HP Hits Print in Beijing

HP Value Equation Printer Event in Beijing

Often times enterprise-level tech events sidetrack from a straightforward point with the inevitable barrage of buzzwords, and the HP Value Equation enterprise and SMB event held in Beijing on the 20th and 21st of April didn't disappoint. Phrases like 'flight to value' (that's a new one), 'data point' (is 'data' not good enough anymore?) and 'greenovator' (we see what you did there), and long mission statements crammed to the brim with multi-syllable words. Despite this, there were some real gems hidden amongst the buzz to be found and that's the reason for this article as we report the more interesting developments that were shared with us.

New HP Features

Save Power, Save Money, Save the World

HP introduced a smart, power-saving feature installed in some of its new printers, called Auto-On/Auto-Off. It does what you think it does, automatically powering down a printer after a period of inactivity. The difference between normal sleep mode and AOAO (jokingly called coma mode) is that it uses up to three times less energy and powers back on almost instantly when sent a print job.

HP estimates that present printers still draw 3 to 25 watts of energy when not in use, but printers in AOAO mode will draw slightly less than 1 watt. Seeing that most printers aren't printing all the time but are left on almost 24/7 (especially in offices), using less power translates to savings on your power bills. This isn't just good news for the environment, but for the bottom line, especially in offices with lots of printers.

HP's new Auto-On/Auto-Off feature can be found on the new LaserJet Pro 1606dn, 1566, 1102, 1102w, LaserJet 1212nf, M1213nf, M1132 and M1136 MFPs.

Plug and Print - No CD Needed

Ever lost your printer driver CD or had to download massive driver files off the Internet? HP comes up with a solution so obvious it's a wonder why no one has ever done it before. Smart Install makes installing a printer fast and easy, all you have to do is connect your printer to your PC via a USB cable and the driver will be installed straight from the printer. Hoorah! No more fussing over CDs or downloads.

According to HP, while updates to the drivers can be flashed to the printer, it's not recommended. Instead, just download them into your existing PC setup. Also, printers with wireless features can install drivers wirelessly through the network. HP Smart Install only works on Windows today. Sorry, Mac users. Printers with this new tech include the LaserJet Pro P1100, M1130, M1210 MFPs and the P1566, P1606dn series.

Make Sure it's the Real Doc

Something for the security-conscious is EzStampGuard, made for HP by TrustCopy Pte Ltd. Easily installed by flash drive with select HP printers, it creates a watermark stamp with a hidden image that can't be seen without unique transparent film keys overlaid. While the hidden image can be seen on the original document, it degrades when copied, giving you an easy way to make sure you've got the real deal in your hands.

New HP Products

New features need new products to be housed in, and these were the ones that caught our eyes.

The First HP Mobile Scanner

In an enjoyable demo session that mixed a Chinese history lesson with the latest tech, HP showed us their new, ultra-portable HP Scanjet Professional 1000 Mobile Scanner. It's a small, light weight beauty of a thing at only 0.64kg. Perfect for road warriors who need to scan on the go, it powers up and connects via a single USB cable connected to your PC. It can scan two-sided documents in a variety of sizes and thicknesses, from invoices to name and credit cards. Estimated to be US$249 and coming in May 2010.

An Affordable A3 Color Printer

The new Color LaserJet Pro CP5225dn A3 color printer is built for the small work team who needs to do A3 color prints in-house. It's a nicely-designed machine with convenient loading trays, small oversize (for an A3 printer!) and pleasing aesthetics. What we liked? No starter cartridges, which are the less-than-full capacity carts that ship with most printers. The CP5225dn ships with full capacity cartridges shipped in the printer (less packages mean less material waste) and from what we saw, cartridge installation will be a breeze with front-door access. Price hasn't been announced, but HP says that this will be their most affordable A3 color printer yet.

Most Energy Efficient Laser Printer in the World

While we tend to get cynical about tag lines that go "world's most something or other", making more and more energy efficient products that do more while using less energy is always a good thing. The HP LaserJet Pro P1100 printer series - yes, tagged "the most energy-efficient laser printer in the world" - comes with the aforementioned Auto-On/Auto-Off technology and can save up to 72 percent on energy costs versus its predecessor the LaserJet P1005 Printer (which by the way was one of our selections for the Top 100 Products of 2007 for its technological breakthrough in quality and energy savings back then).

A Printer that Pays for Itself

For a moment, we thought a printer with a wallet feature that would actually pay for itself, but unfortunately that's not what HP meant. The newest line of LaserJet MFP printers promise to pay for themselves in less than 45 days - and HP says that's a conservative estimate. How has that estimate been reached though? You can skip the following part if it gets way too long for you:

"The calculations are based on comparison between the retail price of HP LaserJet 1213 NF AIO and dollarized monthly median savings of consolidating single function or competitive AIO printing, copying, faxing and scanning devices into HP LaserJet 1213 NF AIO Laser printers, as reported by AsiaInsights study commissioned by HP in 2009 of 40 small medium businesses of various ownership and profiles in Singapore and Shanghai. Above return is based on 10 SMB (10-20 employees from Singapore). Select HP LaserJet MFPs can pay for themselves in as little as 17 days or 45 days depending on mature or emerging markets, respectively."

Whew.

HP's Smallest Auto Duplex Printer

The new HP LaserJet Pro 1606dn printer is HP's smallest auto-duplex laser printer. Fast, as most laser printers are, at 25 ppm (pages per minute) on A4. The more printers that have built-in auto-duplex, the easier SMBs can save on paper use.

New HP Services

Okay, as you'd expect from an enterprise and SMB-level event, it's not all about products and features but also broader trends and strategies. HP talked to us a lot about what they think to be the key trends in the printing world today; mobility and wireless printing, and the growth of services-based printing models, with some interesting new plans to take advantage of that growth.

Enterprise Mobile Printing

The big news of the day was the announcement of a new service called HP ePrint Enterprise Mobile Printing, which allows enterprise users to print wirelessly through the cloud using Blackberry phones. With ePrint, users can use their Blackberry phones to search for printers near their location which are linked to their intranet servers, whether in their base offices or in satellite locations. A user can then simply email an attachment to a printer, which will print the document accordingly - no need for printer driver installation or manual input of IP addresses.

HP is also rolling out ePrint for public print locations, which lets users print wirelessly from Blackberry phones. Hilton Hotels is named as an initial partner and other locations are expected to be announced.

Although this sounds potentially useful for a person on the move, we wondered about the difference between setting up infrastructure to print wirelessly from a Blackberry phone to a intranet printer in a satellite office, compared to simply emailing the file to a colleague in that same office and asking him to help you print it. HP representatives would only hint that this was the first step in a larger tech development which they couldn't talk about yet. Humph. When asked if this ability can be made into other mobile phones, they would only say to "watch this space." Double humph.

Save Money or We'll Pay You

HP has a pretty bold plan for enterprise customers, called the HP Printing Payback Guarantee. Essentially, you either save money using HP printers, or HP pays you. First, HP conducts an assessment of a company's printing needs, develops recommendations and calculates a projected printing cost savings figure, which both parties agree to. One year after a full implementation of HP's recommendations, HP conducts a second assessment. If the customer hasn't saved the projected costs, HP will pay the difference. The initial rollout will be in New Zealand, Australia and Singapore.

HP QuickPage is Just Like a Mobile Phone Plan

How do SMBs choose which printers to buy? According to Sandra Ng from ICT, brand preference comes third in importance. Print speeds? Fourth. Hardware price ranks second and the cost to operate is the most important attribute for SMBs. Most SMBs then turned to managed print services (MPS) to manage costs, more so than those who just switched to duplex or limited color printing. Thing is, MPS plans have been available for enterprise-level customers only. HP wants to change that.

QuickPage is a contractual service offered for SMBs to help them manage their printers and printing and it covers new hardware, installation, supplies and support. HP describes it like a mobile phone plan, customers select the HP printer or MFP and the monthly volume of pages based on their expected use. The contract is good for 3 years and the customer pays a predictable fee. HP says you can't break the contract without consequence nor change the printer, or keep the printer after the 3 years, but you can upgrade or downgrade the number of pages per month.

At the same time, HP predicts reduced expenses for the customer, a predictable and transparent monthly cost for hardware, service and supplies, simple supplies ordering and less pressure on IT personnel who may not have the expertise or the time to focus on optimizing an SMB's printing costs and needs. QuickPage is expected to roll out in different countries in different timeframes, starting June/July in Australia and New Zealand.

InCommand Makes You In Command

To support the QuickPage service, HP is rolling out the InCommand portal, a cloud-based printing management website that helps QuickPage customers order supplies and access real-time status information about their printer usage. This is huge, because most SMBs (or even enterprises) don't know for sure how much money their printers and printing is costing them over time, either because they don't have the manpower or the tools to track. With QuickPage and InCommand, the printers automatically ping the HP servers when they're used, making it easy to see just how has been printed and how much it costs.

Unfortunately, we weren't able to see a demo of the InCommand portal in action. HP says that this is just the announcement for now, and the official launch will happen country by country, with contract sales happening through HP's MPS channel partners.

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