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."

Comments

All Carley's Fault

[AKAImBatman]

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?

Ouch

[Spackler]

So now will the whole printer expire instead of just the ink cartridge?

Ink Prices?

[abcxyz]

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?)

Re:The Best Way To Print...

[Golias]

Although I realize you mean documents, Walmart lets you upload photos for printing and pick them up at the store. It's pretty slick.

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! :P

HP product degradation

[AtariAmarok]

"Don't worry, this is HP. They'll make up for it somehow, probably by raising the price of ink even higher. And as an added bonus, they'll make their printer drivers even more unstable and difficult to install."

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.

Re:Photolithography

[Reaperducer]

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.