community, "from any web-connected device - smartphones, iPads, netbooks and more", according to Vyomesh Joshi, HP's Executive Vice President, Imaging and Printing Group. The release goes on to very specifically mention the possibility of "an executive on a train sending a presentation from a Palm Pre or Blackberry smartphone to print and pick up at a FedEx Office Store."
The Times piece, a feature on Vyomesh Joshi, includes a quote which could as easily be talking about future webOS development as printing:
"'Now that H.P. is going mass-market with this technology, we will more actively program to it,' said Steve Youngwood, an executive vice president at Nickelodeon."
While this announcement is not expressly about putting webOS on printers, it shows that HP's overall strategy of improving mobile data use from creation to production, a strategy for which webOS and the Palm smartphones will be a key component, is both moving ahead and getting positive attention.
66 Comments
Nice, but I'd still ike to see improved phone hardware.
Yeah, especially since you seen iPhone 4 over on engadget!
Nice, but I'd still like to see improved phone hardware.
if only I could *edit* a document from my phone, then print via cloud.... Ah Dataviz, you bastards!!!
Well @ least he said " from a Palm Pre or Blackberry" and didn't say 'from your EVO'
wow I actually seen this coming last week. I posted a comment on the article of Hurd retracting his statement about HP making smartphones..
at the end of my comment this is what I said last week...
"The smartphone should be on a priority list of things here. It's a main communication device to compliment any new devices such as a tablet... A remote control if you will... Imagine a smartphone that could link with the tablet via WebOS.. Just imagine the possibilities of the productivity.. Or hell send a file from your phone to your printer via WebOS connectivity while your pulling up to your office or walking up to your front door. By the time you walk in your document would be waiting for you.
I see an endless sea of possibilities here.. However the WebOS smartphone is the key to linking all the other devices to work as a collective because lets face it.. A smartphone is slightly more portable then a tablet."
crazy I seen the possibilities of a printer that could have the possibilities of receiving a document from your WebOS device on the way into the office or home so it would be there waiting for you.
Now all we need is document editing on the WebOS to make this vision a reality!
wow what else did I predict... Oh ya new hardware announced around the same time the buy out is officially announced making HP look cool. That and I heard from various sources in Sprint there is a 4G Palm phone being released this year.
lets see how close I was on this one next. Lol that would be creepy and I don't work for Sprint, Palm or HP.... Just someone that can read betwee the lines instead of freaking out.
i got my printer when someone left it in the dumpster. Works perfectly.
They could put Neo, Trinity, Agents and the whole damn Matrix inside a printer. It's not gonna make it more appealing. Its just a printer. It sits in the corner til i turn it on.
Tell that to Mr Average User, who can't figure out how to share printers for the two computers they have. Then have a solution that they plug it in and it just works for them. This type of thing, combined with Google's push for printer driver standardization will work wonders to reduce frustration from average users.
I am mr. average user. We don't care much about printers. but do you honestly think the average user is printing a ton of stuff in the digital age? They average user is barely printing anything. Plus If they can't figure out how to print share, which is quite easy in windows 7, they surely won't be interested in learning a new O.S. just to share printers. This isn't a solution it just adds another layer of complexity to something they already don't care much about doing.
A good piece of software doesn't ADD complexity, it removes it. A good UI with easy to understand options on a touchscreen would make printer setup and maintenance easier.
The less users know and trust technology, the more they print out everything, in my experience.
I look at this technology like the difference between GoToMyPC and setting up a VPN or RPC. The VPN is probably more efficient, but anyone can setup and use GoToMyPC.
Not printing as much as I used to, but when I do print, the demands on quality and format are magnitudes higher. And I might be printing on one of six printers in the house from one of eight different computers depending on what is needed. Several of those printers juggle scanning, fax (whatever fax is) and copying, so a simple and reliable interface is very much appreciated. HP does a decent job expressing what it's trying or capable of doing.
Too many devices still just give a little LED light that blinks in a certain pattern or color depending on what snafu struck. So I have to believe the average user really appreciate better feedback and control.
"Too many devices still just give a little LED light that blinks in a certain pattern or color depending on what snafu struck. So I have to believe the average user really appreciate better feedback and control."
So true! I'm pretty savvy and have set up a fair share of printer shares, networked printers, etc, but I definitely think that the market could always use more easy to setup and maintain printers that gave actual meaningful feedback (without necessarily having to install the manuf'r bloatware). If you could just plug the stupid thing in and have it work more effectively without any fuss, who would argue with that?
now that was kind of ignorant basically saying Mr. Average user is pretty much dumb.
Mr. Average user knows how to work his computer and know how to read if they need to set up a network to printer share. It's the people that are computer illiterate that can't do that. All they use the computer for is Facebook,online games and internet porn. I don't see a printer problem there. Lol
I'll tell you what though my sister has a newer HP printer and it's got this really cool feature on it that's helped me out so I don't have to put her unstable rig on a network so we can share her printer..... Her HP printer has a flippin USB port on the front of it. I just walk up plug my laptop in. Windows notices it fairly quickly and I print..oooo ahhhh.. Lol.
I usually only print maps for friends without GPS on their phones or stand alone units (yes there are still some slow goers out there), reciepts for when I purchase something online and need to pick it up, event ticket confirmations, airline confirmations, resumes, spreadsheets for events, presentation paperwork, etc etc..
so yes a printer is still useful on this day and age. Alot of people still use them. Just because some of you don't anymore doesn't mean everyone isn't anymore.
what's amazing is if you don't have a printer or it is removed from your life eventually you wish you had it.... Then when you have it now you don't need it...
that would be cool to be able to print from the cloud to my printer. God only knows how many times someone has sent something to me in PDF that I wish I could open an app view it then just send it to my printer from wherever I may be like a fax and it would be there when I get home to look over.
but hey that's just me I'm only a blue collar warehouse worker and a "D" list Pro Skateboarder. Guess I'm Mr. Average "power" user.. Lol
More than printer I rather see a pad on my fridge that syncs with my pre, so I know what groceries to buy before I come home to my wife.
Just check Google for "3Com Audrey," or, alternatively, "huge PalmOS failure." :)
Boooooorrrrrinnng....
It's funny that while I might use this feature only a couple of times a year I'm super excited about it. I got an HP wireless printer not long ago and it is awesome to just print from any computer anywhere in my house.
If I could print a web page I see on my phone, directions I bring up on my work computer but need my wife to have at home, or scan/snapshot a menu to print at home to coordinate what's for dinner, that would be awesome. Right now it's the headache of walking whoever in my house through getting to their e-mail, opening up whatever document type, previewing it or printing it, yada, yada. Instead it will be "grab the page off the printer."
Now if we could only stream line some sort of "print to device", like e-mail but more direct, for trusted devices/users. So if I wanted to send something to my wife's laptop screen without her having to open anything, I could just "print to device" and pick a trusted device where it would open in the appropriate program in the background and then the person on the other end could bring it to the foreground.
exactly nhavar that's what I'm talkin about! Many times I had my lady ask for certain maps or pdf files I had on my Pre or she had me look something up for her I could of just made the printer print it scare the crap out of her but she would get the info she needed while she was getting ready for work.
by the time she got out of the shower it would be waiting for her instead of slowing her down getting ready to open an email attachment and print it.
I hate to we a wet blanket, but does the fact that HP bought Palm mean every announcement from HP get posted here as news weather it has anything to do with Palm or not?
The fact that Palm's WebOS might be used on these HP printers is why its posted here. So with every HP announcement possibly regarding WebOS, yes you will see it posted as news.
May have been a quick typo but its whether not weather ;)...not to be the spelling nazi but if I spelled something wrong and didn't know it I would want to. If you don't care just ignore lol.
"I hate to we a wet blanket" - then don't be!!!
I for one like the fact that I get to know about what HP is doing for it will tell me in a way what is going to happen with the pre. So all in all good work pre|central.net great work.
Wet blanket and all, the site is more about WebOS than it is about the Pre. The Pre as a device was very good in concept, incomplete when launched, and a bit dated now.
But WebOS is as fresh and better than it was a year ago and continues to grow in concept and execution. HP has been clear, it is a part of their future business and product lines. If you dont like advanced electronics that have advanced capabilities, yet simple interfaces, I guess I can understand your pain.
webOS Printers were one of the first things I thought of when HP bought Palm. We have HP printers at work. They print/fax/scan/copy; their menus are confusing and difficult to work. We all use them though, printers - way to get webOs into the consciousness of the masses.
They may say we live in a paperless world, but we don't. We live in a world where everything is entered on computer and then still printed out and kept on file.
"and then still printed"
uh. Not in my experience. i print very little. And in my job there is an edict to print a whole lot less. the world isn't paperless but but it's using less printing. We have hp printers at work.
You just hit print from your computer and walk to the printer. Done and done. If you want to change computers you just pick the computer from the dropdown menu and hit print and walk to the computer. My experience is there are no menus for anyone to care about. Plus we have rented extremely fancy zerox ones with large menues. They are networked and work exactly the same as the HPs. You pick the computer, hit print and wait. This to me is a solution waiting for a problem.
Ah try working in social care or health in the UK. We have to enter everything on computer and then print it out to provide evidence to show we are meeting our targets. If it isn't written down/printed out so the Inspector can look at it in a file then it didn't happen and wasn't done.
And yes, we are told to print as little as possible too - the printers can theoretically do all sort of fancy paper saving stuff but no-one understands how. We use the printers to fax documents and to scan them too...we scan signed documents to our computers so we can e-mail them. But as I said, the user interface is terrible.
"And here is your fifty page contract, review it carefully and sign the top side of the CD".
"No Grandma, thats not a stamp, its an SD card with my letter and pictures from our school play".
"...and here is the confirmation for my room reservation with the room rate you offered on the web? Do you have a keyboard and monitor so I can show it to you?"
"Sorry my report isn't here teacher, the dog ate my thumbdrive."
I also wasn't too excited by webos on printers, nor printers on the web, but reading the Times this morning, it did seem like a solid idea. I hate the fact that I need drivers on PC's, even networked ones. At home, I used an old computer as a print server, but even that solution gets bad as the computer ages.
I just bought a new wireless/wired/bluetooth HP Printer. And the interesting thing was the way my children used it - it prints suduko, mazes, graph paper, etc., and I keep catching them in the office using up my paper/ink! I'm just happy HP doesn't have a paper airplane application...
This will make my life much simplier. The end of print drivers is pretty big.
Did any article mention how they would handle settings? Suppose I want a small photo vs. plain legal paper, etc.?
WebOS will really work well this this, both as a client and server.
Here is one of my post from Yahoo financial board, which I thought is relevant w.r.t. webOS development that I hope HP/Palm should follow immediately.
Will webOS be able to match up with iOS4 ? I think iOS4 will never be able to become a true web-centric operating system as long as it continues to operate in it's i-ecosystems driving all those i-cult members to buy more and more i-devices.
I think webOS can do much better if webOS can become a true device-independent OS. To do that HP/Palm should try to build, ASAP, a true web-based service facility, just like a Google-Doc system on a virtual server. And it should be build in a way to be able to interface with any system (like a navigation system, or a billing system, or a library or medical system), or device (like a smartphone, or a tablet/slate, or a printer, or a laptop operating inside a plane flying by, or a camera/video streaming live shots in an wi-max setup, etc.) that requests for a webOS-based service. Anyway, I just dropped some hints,and I hope someone understands.
HP seems to have trouble with their printing buisiness, which makes a third of their profit.
This news absolutely not about webOS, in fact it's not even mentioned anywhere. It's more about HPs printing strategy in the future, which fits actually pretty well into the acquisition of Palm.
The fact that webOS isn't mentioned doesn't bother me at all, since its still some time until the end of July. What bothers me more is that a couple of iDevices are mentioned here and there to gain attention. The Pre is the only hint towards Palm. Doesn't seem to me HP wants to be a big competitor against iApple. Doesn't seem HP is really confident in the superiority of webOS.
This would have been the perfect opportunity to hint to a new Palm device, making not only waves for that, but also for the new printing ehh... revolution
Release dates of the printers are mentioned ranging from end of July to September. I wonder if the first webOS printers are among them, or if they keep using their existing printerOS for the time beeing.
The idea to print something to an email address is pretty interesting IMO. printing that without turning on a PC, fetching the mail, opening the attachment and printing that sounds neat...
but I don't think I would need to print that much. newspapers? I read them on my phone. Printing photos from social networks? I don't think the quality of those justifies a print. Printing nikelodeon stuff for the kids? Maybe too expensive. The Kids would rather surf the web and print porn if their teens *g*
Printing directly to a photo lab and fetching that in a kiosk? Isn't that something, which online photo labs already do?
Printers do have a raison d'
I'm trying to do a better job of thinking of webOS utilization from the ecosystem perspective. From that position, I'm imagining plenty of clever back and forth scenarios for Pre, Printer, and Tablet. Imagine an hp all-in-one with a "Scan, Print or Upload to Palm Profile option" drop in your SD card from your Nikon, and have your pictures viewable on your tablet. Get push notifications when your print job is finished. Edit across multiple devices (or accounts) and always have your data synched. With webOS as the backbone of an ecosystem, you can begin to imagine a desktop/windows PC-less world. Which, btw, is CRAZY. Taken in that context, this is actually fairly big news.
A few days after the hugely succesful HTC Evo launch, and the same day as the iPhone 4 announcement, HP gives us...new printers?! :(
Don't act so surprised. HP is, in fact, a printer company. They didn't buy webOS to compete with the greatest phones on the planet.
I really don't understand why people are not listening or understanding what is going on. HP is not in the cell phone business and will not be. This means that Palm will keep doing business according to their roadmap, and it also means that HP will not throw a lot of money at Palm. They will use a version of WebOS on their other products but Palm is the one responsible for the smartphone devision.
I think you guys are being a little myopic. Even if HP throws Palm a pittance by their standards, it will be a whole heck of a lot more cash than Palm has seen in a long time.
Second, they haven't actually BOUGHT Palm yet and are releasing devices on their own roadmap. The reason why folks are running stories on this is because we're beginning to see the possibilities here with a whole host of interconnected devices, yes- including printers. Printers make up 1/3 of HP's profits, so obviously in their past investor's call they had to make HP's long-term prospects look good to investors, who consider printing an important cash-cow.
Third... HP would be plain stupid to just slap webOS on printers and be done with it. If they really want this web-connected ecosystem to thrive, they know they'll have to go through smartphones (at least in part) in order to get there.
Fourth... HP just struck a big deal with Intel and Enomaly that will give them a strong foothold in the cloud server market. Scanning to the cloud from all-in-one printers is just the start. Don't think for one second that webOS smartphones won't be the beneficiaries of this deal.
Now... I'm with you guys hoping that HP doesn't half-asss this effort. I wrote my editorial to this effect over on webOSroundup.
... But regardless I think people just writing HP off as a printer company with no interest in any other market are thinking way, way, way too small.
Excellently put!
The only concern I have about this email printing is security. There better be some sort of authentication. I already get enough junk email and texts. If someone can just email a print job to me, I want SOME way of controlling it. Ink / toner is not free and I spend enough on it for my own use.
Wow.. This is where its from & going to...
HPackard...
HPC (Compaq)
HPrinter
HPnetwork (3COM)
HPalm
HP+W(WebEnabledStuff)
its interesting that HP choose 'Palm Pre' followed by 'Blackberry'. Maybe a hint as to which market they plan on marketing Palm phones too? i.e. business users. Just a thought
how is that example different than uploading to fedex.com and telling it which location I want to pick it up from (which I do frequently).
I don't actually get the value here... What did I miss?
printers? who wants that... where is the toaster!!!
text to toaster - toast
i get home.. i have toast! or a house on fire.. either way.. it much cooler then a printer
maybe I'm tarded, but I don't see the benefit of this over emailing someone the doc and letting them print it.
many companies are in fact going paperless and using digital signatures for things and still giving you the option for printing hard copies only when you need them.
perrsonally, I believe this may be a fad due to the 'coolness' of it, but will soon wear off.
how is that example different than uploading to fedex.com and telling it which location I want to pick it up from (which I do frequently).
I don't actually get the value here... What did I miss?
Slow news day.
what I read is that the new printers will have their own email adress and you do something on your mobile device and send it as an email and the printer will que it up and then print it. A very cool and interesting idea!
how is that example different than uploading to fedex.com and telling it which location I want to pick it up from (which I do frequently).
I don't actually get the value here... What did I miss?
how is that example different than uploading to fedex.com and telling it which location I want to pick it up from (which I do frequently).
I don't actually get the value here... What did I miss?
Definitely not the "save" button.
I feel like Palm has become Dunder Mifflin from NBC's The Office. Bought to sell printers.
Is John Rub. anything like Michael Scott?
Leave it to HP to come up with the 21st century FAX machine.
I also don't understand this move considering consumer-level printers are practically disposable nowadays--run out of ink, buy a new printer for just about the same cost as ink carts would run you. The pricing on the premium wireless models is pretty hefty, and it remains to be seen if people will buy into that to print from their smartphones or other mobile devices.
On a totally unrelated note: What's up with all the double, tripe and quadruple posts in the comments?
fyi. Commemts from Mr. Hurd to me direct email to his comments on buying Palm to NOT get into the SmartPhone
business:
(note typo "andr" is his...)
RE: Feedback to CEO andr D.Padilla
On Jun 7, 2010 4:24 PM, External ceo-communication wrote:
When we look at the market, we see an array of interconnected devices, including tablets, printers and,of course, smartphones. We believe webOS can become the backbone for many of HP's small form factor devises, and we expect to expand weOS's footprint beyond just the smartphone market, all while leveraging our financial strenght, scale and global reach to grow in smartphones.
CEO Customer Relations
Don't be too disappointed, but "CEO Customer Relations" = Customer Service Associates (or automation) answering emails (with canned responses .. sometimes with typos to make it more "human") on behalf of Mr. Hurd.
hey hp .... Why don't you make printing affordable and then I might print more .... Being able to burn through over priced consumables easier and more conveniently does not really motivate me to burn through more overpriced consumables.
I need my WebOS coffemaker, screw the toaster. Also it's not like we buy printers every year. I think the printers are gonna be for more of business side. I bought a brother wireless printer eight months ago barely use it. Print a resume or receipts and that's about it. Print from the pre would be pretty cool though I guess.
So are they going to be accepting preorders or will I have to stand in line all night? Do you think the HP employees are going to hand out reams of printer paper to the fIrst 200 customers on launch day?
I'm surprised no one else has commented on the security issues of this "solution". As described, anyone can send a document to the email address of the printer and it will automatically get printed.
That's all well and good, but without some sort of authentication system, that anyone could literally be ANYone.
I'm assuming you'll register your printer and it will be assigned an address like printer1@hpprinter.com. Once this addessing scheme gets known, does any one honestly believe the printers won't soon be inundated by spam?
Think about how much spam you already get in your email. Do you really want to come home to find 50 pages of add for porn & viagra sitting on your printer every day?
Like I said before, ink isn't cheap. There had better be some kind of authentication system. Some kind of password system, a white list, something.
I tell you, as intruiging as this concept is, if I can't control what gets printed, I definitely won't be getting one any time soon. HP had better understand that ease of use does not obviate the need for security.
Amazon's Kindle devices also have an email address assigned to them so you can send docs, pdfs, mp3's, etc to your Kindle. However, not anyone can email your Kindle. You have to set up a list of pre-approved email addresses that Amazon uses to filter out spam. For an HP printer with an email address I would assume the default behavior would be to hold the emailed files on the server and not to just automatically print them out.
Kindle's have a cellular radio built in to receive books and incoming emailed files, without a subscription fee. To be able to support this they charge 15 cents per Megabyte (for files, not books of course)
I wonder if the HP printers will have the same capability. This way anyone can get use them without a computer and without an existing home network.
Wow, this is really visionary! Since we're moving more to print based content instead of digital. [wink]
Why is HP wasting it's resources on this?
This foolishness is a bad omen for things to come for Palm.
It could be a win-win-win (for palm-hp-consumer).
HP just gives Palm almost total autonomy as the Smartphone division -- with a nice steady flow of cash to fund them. Palm leverages HP's marketing, distribution, business salesforce and hardware resources / partnerships.
Palm Wins.
Meanwhile, HP's other divisions leverage WebOS as the interface on a multitude of devices. Printers, tablets, clock-radios, phone/answering machines (think synergy contacts auto sync), monitors, camcorders, thermostats (don't laugh). Palm's developer headcount expands so they can support requests from these other divisions.
HP Wins.
Consumers get the best Smartphone and seamless integration with other products / appliances that get a user interface you already know how to use.
Consumer Wins.
net-net, You win.
READ MY LIPS!! MOST PEOPLE DO NOOOOOT Print. The view, attach send, where someone else views, disgards and/or forwards. This is a digital age where paper is a primary output. Even Corporate America (Who this technology is for) is going more green. A presentation is shared via Live Meeting, E-Mail, NetMeeting etc. Rarely printed and passed out. Movie Tickets, E-Cards... pretty much everything is output digitally.
So Please....Quit the shenanigans and give me my new WebOS Phone.
I used to print all the time until I got an eReader.
:)
webOS on a large, *non*-backlit LCD (like the Jetbook Lite) would make an amazing eReader. I'm not sure what's holding them back.
Heck... make a couple different sizes between the 5-9" range and GIVE AN OPTION TO TURN THE BACKLIGHT OFF!!!
That's a money maker right there. Backlights are what keep me away from an iPad, an HP Slate, etc. I want non-backlit so I can stare at it for hours. Tablets, in my mind, should be used in environments that already have pretty good lighting.
webOS on an eReader would be pretty fabulous. Think an Eee Tablet. You guys might not see the benefit of such a non-backlit LCD w/ hi-resolution touchscreen... but most everybody else will. The Eee Tablet is the tablet of the future, but a webOS Tablet like that would be way, way better. And no mic APIs necessary for such a cheap tablet.
Correction.....This is a digital age where paper is NOT a primary output. So don't put Primary Dollars (a dual overhead Cam, A Holly Four Barrel, NOS,) on a skateboard, that few people ride.
MAN!!
Remember the Fax days when you would get all types of advertisements from entities that got your fax #. Is this where WebOS is headed. Put me on the "Do Not Print" List Right NOW!!
Immagine this on a WebOS phone:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLy_M3vSBW0&feature=player_embedded
I was really looking for something that can print without the use of the web. Now don't have to face this problem in near future.
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