Yes - you heard me right. Printing through a mobile phone. How do I do that?

I wanted to take a few minutes to share with you an experimental/beta service that allows users to share, store, and print documents easily using your mobile phone.

It is called CloudPrint and it was developed by HP Labs. Perhaps you don't always carry around your laptop, but probably always carry around your mobile phone. Perhaps you received an e-mail on your Blackberry or browsed an interesting article on the web? If you could only print it instead of viewing it on that tiny mobile phone screen!

In the past, you would have tried to figure out how to email a copy of the document to your notebook or synch up you phone to another mobile device. And forget about trying to directly print from a mobile phone directly to a printer (although hp has developed some phone-specific solutions for Nokia).

With CloudPrint, you can take your mobile phone to any networked printer and "print" your documents. There is no need to synch up - just receive them from the "Internet Cloud" and print them to a local printer. There are several interesting use models:

1. Print email attachments, data or Web pages from your mobile device. Send what you want to print to the CloudPrint virtual print server. The server stores a copy and sends an SMS to your device with a reference ID. When you enter the code on the CloudPrint site, the server converts your data to a PDF, ready to print. 
2. Print documents stored on the CloudPrint virtual server. Before you travel, download the CloudPrint driver to your PC and save files to the server. The server sends your laptop or mobile device a unique code for each file. When you're on the road, enter the code to CloudPrint, and you're ready to print. 
3. Can't find a printer? CloudPrint’s online Find a Printer service can help you locate one nearby. The service also lets you print files – even vacation photos you shoot with your camera phone –back to your home or office printer (I am sure the boss will like that) or that of a friend.

Go ahead and give the service a try an tell me what you think.

Vince Ferraro 

My HP colleague Chris Hawkes has some interesting insights on how hp works with customers to keep updated on their current and future product requirements - Vince

How does HP know what their customers want and why? Sometimes it’s a simple “launch and learn” where we try something and see how it goes over with our customers. However, mistakes in our business where our printers are designed 12-18 months before they are introduced to the market and the pipeline has thousands or tens of thousand of those printers boxed up and ready for customers can be very, very costly. They can also cost us a great deal of customer loyalty.

Fortunately HP has an enormous number of engineers, product manager and other groups who help to put the whole product together, diligently working to make sure that we’re designing our products to be as feature-rich and simply to use as possible. Our employees also know a great deal about our customers and are constantly looking for ways to improve the ‘product experience’.

There are a number of mechanisms that HP uses to stay connected to our customers:

• We have periodic studies that ask how happy our customers are with their products and whether they intend to purchase HP again.
• We get feedback from the technical support calls – to understand what functions or capabilities are less intuitive than they could be.
• We also conduct a good deal of market research to talk to customers, in different environments (home, small business and the enormous enterprise customers
• We also do this across the globe to understand how people on different continents and in different countries want their printers to work, what functions are critical and which ones could be taken out, so we can meet their expected price-point on certain types of printers.

Some of the issues that we have conducted market research on include:

• Understanding how price sensitive customers are.
• We can always add impressive capabilities to our products, but if they’re not expected or desired by our target customers, those functions should be taken out so we can give customers a better price on their next printer purchase
• We have also researched want advanced features such as ‘fax to e-mail’ (or Digital Send in HP terms) our customers want
• Are smaller companies interested in having these higher end capabilities which have yielded great efficiency improvement for the larger businesses? If so, are they willing to pay more money to see those capabilities built into their products?

HP conducts dozens of market research projects every year; it is our marketing priority to understand what you as a customer, would ideally want from the perfect printer or MFP. We consistently seek out and value customer’s opinions and do everything that we can to see that they are included in the next generation of our products. Of course conducting market research doesn’t mean that we also always hit the perfect mix of capabilities and price for all of our customers. That’s not an easy thing to do, but it is considered everyone’s job at HP to do as much as we can to match our product offerings to the customers’ demands and do that better than the competition. The team works very hard at that. We’re trying to make your life easier and it’s important that we can talk to you, our customers, to understand how best we can serve you – now and in the future.

Best Regards,

Chris Hawkes, Market Research Consultant

For more information on the types of market research that are available and how they work, you can go to www.MarketResearch101.com for more details on the processes.

I wanted to post this entry today because I am excited that HP's Imaging and Printing Group is making some significant announcements around their portfolio of environmental printing solutions. HP today unveiled a series of products, tools, services and initiatives that help customers minimize their environmental impact when it comes to imaging and printing.

We believe these Eco Solutions are industry-leading and in many cases, represent significant improvements of our products and solutions on many environmental fronts. HP has always cared about green issues and the environment. In fact, most large companies want to look green - to cover themselves with a green flag. However, I believe HP has gone further than most because we can point to really tangible things we have implemented or are in the process of implementing.

Here are some of the key announcements:

HP Eco Highlights  The company’s is debuting new HP Eco Highlights label on two LaserJet printers.  The new label from HP makes it easy for customers to identify HP products with environmental attributes-

• HP LaserJet P4015x,
• LaserJet P4515x, and
• LaserJet P4515xm (the P4515xm is EMEA only) as well as the
• HP Deskjet D2545.

These new LaserJet products and the Deskjet will be the FIRST HP products to include the new Eco Highlights label. It makes it easy for customers to identify HP products with environmentally preferable features and will be used company-wide across all products segments. The Eco Highlights label will appear in places where customers typically look for information on HP’s offerings, such as packaging, the Web and data sheets. 

HP Printer Auto-on/Auto-off 

This is HP's next breakthrough in Instant-On technology.    The   printer powers off on its own after inactivity (using less than one watt of power) and powers back on when it senses activity

HP Carbon Footprint Calculator for printing

This calculator allows customers to compare the carbon footprint of their existing printer fleet to newer models to understand how they can reduce their carbon footprint on the environment. The calculator looks at printer energy and paper use, the carbon impact of usage and energy spend based on geography. Look for it online towards the end of June or contact our sales team to work with you to build out some estimated costs.

Clear Packaging Design

On high-end HP LaserJet printers HP will, on average, cut the volume of packaging materials in half. HP is the first in the technology industry to apply this method to printing products which eliminates the need for an outer corrugated box and extensive foam packaging. The outer plastic is made from the same recyclable materials as plastic milk jugs, and customers will have less packaging to manage when they receive their products. HP will use it to ship recently introduced products such as the HP LaserJet M5035x MFP.

HP Paper Policy

Building on its legacy of environmental leadership, HP is pledging to reduce the environmental impact of the papers that the company buys, uses, and sells by establishing one of the most comprehensive paper policies in the industry – spanning both papers sold to customers and those used by HP in packaging, collateral and office-printing. 

With some of these enhancements, we have goals to improve the overall energy efficiency of HP's ink and laser printing products by 40% by 2011 and to surpass 250 million cumulative HP inkjet and LaserJet cartridges recycled in 2008, thereby helping the company reach its goal of recovering two billion pounds of computing and printing equipment by 2010.

HP’s Imaging and Printing Group is enabling enterprise customers to save power and paper. HP has helped several Fortune 500 customers see up to a 30 percent reduction in their carbon footprint using technologies such as the HP Carbon Footprint Calculator, Instant-on Technology, duplexing, Universal Print Driver, pull printing technologies and Web Jetadmin. HP IPG is the first business to roll out offerings under the company-wide Eco Solutions program, a collection of eco-conscious products, solutions and services. 

More information about the company’s work in relation to the environment is available at www.hp.com/environment. The full press release of this announcement can be found at www.hp.com/go/ecosolutions.

I would like to hear from you on ways you money to print in a more environmentally friendly way. How do you do it? Please share out your strategies and ideas. I welcome your thoughts.

My colleague Jim Lyons posted this entry on his blog regarding the current and future role of paper.

For the last 10-15 years there have been dire predictions on the future of paper. And believe it our not, people are printing less in many areas as the quality and number of documents online continue to increase. However at the same time, the number of office and home pages printed continues to grow. How do I know this? I am in the business and part of my job is predicting the number of pages that will be printed in the future.

Why are printed pages growing you might ask? I won't bore you with all of the techno jargon and bloody details of it all. I believe there are three main factors:

• First, there are many documents that are now printed on home and office printers re-purposed from other printing sources. For example, those photos you use to print in your local drug store are just as likely to be printed on your home printer. Small businesses are printing marketing collateral like brochures, data sheets, flyers, etc. on their ink-jet or laser printer that were once only the domain of expensive commercial, off-set printers (and the desktop printer quality is terrific!).
• The second major factor is that the explosion of information - blogs, web pages, digital content, etc. has created a tremendous growth in the amount of pages available to be printed. So even if you print less of each type of traditional document - letters, spreadsheets, etc. you might find yourself printing more web pages, blogs, CD/DVD labels, and online articles.
• Finally, the quality of online viewing is not at the level of quality of printed documents. Ever try to read a book online? Was it an enjoyable experience? Well there are some alternatives. Amazon has introduced their Kindle "reading device". Other vendors and some of the big Fortune 100 labs (like Xerox Parc) have worked on this issue from time to time. The simple fact is that printed output is far easier to read than displays. Perhaps some day there will be alternatives that can put paper to the test.

 

HP today announced a very broad expansion of its imaging and printing portfolio for large businesses. Our latest offerings help enterprises simplify their imaging and printing environments and improve workflows to reduce costs and enhance productivity, all with an eye towards security.

 

The new HP offerings include:

1-Six HP LaserJet printers,
2-An enterprise-class scanner for document capture,
3-Three access control printing solutions,
4-Four printing services
5-An accreditation, certification and test program for HP’s software solution development partners.

These new printer and MFP products and solutions are focused on the "managed" print environment. When we talk about "managed" environments, what we are really saying is the device maintainer is an IT department or equivalent organization.

HP is investing a lot in this space because we believe printers and printer-based MFP's provide a superior, more cost-effective total cost of ownership alternative to copier-based products that are still used in many offices today. In addition with printer-based MFP products, there is an improvement in manageability of devices and an enhancement of paper-based workflow solutions.  

With workflow solutions, we believe they can be better automated to increase accuracy and productivity while reducing costs. Our strategy is that with printer-based products, we can better enable the following things:

1. Optimize Infrastructure - Gain visibility and control. Create a cost effective, reliable and secure printing and imaging environment.

2. Manage Environment - Free up your IT resources with efficient printing and imaging management tools and services

3. Improve Workflow -  transform document-intensive workflows and information management with end-to-end solutions and services

My team and I are excited because these products have been in the product development process for some time and are being announced today. It is a birthday of sorts.

As part of recent new product introduction conversation with Fredric Paul, of Bmighty.com, we spoke on a number of topics including in-house marketing, a comparison of ink vs. laser printers, the future of printing, and environmental issues. You can find the complete text of the article here.

Today's guest post is provided by Kellie Phillips.  Kellie is the LaserJet Communications Manager for Small and Medium Business.

HP announced today new printing solutions that enable small businesses to affordably produce marketing collateral in-house, increase productivity and better manage their printing environment.   So what does that mean for you? 

Did you know that you can save up to 50% by printing your marketing collateral on your Color LaserJet printer versus using a quick printer?  Take a look at how Far and Away Adventures, a luxury wilderness tour provider, is using an HP Color LaserJet to save time and reduce their overall printing costs.

Check out the new Marketing Impressions Portal as well.   It’s a one-stop shop to help small businesses market and grow their business and interact with others through an online community.  There are a lot of great tools, templates and guides too! 

Over the next year, we are making color printing even more affordable with new HP Color LaserJet printers that deliver monochrome printing for the same price as a an in-class monochrome LaserJet printer.  So you get the monochrome printing experience you’re familiar with and superior color printing in one affordable device. 

New color printing solutions optimized for small business include:

• HP Color LaserJet CP1515n/CP1518ni Printer series and HP Color LaserJet CM1312 MFP series: Industry-leading print quality with newly formulated HP ColorSphere toner that provides a wider range of colors, higher gloss and improved photo resolution. Printers also ship with marketing resources such as HP Print View software that allows customers to view elaborate print jobs in advance and estimate document costs to avoid the frustration of unanticipated costs and reprints.
• HP Color LaserJet CP1215: Priced at $299, HP’s lowest-ever priced desktop color laser printer also features new HP ColorSphere toner.
• HP In-house Marketing Starter Kit: Available with select HP printers, the kit includes a sampling of paper types commonly used for marketing collateral such as photo, glossy presentation and matte brochure papers, as well as a Business Marketing Design CD containing templates, images and coupons to provide a jumpstart in creating professional marketing collateral.
• HP LaserJet M1319f MFP: HP’s lowest-priced monochrome laser MFP with print, scan, copy and fax capabilities.
• HP LaserJet M1522 MFP series: Delivers higher-end MFP features at a low price, such as fast print, copy, scan and fax speeds, a 50-sheet automatic document feeder, flatbed color scanning and built-in networking.
• To help small businesses better manage their print environments, HP Easy Printer Care software 2.5i monitors between two and 20 HP printers, both laser and ink, with a single tool. Now supporting most HP business inkjet devices, the software makes it easier to maintain and quickly view the status of multiple devices, set up printer and supply alerts, generate basic usage reports and reorder supplies with the click of a button.

You can view the press release here or full details or the entire press kit here.

This week, PC Magazine featured a roundup of four affordably-priced monochrome laser printers best suited for SOHO use – two of which included HP LaserJet Printers.  The roundup included the HP LaserJet P1006, the HP LaserJet P1505 Printer (an editor’s choice pick from an earlier review), OKI Printing Solutions B4400, and the SamsungML-1630.

The review praised the HP models for their speed and small size, and reviewer David Stone said that while “the ML-1630, for example, offers a designer look, for those who care about such things, […] the P1505 and B4400 are noticeably faster than the other two models. Any one of them could be your personal monochrome laser of choice.”

There is a great deal of debate, in the industry, in terms of how fast the market (and users) will convert to color business printing. To be sure, the price and performance of color laser printers is declining - making them more affordable than ever. However, if you are not yet ready for color, mono laser printers in this price range offer surprisingly good value in terms of print quality, performance (usually faster than equivalently-priced color printers), and performance.

Today's guest post is provided by Tom Codd, who recently returned from Lyra's annual Imaging Symposium.  Tom is the Director of LaserJet Out Bound Marketing.

I had the opportunity this week to attend the annual Lyra Imaging Symposium in Palm Springs.  This event brings together many of the key vendors and technology providers in the printing and imaging business to discuss industry trends and developments.  With representatives from Xerox, Lexmark, Epson, HP, Adobe, and others, together in the same location, it makes for some interesting presentations and even more interesting informal discussions.  

The focus of this year’s conference was “Technologies Disrupting the Business Model”. Bill McGlynn (Memjet), Bruce Dahlgren (HP), and Jim Rise (Xerox) as well as representatives from Lyra all presented on topics relevant to laser printing.  While all of the presenters approached the challenges in office printing differently, the following common themes emerged.

Theme 1:  Color printers and color MFPs are the growth opportunity of the future for the laser printer business. 
New, affordable color products like the HP Color LaserJet 1600, 2605, and 3505 as well as new low end  color products from other vendors have been delivered to market with technologies that make color printing much more affordable.  HP believes that providing affordable, reliable laser based products with superior print quality and deliver on the heritage of the original LaserJet is what customers want.  Xerox, with their solid ink technology, believes that delivering products with a relatively high acquisition price ($2500 for the 8860 vs $1000 for the predecessor) and low color cost per page is the right approach (see Xerox blog post).  Xerox also touted the greenness of solid ink’s “cartridge free” approach, but did not mention that solid ink consumes more than 3X the power due to the fact that they recommend you do not turn it off and there is no real sleep mode.   Interesting to note is that Xerox also has several laser based color products that use the same cartridge based approach as HP.

Memjet, a printing technology provider, also gave a quick update on their progress of bringing a new low cost ink based technology to market. While Memjet claims that they can deliver a print technology for very high speed personal color printers at breakthrough prices, they have yet to announce any printer vendor partners for this technology. 

Theme 2:  It’s not about speeds and feeds anymore. 
Bruce Dahlgren (HP) gave a very compelling presentation on Print 2.0 and the enterprise and how printers and the documents they print have evolved over the years.  He described how printing devices that nobody thought were strategic are now becoming an integral component of enterprise information delivery systems.  See Jim Lyons' post on this topic. 

Theme 3: Environmental. 
Charley LeCompte (Lyra) and Michael Hoffmann (HP) both gave very interesting presentations on the environmental impact of printing.  Michael covered HP’s approach to reducing the environmental impact of printing on the environment and used the event to publicly announce HP’s "closed loop" process of using 100% recycled plastics in the manufacture of HP inkjet cartridges.  The process, which went into pilot in 2005, has already resulted in the manufacturing of 200 million HP printer cartridges from recycled materials.  The program also lets customers world wide return inkjet cartridges for free using a postage-paid return envelope provided by HP with the inkjet print cartridge box.  LaseJet printer cartridges have a similar return program and to date 106 million cartridges have been returned and recycled as part of our Planet Partners program. See Vince’s previous Green post.

Charley LeCompte wrapped up the conference with an eye opening presentation on the environmental impact of printing. It is fairly intuitive that with a printer,  paper usage, which equates to trees consumed, is the biggest impact on the environment.  What I didn’t realize is just how environmentally unfriendly the paper manufacturing process is.  I learned that 13.5 million tons of paper was used by printers, MFPs and copiers in 2007 and that it takes roughly 5.3 90-foot 12-inch diameter Doug Fir pine trees to make a ton of new office paper.  That’s a lot of trees! This is why duplexing is such an important thing for each and every printer user.  Our studies show that duplexing saves on average 25% on paper usage.  Why only 25%?  Well, many documents are only 1 page long.  Even so 25% savings would save a lot of trees and help minimize the impact of printing on the environment. Jim Lyons had additional coverage of Charley’s presentation.

It has been a very interesting couple of days and it is encouraging to see that many of the issues in the industry are areas where we at HP are putting focus and investment to make the printing experience the best it can be for our customers.

I am writing this blog from ImagePrint 2007 in Phoenix, Arizona. ImagePrint is IPG’s annual enterprise printing and imaging customer event. Each year, IPG invites its top customers and channel partners to hear IPG’s print strategy and how it can benefit their businesses. By better understanding IPG’s strategy and offerings, ImagePrint attendees understand key printing trends and how hp can help transform their own business environments.

ImagePrint supports the work of the IPG enterprise sales team by communicating the IPG Print 2.0 strategy directly to customers. Concurrent with ImagePrint, we are sponsoring the first-ever IPG Executive Summit. The Executive Summit is an invitation-only event for 25 top corporate level executives. The agenda is designed to address the strategic business issues facing this executive level of IT management.

In ImagePrint, we broke the event into three components - hp product/solution showcase, a series of workshops which cover a number of real world print issues (like controlling your printer costs and vertical industry solutions), and our all platinum-level Solution Business Partners who are demonstrating their solutions in the Solutions Showcase. Partners presenting include:

• Capella presenting MegaTrack and FormPort
• Jetmobile presenting SecureJet
• Equitrac presenting Office
• Omtool presenting Accuroute
• Kofax presenting Ascent
• Captaris presenting Right Fax
• Troy presenting Check Printing
• MPI Tech presenting various host printing solutions

During ImagePrint today, we also announced two enterprise imaging and printing solutions for the financial services and public sector markets. The offerings build upon HP's Print 2.0 strategy by providing industry-specific offerings that streamline workflows and reduce costs for enterprises. HP Compliant Document Capture for Financial Services helps financial institutions streamline critical document workflows, while simultaneously providing the increased document security, audit trails and archival capabilities required by industry regulations. HP Document Capture Solution for Evidence of Identity is designed to help government agencies securely process and issue identity documents such as driver's licenses and passports.

I really like ImagePrint for a number of reasons. First of all, it is a great opportunity to engage many of our important enterprise customers - thanking them for their business and discussing how we can work and solve their problems in 2008. The other thing I like is that our customers and sales reps are brutally honest on where they see hp can make improvement in hardware, supplies, and solutions. The feedback is really valuable to me, as it helps my team to build better solutions moving forward.

My fellow blogger Jim Lyons is here and is also blogging about ImagePrint

 

This week I have decided to talk a little about printing costs. These costs are not what one typically thinks about - hardware, supplies, and media - but other cost that are sometimes called "hidden" costs. These costs are typically found in medium to enterprise sized companies.

A recent InfoTrends study found that organizations perceived that they spend an average of three percent of their annual revenues on printing, copying and fax-related costs. But in actuality overall document expenditures (including hardware, supplies and "people" costs) averaged six percent of annual revenues across all industries. So why the confusion? Many of the largest cost components of document output are often hidden and grow over time. Here is a quick look at five of the most common concealed costs (read: savings opportunities) and why it pays to act on them now.

1. Device proliferation
2. Underutilization
3. Multiple print architectures
4. Multiple print drivers
5. Energy drain

I hope this white paper helps to illuminate that some costs associated with printing don't necessarily show up in an initial conversation about printer costs. I would be interested in hearing readers' perspectives on this topic. Do you see other cost of ownership issues from your perspective?

Dear readers, I’d like to take a moment this week to clarify any issues around technical questions that might be posted as comments on this blog. This is in response to a mention in NETWORKWORLD that refers to my blog. While they list hp blogs as “Cream of the Crop”, this article included the following quote:

“Some companies aren't as comfortable responding to customer complaints in a blog. HP LaserJet blogger Vince Ferraro answered numerous questions in July about printing problems that occurred when HP equipment was used on Microsoft Windows Vista. His blog posting, however, spurred HP to change its policy about responding to comments about product problems. The blogger now is prohibited from responding directly to comments that can be handled by customer service.”

Well, first I just want you to know that I did not get the corporate paddle to my backside. All is well in hp's blogosphere. I think there is a genuine concern that executive blogs don't turn into product support blogs and I agree with that approach. I have responded directly to many of the technical questions on my blog. I think it is important to provide responses to specific issues and these responses tended to be to those questions that a number of customers seemed to have in common. For instance, in realizing that many people were going to experience problems when trying to print from the Microsoft Vista operating system, I posted the following series:

1. Universal Adoption of Vista and Office 2007
2. New HP Universal Print Driver solves Vista Printing Problems for LaserJets
3. Laser Printing Problems using Microsoft Windows Vista
4. Microsoft Vista Printing Problems and the new HP UPD 4.0 Solution
5. One More Time: Vista Imaging & Printing Help

Soon after the 4^th posting in this series, hp published an HP Blogging Code of Conduct, which included the following statement, “Because our blogs focus on material of general interest to all our readers, we ask that you direct customer support inquiries through our traditional customer service channels or use our IT resource center forums. Using these channels will allow you to get your issues to experienced HP support representatives in a timely manner“. This was not to say that you couldn’t register comments to hp blogs (and that I couldn't respond), but rather, that you would probably be better served by directly accessing the support resources designed to answer your questions.

This is especially true as about half of the technical questions entered as comments to my blog have been on devices other than LaserJets. While I’ve captured all of your technical comments and forwarded them to technical folks, over half of all these comments didn’t enter valid email addresses. Going forward, please feel free to leave comments on whatever you like, including technical questions, and I’ll make sure they are treated appropriately. However, you’ll probably get the most immediate responses to your support questions by going directly to customer service or IT forums.

Moving forward, I will selectively respond to broad class questions/issues with LaserJet printers, if I think the information will help you and improve your satisfaction with our products in a timely way.

2007 Blog Action Day is upon us (don’t worry if this didn’t make your calendar)! I’m writing a post to support this effort because I feel very strongly about two aspects of Blog Action Day. One is that hp and I care deeply about the environment and making our LaserJet devices as environmentally friendly as possible. I also appreciate the way that Blog Action Day is going about this effort. In true Web 2.0 fashion, they aren’t pushing a particular environmental agenda, rather they’re simply encouraging people to blog on environmental issues in their own way. So that is what I want to do today.

In the past, I’ve posted blogs on a number of environmental issues as they relate to HP LaserJets. I’ve also opened my blog up to guest bloggers on green-related subjects in order to go into greater detail on particular topics, as in:

• Turn your HP LaserJets Green--a comparative piece on how you can make using LaserJets work with the environment
• Earth Day Celebrations and HP LaserJets--synopsis of hp Earth Day activities and those particularly related to LaserJets
• HP Responds to Australian Printer Study--where I pointed you to hp's initial reaction to an office environmental study
• HP LaserJets help keep you Business in the Green--a guest blog by Dave Lobato on particular LaserJet environmental aspects
• Xerox Solid Ink: Reality vs. The Hype--clarification of the relative benefits of these two technologies, with an emphasis on the energy savings from using laser printing in your office environment
• The HP Page Cost Calculator: MFPs vs. Copiers--a guest blog by Tara Tackett on how using the Page Cost Calculator can help you make printing decisions that conserve your resources

I hope you agree that these efforts reflect some of the key aspects of following an environmentally conscious LaserJet effort. There is collectively more for hp to do in this area, but I believe hp LaserJet printers have some of the best environmental capabilities in the industry. We want to “walk the talk” on environmental issues--I’m particularly interested in how we can help our customers go greener in their office environments (look for more in this vein going forward). 

At the same time, I'm going to expose you to vendors that say they're environmentally-oriented, but have more fluff than substance in their environmental programs and the products they sell. Doing one thing really well and saying you have the best environmental program is not what this is about. There need to be many, collective company initiatives working together to drive meaningful change in the industry. I feel that hp is on the right path, but there's more to do.

At last count, there were over 15,000 blogs registered to participate in the Blog Action Day 2007 net event. This is much like a get out the vote drive, where the important aspect is not persuading people of the efficacy of your opinion, rather, the key is to simply be involved. This is much like my approach to blogging, where I don’t try to push HP LaserJets on you, but rather, I like to talk about industry issues and let my guest bloggers and comment posters freely promote their points of view. If there are particular environmental topics around LaserJets that you’d like to discuss, please let me know and I’ll field your comment either directly or through a posting (if there are enough similar comments).

I’ve blogged on printing cost issues in “HP LaserJet Printers and Cost of Ownership”. Since then, there have been very interesting developments in this space. Some manufacturers now offer ways to figure out your relative printing costs—so you can decide what kind of devices you want to print documents on. The leading tools in such page cost calculations are described in this newsletter by Industry Analysts, Inc. An expert on this subject, and key member of my Team, Tara Tackett delivers the following blog post on hp’s free tool in this space, the Page Cost Calculator:

"There was a point in time in the not too distant past, when printers were printers, copiers were copiers, and rarely did the two compete with one another.

With the introduction of printer-based MFPs, like the HP LaserJet M4345 MFP, the game has changed. Today, MFPs boasting high speeds and features such as copy, scan, fax and comprehensive paper-handling are competing in the traditional copier space. And, digital copiers with networking capabilities, previously seen only in printers, are competing for printer pages as well.

Which is better? Printer-based or copier-based? Copier vendors would like you to believe that printer-based MFPs are a poor choice due to their higher supplies costs per page. Printer vendors counter with the higher hardware and maintenance costs of copier-based devices.

HP understands there’s a place for both. In order to choose the device that is best for your business, it is critical to know your page volumes, or the number of pages you print each month.

Printer-based MFPs, with their lower purchase price, cost less overall at lower page volumes. Copier-based devices, with their lower supplies CPP, may cost less at higher page volumes.

How high is high, you ask. Which device would be right for your business? Let us help you find out. HP has just introduced a Page Cost Calculator for HP MFPs featuring the LaserJet M4345 MFP and its top three digital copier competitors. With just a few easy steps, it will help you determine which device offers you the best value--the HP MFP or the digital copier. Feel free to give it a try. You may be surprised at what you find.

This interactive tool, which has now launched on hp.com, is already receiving high praise from analysts. Andy Slawetsky from Industry Analysts says “We thought HP’s Page Cost Calculator was impressive for two reasons. First, it dispels the myth that A3 devices are, for the most part, cheaper to operate than A4 devices. Second, the sponsoring vendor (in this case, HP) does not always win.”

Mr. Slawetsky is correct. HP doesn’t always win. The tool was created to give customers upfront and honest information they need to make the best purchase decision. If a customer is printing unusually high volumes, say 25K pages or more per month, the HP M4345 MFP may not be the best device for them. At those volumes, a customer may be better off economically to use a device with a lower supplies cost per page. Good choices for environments with high print volumes are the HP CM8050/8060 MFPs with Edgeline Technology.

It is worth noting, however, that according to a study completed by International Data Corporation (IDC), a full 87% of workgroup class copiers and MFPs (25-45ppm) print less than 20,000 pages for month. At these volumes, you’ll be much better served by HP."

I hope you have time to try the Page Cost Calculator, it’s pretty enlightening in that it gives objective Total Cost Per Page based on the volume of pages you print. Please feel free to leave any comments about this blog and I’ll make sure Tara gets them. -Vince

Xerox’s announcement on September 24^th, 2007, may have some customers taking a look at Solid Ink technology for their color business printing requirements. We hope customers take a close look at the technology, and the history of Solid Ink vs. Color Laser or business-focused inkjet devices and make an informed decision about which technologies are the best.

It’s important to consider that Xerox acquired Solid Ink technology when they purchased Tektronix in January of 2000. In the 1980’s, Solid Ink printers had captured an early niche in the graphics departments as proofing devices. Graphic artists liked the 11”X17” format and glossy, vibrant colors that solid ink offered. And, at the time, the nascent inkjet technology business was just emerging. Inkjet was delivering only 180 dpi on special paper. Color laser printers were not commercially feasible back then. We dreamed of someday selling a Color LaserJet printer for $1,000. Today, of course, the technology is much less expensive—HP Color LaserJet printers start at just $299.

But as the technology matured and color printing spread into other parts of the office, color laser became the dominant technology of choice. There were significant differences in the needs of the office users vs. the graphics department. (hp also has strong offerings for the Graphic Arts). Office users needed permanent output that could be handled, copied, annotated and archived. Permanence was especially important in contracts, legal documents, purchase agreements, proposals, etc. Solid Ink technology could not match color laser/dry toner technology in these areas. Also, color laser technology was able to deliver sharper text quality which was also critical in high-value business documents.

General office users also needed fast output. Again, Solid Ink technology had some drawbacks compared to color laser, many of which are documented in this side by side comparison. If a Solid Ink device is turned off, or if nozzles clog, there is up to a 12.5 minute delay to cycle the printer. A color laser printer can be power cycled in less than two minutes. This was another key advantage for color laser.

In addition, color laser technology provided simplicity at print time for users. With HP Color LaserJets users get best print quality in default mode. There’s no need to go into the print driver and fiddle with settings. But with Solid Ink technology, there was a dramatic relationship between quality and performance. If you wanted fastest performance you'd get a draft quality and printing would slow down to a fraction of the maximum print speed for highest quality. This extra complexity was an additional disadvantage for Solid Ink in the office. Users and helpdesks preferred the simplicity of the color laser user model–file print and great output without performance penalties, and no need to change settings in the print driver.

And the Solid Ink devices did not earn an Energy Star approval. They used 4 to 5 times the amount of power as color laser printers. Xerox created some special bundles that were Energy Star compliant, but the top-selling Solid Ink models were not and are still not Energy Star products. This was another reason to go with Color Laser technology.

Solid Ink technology maintained a niche with early adopters and graphics departments, but never experienced the mainstream adoption in the general office because it had fundamental shortcomings that make it inferior to color laser technology. As office color printing boomed, color laser technology boomed and became the de-facto technology standard and hp was, and still is, the leading vendor. Today, additional investments are being made in inkjet printing, like hp’s Officejet Pro and Edgeline Technology, that allow business quality results from inkjet printers tuned to SMB and Enterprise applications and customer needs. The result--as of 2007, Solid Ink technology is used in less than 5% of color laser class printer applications.

Will Xerox’s recent announcement change things? There’s a new pricing strategy-–more expensive printers and cheaper supplies. But has the technology changed? I don’t think so. Solid Ink still has inferior permanence to color laser/dry toner. Color Laser still warms up in 2 minutes (from Power Off, while printing much faster from Powersave Mode, using Instant-on Technology) vs. 12.5 minutes for Solid Ink. Solid ink still requires significant delays for best print quality and solid ink printers still use 4 to 5 times the power.

I wouldn’t be distracted by new cost per page claims from Xerox. This is a defensive competitive play—one that Xerox seems more comfortable initiating than something that is truly new and innovative. A while back, I wrote about how Xerox responded to hp’s hugely successful printer-based MFP. From a technology standpoint, nothing has changed.

Raising the price of the printers and dropping cost-per-page is an alternative business model not unlike what Kodak is trying to do with consumer inkjet printing. What is really important is Total Cost per Page (TCPP)—where you look at hardware prices, cost per page, up time, support costs, down time, etc., to derive the real cost of printing. Stick with the right technology for office color printing, color laser.