Laser technology survives HP's Edgeline revolution

Stephen Withers
Monday, 16 April 2007 20:42

Your IT - Home IT

Despite touting the advantages of its Edgeline technology over laser printers, Hewlett-Packard is still introducing laser MFPs.


The CM4730 is a 600dpi workgroup device rated at 30 pages per minute. Being based on a printer engine rather than a copier means there are fewer moving parts and less chance of paper jams, said Gordon Tan, business development manager for multifunction printers, HP Asia Pacific.

The use of cartridges that contain the toner and drum gives the best and most consistent quality, and is as cheap to run as separate toner and drum arrangements, Tan claimed.

Paper handling features include three 500-sheet adjustable trays an a 100-sheet bypass tray ideal for heavier stock or letterheads. Output options include a stapler/stacker and a triple mailbox (eg, to separate print, copy and fax output). Two and four-up copying is supported (eg, four A4 sheets can be copied onto a single page) and the CM4730 is also capable of booklet imposition.

Despite these features, the CM4730 has a relatively small footprint and as access is only needed to two sides it can be installed in a corner.

Improvements on previous models include 448M of memory, and a 40G hard disk for job storage. For example, a form can be scanned and held on disk for on-demand printing, optionally protected by a PIN.

The CM4730 also features the 'widescreen' display common to most current HP MFPs and provides the same user interface.

Scanned documents can be sent via email or stored in a network folder instead of being printed. PDF, JPEG, TIFf and MIFF formats are supported.

Like other HP MFPs, the CM4730 is manageable via a web browser (eg to monitor its status or to control which users are allowed to print in colour) or the Web Jetadmin utility. It is compatible with HP's universal printer driver.

In Australia, the CM4730 is offered on service-based pricing, not as a purchasable product. Indicative per-page pricing was not disclosed.

Stephen Withers travelled to Beijing as the guest of HP.