Slashdot Mirror
HP Invents A New Way To Print
Sushant Bhatia writes "Forbes is reporting that HP is introducing new technology in its inkjet printers that should help the company and consumers save time and money. If successful, the strategy may alter the economics of the printer market. The new inkjet platform, which will initially be geared toward the high end of the market, will incorporate the print head in the printer itself rather than in the ink cartridge. It means cheaper prints for consumers (about 24 cents per photo print) and faster output. HP says it has more than halved the time it takes to print a 4-inch-by-6-inch photo, to 14 seconds. The press release from HP has details on the new technology."
I blame Carley for this concept seeing the light of day. If she hadn't left the company so abruptly, such innovation technology would have been soundly buried, the employees sacked, and the tech developed by a competitor. Instead, HP is producing equipment based on this!
It used to be that you could count on HP to produce absolutely nothing of interest and sap up every failing tech company on the market. What is the world coming to?
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Being able to produce your own photos inexpensively from your digital images could worry businesses that print photos for you. If this tech hits the mainstream it could change the digital photo industry.
Voice your opinion!
So now will the whole printer expire instead of just the ink cartridge?
Most of the complaints against HP printers surrounds their replacement cartridge prices. Looks like, from the Forbes article that the new ones will be in the $10 price range. Curious to see how they turn this into their new cash cow. (Maybe 6 really, really low-capacity cartridges?)
Wow, this sounds all nifty keen, but its still using aging printer technology as the core...
Now if you're looking for a new way to print, this guy at the office was showing me something. Its a long transparent stick, with a blue line down the center on the inside. He moved it across a flat, thin, rectangular peice of processed tree matter, and voila! Words were being printed on it! Technology amazes me sometimes...
-FL
Thats not half as bad as the anti-tv zealots that feel a need to mention that they never watch tv every time it is mentioned just so they can feel superior.
So what if you have a girlfriend, and are in shape, and actually do some open-source programming in your new-found spare time.
You can pry my remote-control out of my cold dead hands.
So not only do the /. editors run story dupes, so does the PR team at HP... brilliant!
-> do not pay executives $42 million just for quitting, this should lower cost per page by at least 2 or 3 cents
-> do not hire executives who just came from worldcom, this will easily lower cost per page 5 or 6 cents
-> do not build DRM chips into ink cartridges, which can obviously lower the price per page by 10 cents
-> use the money saved by lowering executive pay to hire some actual engineers, so that the company, you know, actually might build some products
Although I realize you mean documents, Walmart lets you upload photos for printing and pick them up at the store. It's pretty slick.
:P
Being able to upload documents to a store's printer to pick up later is a great idea... but better still, if you have a printer/fax, then you would not even need to go pick them up, because they could fax them to you and save you the trip!
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Fuck shutting up, I read Slashdot.
--
Promoting critical thinking since 1994.
...the whole printer when the head dries out, you just have to submerge the printer in rubbing alcohol and hope it doesn't catch fire when you plug it back in.
Trends, huh? Just like their making the printers with bizarre hump shapes so you can't set anything on top of them. The wide black mouth of the 5550 printer gapes and laughs, like some sort of plastic ink-guzzling sinister giant clam: "Yes, you have IRREVOCABLY lost this desk space!" This is an example of outright poor design: form defeating function. Canon is at least as bad.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
...new opportunities to use your printer... even tattoos.
Dude, if you can fit your arm through the line-feeder of a typical inkjet printer, you seriously need to hit the gym.
(I keed, I keed!)
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
So did my Commodore MPS-802 in 1985.
I think the big story is that HP's invented a combination Wayback Machine and Reality Distortion Field.
-- I'm old enough to have lived through six different meanings of the word "hacker."
Thats not half as bad as the anti-tv zealots that feel a need to mention that they never watch tv every time it is mentioned just so they can feel superior.
I find that pretentiously referring to TV as "visual fiction" confuses the anti-TV zealots for long enough for me to escape the gravitational pull of their superiority field. YMMV.
All movements for social change begin as missions, evolve into businesses, and end up as rackets.
I think the big story is that HP's invented a combination Wayback Machine and Reality Distortion Field.
Unfortunately for HP, the White House has a patent on this already though.