bruceb news

Printer prices keep falling. I’ve seen a plausible prediction that printers will come to be disposable – we’ll replace the printer instead of replacing the ink cartridges individually. Even the least expensive inkjet printers can print photos that rival prints from the drugstore.

HP inkjet printers are designed inelegantly in one respect: there isn’t room to install all of the possible ink cartridges at the same time. You’re required to put in the appropriate cartridge for photos or text before you send a print job. They sometimes include a cute little stand for the cartridge that has to sit off to the side when it’s not being used. […] continued

Printer prices are in freefall. Inkjet and all-in-one printers under a hundred dollars, laser printers under two hundred dollars – and now color laser printers have dropped below five hundred dollars. At that price, small businesses have to consider them – the cost per page is far lower than inkjets, and they print far more quickly.

The color lasers have some interesting quirks. They’re bulky and frequently noisy. After the printers go into their power-saving sleep mode, they take longer to come to life and print the first page of a print job – although pages come out with gratifying speed after that. […] continued

If you’re considering a printer, here’s some advice from Vyomesh Joshi, general manager of HP’s Imaging and Printer Group – someone in a position to give good advice.

“If you are not going to use your printer that often, then you want to buy a very low-end printer. If you’re going to use lots of pages, you should really buy a business ink jet, because it has the lowest cost of ownership of any of our ink jet devices. It’s even cheaper to own than a color laser. Our business ink jet cost per copy is cheaper than our color laser.

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I recently saw a study about the dilemma facing manufacturers of products sold in grocery stores – they don’t want their product lineup to get stale, but consumers can be overwhelmed if they’re offered too many choices.

Printer models have become a blur. I can’t keep up with the rollouts from HP any more, much less the other manufacturers. Every time I walk down the aisle at CompUSA, I feel like I’ve never seen any of the choices before. Who knew there was a laser printer from HP as low as $199? Color laserjets starting at $549! My goodness. […] continued

HP has an overlooked line of business color inkjet printers – here’s the 1100 series, and here’s the 2230 series, for example. There are more expensive models as well. They’re fast and sturdy.

Nonetheless, many offices are more comfortable with laser printers. Color laser printers are finally coming down in price and quality has significantly improved. You still might not want to print your photos on them – but they surpass inkjets in speed and text quality, and the best of them can almost close the gap on photos as well.

PC Magazine likes the Minolta-QMS Magicolor 2350 EN ($1,100) and says generally nice things about the dirt-cheap HP Color LaserJet 1500L ($800). […] continued

HP spent a billion dollars recently to do a complete makeover of its Deskjet printer lineup – redesigning the entire line from scratch to ensure that HP continued to hold onto its lead instead of losing the low end of the market to Lexmark and other competitors. Here’s an article from Fortune magazine about the business decisions and technical choices that were made to accomplish the audacious project in record time.

Interesting fact: The ink cartridges are supported by almost a hundred patents, and when they’re printing at full speed and top quality the nozzles on the cartridge spray eight to ten million drops of ink per second. […] continued

Hewlett Packard has a line of color printers for business – including “business Deskjets” that don’t turn up often at the neighborhood stores. They feature faster speeds and bigger paper trays than the home units, but they aren’t quite as well suited to printing photos as the amazing new home inkjet printers.

HP announced five new business printers today. Here’s the press release. The one that stands out is a color Laserjet at $999 – a remarkable price if you need high-speed color printing. I haven’t checked out the cost of toner cartridges – I assume money flies out of your wallet to keep the ink flowing, just like all the other color printers now. […] continued

It should be fun to watch the printer market over the next six months or so.

Dell wants to market printers under its own name, instead of reselling everybody else’s printers – but Dell doesn’t particularly want to do its own research, development, or manufacturing, so it’s looking for a partner that will sell printers cheaply to Dell and let Dell put its own logo on the outside. Dell probably approached Hewlett Packard at one time but got nowhere. In fact, recently the talk about Dell’s rumored printer business got so heavy that HP abruptly quit supplying Dell directly with printers, although Dell will probably keep offering HP printers that it obtains from other channels. […] continued

Take a sneak peek at the new HP Deskjet 5550, due to hit the stores any day now. I don’t have a direct link, but you can get all the info by going to the HP Shopping site. Type “5550″ into the “Search” box. It’s so new that I can’t find any reviews yet, but it will be getting a blast of publicity in the next few weeks. HP apparently felt driven to blow away Epson and Canon, so they poured money into overhauling their Deskjet line, and this is the first product to hit the shelves. Here’s HP’s press release about the new printers. […] continued

If you’ve got a digital camera, I’ve got a great accessory for you. This is my favorite Christmas present.

The Hewlett Packard Photosmart 100 printer does only one thing: it prints high-quality 4×6 photos on HP glossy photo paper. But it does it very well indeed! The photos are borderless (!) and printing is relatively quick – about three minutes per photo. And you have to see the printer to appreciate how small it is – significantly smaller than a toaster. It’s absolutely adorable.

HP, Epson, and Canon all make inkjet printers that can print out high-quality photos. It’s clumsy to load the 4×6 paper in a regular-size inkjet and get it to feed straight, and it takes no time to get sick of reaching for the scissors to cut out pictures printed on full-size photo paper. […] continued