Digital Home Thoughts - News & Reviews for the Digital Home

"HP ePrint lets you print from virtually anywhere. One of the ways that ePrint works is to assign an email address to your printer. To print, simply send an email containing your document to your printer's address. You can print images, Microsoft Word, Excel* and PowerPoint documents, PDFs, and photos. Note: .... Documents printed with ePrint may appear different from the original. Style, formatting, and text flow may differ slightly from the original document. For documents that need to be printed with a higher quality (such as legal documents), we recommend that you print from the software application on your computer, where you will have more control over what your printout looks like."

Sending a print job via the internet is not new technology, but HP's ePrint service raises the ante by simplifying the process, and by signing on content providers such as CNET, USA Today, and Google Maps in hopes of increasing the desirability and usage of the service. Indeed, while HP mentions the ability to store documents in "the cloud" for later printing, most of the emphasis appears to be on the "Print Apps" which provide "Instant access to relevant, printable web content from your printer screen," and appear to be primarily home or family based in their appeal. To utilize the service you need a HP printer with ePrint capability, and you must create an account, which will assign a random e-mail address to your printer. A typical Print App will then allow you to print content such as a Google map, a daily news summary, or perhaps a page of coupons. If the service catches on, HP would realize an increase in printer sales, and - perhaps more significantly - an increase in profitable printer ink sales. However, given the popularity of smartphones, netbooks, and tablets (Apple or otherwise), I would question how many people are clamoring to have more printed pages as opposed to having content sent to (or natively available on) their portable device of choice. Does HP's ePrint service seem significant enough that you would be willing to base your next printer purchase upon it?

"If the numbers of ink colours manufacturers build into their high-end photo printers goes on increasing, there’ll be one for every conceivable colour before long. If you don't believe us, witness the Epson Stylus Photo R2880 and its new UltraChrome K3 ink system. It uses a mammoth eight colours, including a 'vivid' magenta, two grey inks and a choice of blacks, making it ideal semi-professional and professional photo printing."

While we keep on talking about the great benefits of the paperless office, it is still a very, very long way away. Personally, I have found little use for printers, be it for photos or personal or business use. I like keeping everything digital. It is easier to store, access and manipulate. However, I can see how some people might want hard copies of things, especially photographs of precious moments. And for those, we turn to inkjet printers, now with more ink tanks! It has been a while since I've used printers, but they still appear to be quite popular, and ink prices are still high enough to make me cringe. I imagine that the print quality has gone up though, especially if they have more colour tanks than I can count on one hand. Anyone has experience with the prosumer level printers and the photos they produce?

"Belkin Home Base lets anyone within an existing wireless network print to a single, shared printer from anywhere in the home. Attach an external hard drive to one of Home Base's four USB ports to save and share music, pictures, and videos with your family. Home Base has wireless built in, so the wired port is an option if you do not want to go wirelessly. It will automatically back up each connected computer's files periodically to a connected external hard drive, so you don't have to worry about sudden data loss. With the automatic sharing feature, Home Base can automatically upload your new photos to a Flickr or Picasa account. With popular gaming consoles like PS3™ or Xbox 360®, Home Base lets you wirelessly access media files stored on an attached hard drive."

Pretty neat, my Western Digital WorldBook recently died, leaving me without network file storage (luckily I've got a mutli-layered backup scheme and didn't lose anything). The above paragraph just mentions sharing storage and printers, but the bullet points seem to suggest that you can share any USB device, so I wonder if a scanner would work too.

"However, Lexmark is using its touch technology–which it’s calling myTouch with SmartSolutions (not to be confused with T-Mobile’s myTouch 3G phone)–for quite different purposes than HP’s. The Lexmark printers, unlike HP’s consumery model, are designed for use in small- and medium-sized businesses. Lexmark’s screens are Web-enabled (they let you scan documents and e-mail them without a PC being involved, and include a simple RSS reader) but don’t let you print Web content directly in the way that HP’s does. Instead, Lexmark mostly uses the screen to simplify tasks that you’d normally accomplish with the dedicated plastic keys that most printers have. And the SmartSolutions part of myTouch with SmartSolutions is a nifty-looking feature that lets you save multiple custom sets of settings for use by different people–potentially pretty handy in offices where folks share a printer."

I'm a luddite when it comes to printers, I just have a really basic black and white laser printer. Sure I print photos, but Costco costs $0.13 a print and is a minute away from my house. But, I do find these features pretty compelling for the office. In fact the scan/e-mail function is something I use quite often on our workgroup printer at work.