News
HP Develops Internet Print Appliances
- By Scott Bekker
- April 26, 2000
Hewlett-Packard Co. announced the first in a family of print appliances that provide customers with dedicated printing solutions and a new product category called document routers. HP also demonstrated technologies that enable cellular phones, PDAs, pagers, and other wireless Internet devices to point and print.
Printing services, infrastructure, and appliances are the key points to HP's Internet print intiative. On the infrastructure front, HP will develop technology to enable information appliances to print without wires. The HP JetDirect 4000 print appliance, and the wireless HP Jornada 540 Series Color Pocket PC, which can beam color images to color printers, are the first appliances in the HP initiative.
Print services will include contracts with FedEx, to turn a printer into a personal shipping station; ImageTag, to store, retrieve, and send important documents using bar-coded labels; NewspaperDirect, to print international newspapers locally on demand; printCafe, to auction, broker, and manage high-volume publishing jobs; and Mimeo.com, to receive documents via the Internet to be printed, bound, and sent overnight.
Contact HP, www.hp.com.
About the Author
Scott Bekker is editor in chief of Redmond Channel Partner magazine.