Is HP’s new ‘mobile printing’ really so revolutionary?

by Alex Zaharov-Reutt

Tuesday, 21 August 2007

Page 1 of 2 ! A New York Times article uncovers Cloudprint from HP Labs, a new way to print and share a document through your mobile phone and virtually any printer worldwide which sounds kinda great, until you wonder why not just use a USB memory stick or email the document to your web mail? An article from the New York Times explains that HP Labs’ have devised a way to share documents using a cell phone, apparently inspired by the Apple iPhone. What HP Labs has in store for us appears to be a software program for Windows, and soon to be available for Mac, that is called Cloudprint. This software lets you print documents to an online HP server, which then seems to convert your printed document into a PDF, and then sends your cell phone an SMS text message with a document code. You can then go to any Internet connected PC, anywhere in the world, and you can then go to the HP Cloudprint website, enter your cell phone number and document code, and download the PDF document you printed earlier. That PDF can then, if you so desire, be printed on the printer that is attached to the computer you are using, if there is indeed a printer attached. Otherwise the file simply resides on the PC you’ve saved it to, and it can be read from there. In a minor twist, HP will apparently also offer some kind of link up with Google Maps, letting you see where the closest “Fedex Kinko’s” type commercial print shops are located, which then lets you go to that store and have your documents printed there, with the whole shebang apparently part of a strategy that will see more HP “ink and supplies” used in the marketplace. Well, it seems to be a very roundabout way of ensuring HP sells more ink, which currently accounts for 27% of HP’s overall income. But what’s curious is where the NYT article says that “Cloudprint… makes it possible to share, store and print documents using a mobile phone”. Well… does it? All that happens is a code is sent via text message to my cell phone. That code could easily have been emailed to me, or better still I could forget about codes and just have a username and password that logs me into my documents stored on the HP Cloudprint server, so I could browse all my documents, and download and print as many as I choose. So, does it look like HP Labs' system will let cell phones interact directly with a printer? And why not just use a USB memory stick, web mail or online storage? To get the answers, please read the conclusion on the next page... << First page <   1 2 Next page > Last page - Post your comment >>

 

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