Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Wednesday, 30 June 2010 18:57
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Is wirelessly printing from your smartphone, iPhone, iPad tablet or other connected device, via email, something consumers and businesses will really want to do?
While Sydney has been cooling its heels with some of the coldest June weather on record, the temperature has been sizzling hot here in Hong Kong, both on the thermometer and in discussions over the true usefulness of a printer you can email to.
HP invited me to its regional launch in Hong Kong of its new range of emailable printers, ones which naturally work as normal over corded USB, wireless Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connections, and now over a cloud-service enabled email printing service that lets you send an email (with or without attachments) to your ePrint capable HP printer, which then gets printed out in anywhere from a few seconds to less than a minute.
Although a printer that you can email to seems very useful at first glance, some journalists wondered whether you’d really want to print from your phone or tablet when you already have the information on your portable digital screen already in front of you, or in your pocket.
However, despite years-old predictions of the “paperless office” and the widespread availability of desktop and laptop computers, plenty of people still both choose and need to print information out, and having an emailable printer removes the need to email something from your iPhone, iPad or other device to your home or office printer to then print from that particular computer.
An emailable printer removes that “in-between” step and essentially directly connects you to your own printer, making printing from portable devices very simple – no need for drivers, cables, wireless protocol setups, no need to be within wireless range of your printer, no need for particular operating systems – you just email an attachment to your printer and within a few seconds it starts printing.
It also solves the problem of not being able to “directly” print from iPhones, iPads and smartphones, allowing you to print to your printer even if you’re on the other side of the planet – be it from that phone or your computer, as all you need is a net connection and am email account.
It’s also interesting to note that buyers of all new HP printers valued at US $99 and above will simply get this functionality as standard, whether they ever decide to use it or not, so as you buy a HP new printer to add to or probably replace the one you already have, the capability will be baked in, ready for you to use whenever you want.
Of course if you do want to print to your printer’s email address, you’ll need to set this up (something that is very quick and easy to do) and ensure your printer is on and connected to the Internet (whether by Ethernet or by Wi-Fi), and even if your printer is in sleep mode (to save energy) it will still wake up when needed and pop out your prints as required.
Well, as long as there’s paper loaded and enough ink, but then that’s an issue you’ll have with any printer, emailable or not.
So, what about questions involving “spamvertisements” being printed by spammers targeting your printer’s email address, just as spam faxes can plague some fax machines?
How are the email addresses decided upon, what whitelist or blacklists are used to ensure only you can print to your printer?
What kind of “downloadable” apps for free (and in the future, paid) content can your Linux-enabled, app running, emailable printer download and install?
Will certain types of apps, such as those that might deliver “adult content”, be banned by HP as is the case with Apple?
These questions and more are answered by some of HP’s senior execs on the following pages, please read on!
