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By Beverly Rosenbaum |
New HP Home Ink Jet Line
Hewlett-Packard has announced a new series of color ink jet printers for the home. The DeskJet 680 series printers are based on an upgraded version of the DeskJet 660C engine capable of printing on continuous forms paper (for banners). The new printers feature HP's RealLife Imaging System, which is an integrated set of technologies providing, according to HP, the most vivid colors and sharpest blacks available in ink jet printing as well as foolproof high-quality color on a variety of media including plain paper. HP hopes the new DeskJet 680 series products will appeal to the installed base of customers that print banners and continuous forms output on their dot matrix printers.
The DeskJet 682C comes with three components: A Disney interactive software package includes more than 200 images of Mickey, Donald, and Goofy, among others, and customers can choose from more than 15 projects and a variety of page layouts. The PrintPaks Family Fun Kit is a new multimedia craft kit designed for color inkjet printers and provides everything families need to create magnets, window art and banners, including software featuring 50 specially designed images from PrintPak's unique library, as well as all the designed for small-office and home-office consumers. The printers are HP's first color inkjet printers custom-engineered exclusively for Windows users. The new printers are expected to sell for less than $400, and are Microsoft Plug-and-Play-ready for Windows 95, while supporting Windows 3.1 and 3.11. The DeskJet 820Cse printer comes with HP's quick-start CD that includes Microsoft Publisher, a popular desktop publishing software program that allows users to create newsletters, logos, brochures, letterheads and other business documents.
The DeskJet 820C Series printers use a Windows-optimized version of the new architecture that works by off loading printer formatting tasks to the host PC. A single integrated circuit handles the printer mechanics and input/output. Data flows directly to the printhead from the host PC, improving print speed performance. DeskJet 820C printers can print up to 6.5 pages per minute (ppm) in black text and 4 ppm in color, up to twice as fast as most low-cost inkjet printers. The average cost per page is 3 cents for black and 8 cents for color. The printers can handle letter, legal and custom paper sizes, as well as labels, envelopes magnets, frames, string and suction cups. (PrintPaks craft kits are available separately from PrintPaks Inc.) A special media kit, including HP greeting card stock, envelopes and HP's new banner paper, allows banners to be printed on a single, continuous sheet of paper instead of individual pages that must be taped together.
The DeskJet 680C is basically the same printer as the DeskJet 682C without the software and media bundle. The DeskWriter 680C is comparable to the DeskJet 680C but is designed for use with Macintosh computers.
The new DeskJet 682C replaces the DeskJet 660Cse and is priced at $329; and the DeskJet/DeskWriter 680C replace the DeskJet/DeskWriter 660C and are priced at $309. The DeskJet/DeskWriter 600 will be discontinued in July, when the DeskWriter will ship. The new DeskJet printers print at up to 5 ppm in black and 1.5 ppm in color, and support two-sided printing. The DeskJet 680C and DeskJet 682C are already available and have a one-year limited warranty. These models bear the US Environmental Protection Agency's Energy Star designation for low power consumption, using approximately 80 percent less energy than dot-matrix printers.
HP SOHO Printers
The HP DeskJet 820C Professional Series printers are color inkjet printers and transparencies.
When users choose the manual duplex printing option, the driver automatically alternates page numbers to support two-sided printing, and the user must manually turn over the pages. DeskJet 820C printers support DOS printing through Windows.
New HP Lasers
HP has also introduced three new LaserJet 5 printers, which replace the LaserJet 4 Plus and 4M Plus printers. The new printers offer improved graphics printing and usability in shared workgroup environments. These new printers are the first to use HP PCL (a proprietary HP page description language) 6, HP's next-generation printer language. PCL 6 offers faster graphics printing, improved grayscaling, a new font-synthesis technology and complete backward compatibility.
The 12-pages-per-minute (ppm), 600-dots-per-inch (dpi) LaserJet 5 printers offer faster return to application, faster output of complex graphics and improved graphics print quality than the popular LaserJet 4 Plus printers they replace. The LaserJet 5 printers also offer a sleek new industrial design, fifth-generation HP JetAdmin software and a higher duty cycle. All three models (the LaserJet 5, 5N and 5M printers) are designed for small workgroups (up to 10 users).
This introduction marks the first `N' or Ethernet-ready designation for an HP LaserJet printer product. The creation of the N model reflects the growing popularity among users for connecting printers directly to networks for faster performance, greater location flexibility and better remote manageability. The LaserJet 5N printer, which includes a JetDirect 10-baseT card and HP JetAdmin software, is network-ready for PCs in Ethernet environments.
The LaserJet 5N printer is designed for customers who want network connectivity but do not require PostScript and the extra memory offered with the LaserJet 5M printer.
New HP PCL 6 object-oriented printer language is tuned for graphics-rich documents, and includes font-synthesis technology, which offers the following benefits: faster printing of complex graphics and return to application; more efficient data streams for reduced network traffic; true what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) printing; improved print quality; truer document fidelity; and complete backward compatibility.
Gray-scale images, which are processed as objects, appear smooth and even, offering superior print quality for graphics and scanned images.
PCL 6 will support all Microsoft Windows 3.X, Windows NT, Windows 95 and IBM OS/2 applications. Complex graphical applications whose printing components closely match the Windows GDI model will provide the most notable performance gains.
LaserJet 5 printers come with a newly designed formatter that includes a 33 megahertz (MHz) Intel i80960 JF RISC processor for faster printing of all documents. This makes the LaserJet 5 printer 32 percent faster than the LaserJet 4 Plus printer, which uses a 25MHz processor.
Other enhancements include a more intuitive printer-control panel with easy-to-understand scrolling messages (up to 40 characters in length); a job-cancel button easily accessible on the front of the printer; and paper-level indicators. New 2MB or 4MB flash-memory modules offer permanent storage of forms, fonts and signatures, eliminating the need to download this information with each print job and resulting in faster printing. An optional HP IR (infrared) Connect can be attached to the printer's IR port for wireless printing. Mobile computer users can simply place their IrDA-compliant portable device within range (approximately three feet) of IR Connect and print.
All three printers include HP Printing System software, which provides graphical feedback and printer status for printers attached to PCs running Windows 3.1, 3.11 or Windows 95, and includes PCL 6 and PostScript Level 2 drivers; JetAdmin printer-management software; Flash-memory and FontSmart utility; NetWare NLM; and DOS application utilities and drivers. The LaserJet 5, 5N and 5M printers are equipped with both a serial port and parallel port with enhanced performance and bi-directional communications. The LaserJet 5N printer comes network-ready with a JetDirect card for Ethernet (10Base-T) networks. The LaserJet 5M printer comes network-ready with a JetDirect card for Ethernet and LocalTalk networks. All three models include dual paper trays, a 100-sheet multipurpose tray that holds a variety of paper sizes and types, from envelopes to legal-size paper, and a 250-sheet paper tray that holds letter-size paper. Duplex printing, a power envelope feeder and an optional 500-sheet, plain-paper tray that supports letter-, A4-, legal- and executive-size are also available. The suggested duty cycle of the LaserJet 5, 5N and 5M printers is 35,000 pages per month, a 75 percent improvement over that of the LaserJet 4 Plus printer.
The printers come standard with a total of 110 typefaces (45 built-in typefaces and 65 additional fonts on disk via FontSmart). The LaserJet 5M printer also includes an additional 110 Adobe Type 1 fonts (35 built-in Adobe PostScript fonts and 75 additional fonts on disk via FontSmart). The LaserJet 5 and 5N printers come standard with 4MB of memory, expandable to 66MB, and three open SIMM slots. The LaserJet 5M printer comes standard with 6MB of memory, expandable to 52MB of memory, and has two open SIMM slots. All three printers use HP's Memory Enhancement technology, which doubles the printer's effective memory in PCL. The LaserJet 5M printer offers Adobe's Memory Booster technology for better memory utilization with PostScript. The printers are Energy Star compliant and offer PowerSave and Economode printing options. Economode reduces the cost per page by approximately 20 percent. Packaging, toner cartridges and engine all can be recycled.
The printer's duplex option also allows for efficient use of paper. The LaserJet 5, 5N and 5M printers have expected retail prices of $1,299, $1,549 and $1,799 respectively.
These categories will be covered in the July and August issues: video cards, scaners/OCR software and selected industry trends.
Beverly Rosenbaum is a HAL-PC member and can be reached via e-mail through the User Journal section of HALNet.
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