HP's latest web-connected printers will print any document you email to them

 

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Posted on 17 Jun 2010 at 15:49

HP has announced that all forthcoming Photosmart inkjet MFPs with an RRP of £99 or above will be fully connected to the web, complete with their own email addresses that you can use to send them documents for printing.

This means that you need to send a document to your printer is an email client, which means that you'll be able to print, without installing drivers, from almost any computer or mobile device that has an email client. The printers will support Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel document formats, along with TXT, PDF and image file formats including JPG and TIFF.

There won't be much finesse – you won't able to select which pages of document are printed or alter any of the printer's default settings when you print by email. However, it does provide a way of creating hard copies via mobile phones and other devices without printer support.

Anyone who has your printer's email address will be able to send documents to it. This means that not only will be able to send files to your printer while you're on the move, but also that other people can do the same – if you need to sign that vital contract but don't have a fax machine, it could simply be signed, scanned and emailed directly to your printer.

HP has also given the printers white- and black-listing features, which will allow it to print only from specified addresses or refuse to print from any address on the blacklist – this will hopefully help to prevent attempts at spamming printers that will inevitably be made.

The new ePrinters build on technology first seen in last year's Photosmart MFPs, many of which had large touchscreens and an internet connection, allowing you to install applications from HP's App Studio to print out colouring pages, Sudoku puzzles and photos from the company's Snapfish online photo service.

The App Studio has been re-branded as the HP ePrintCenter and HP promises a host of new applications that for UK users, including shopping discount coupons from BeforeiShop, public domain sheet music from Free-scores.com, maps and directions from Mappy and news from Reuters. An SDK will also be made available to allow users and companies to create their own apps.

HP is currently in a trial scheme that will print advertising on the output of some of these news and entertainment apps – while this might help them monetise the technology, few of the applications are desirable enough to make us want to spend extra ink on printing the adverts.

Even more useful is promised support for document sharing via Box.net and Google Docs. Global head of HP Imaging and Printers, Vyomesh Joshi, told us that HP's research indicates that printing from the web will overtake printing from a word processor within the year. We don't doubt that the increasing popularity of Google Docs plays a large part in this.

HP has announced three Photosmart inkjet MFPs that will come with support for ePrint, priced at between £100 and £230 and set to come out between July and October this year. We also saw prototypes of two small business printers – a business inkjet MFP in the Officejet range and a new LaserJet MFP.

Author: Kat Orphanides