Road warriors rejoice! Remember those frustrating times when you’re on your way to an important meeting only to realize you’ve left some important document behind in your office? Well the smart folks over at HP have come up with a solution that should appeal to anyone who needs instant printing wherever they may be.

At the Global Influencer Summit 2012 in Shanghai, China, HP unveiled a host of new products, one of them being the HP Officejet 150 Mobile All-in-One. Weighing in at little over 3kg and measuring 350x171x90mm, the Officejet 150 can hold 50 sheets of paper and can print up to 500 pages on a single charge of its rechargeable lithium-ion battery. The printer can also scan one sheet a time and either print a copy of the scanned image or save it to a PC or memory card / USB stick.

With a speed of around 22ppm for black and 18ppm for color, the HP Officejet 150 seems like the perfect solution to anyone who may need customized client contracts immediately after a meeting, or may need to scan something urgently on the spot.

While a large percent of the general population believe that printers were put on this planet to make us miserable, I have to digress and say that for the most part I’ve had quite a happy relationship with my printer over the years. Sure, I seem to be trading it in for a newer model each year when the cartridges mysteriously stop being produced, but who’s really keeping track?

My latest assignment (should I choose to accept it or not) is to check out the HP TopShot LaserJet Pro M275. At first the spec sheet made me think of this as just another printer/scanner combo, but it wasn’t until I saw the word ‘3D’ did I sit bolt upright. Was this a 3D printer from HP? Could I start churning out miniature models and spare car parts? Alas, the 3D only referred to the printer’s ability to scan 3D objects which brought my dreams of mass production crumbling down. But still, a 3D scanner? What on earth would you need a 3D scanner for? If you’re constantly taking photos of items that are either meant for your website or a catalog or online auction, then this printer just might do the trick. The TopShot scanner claims to be able to capture objects faster and better than going through the hoopla of setting up a professional product shoot with the right lighting and camera. But how exactly did it stack up in our tests? Read on to find out.

Build Quality & Design
The TopShot combines both matte and glossy plastic in its design – matte for most of the body and glossy finishes for areas around the top of the unit. It also features a small adjustable touchscreen to configure and operate the printer, and includes both wired and wireless print configurations. The printer has a 150 sheet loading tray but doesn’t have other paper handling options or automatic duplex. On the top of the device is the TopShot scanning mechanism, which consists of a white flatbed and a camera mounted on the end of an arm. When not in use the arm can be folded down and automatically latches in place thanks to a magnetic clasp. The arm is constructed from plastic and cannot be removed, and felt a little bit delicate when I moved it up and down. Lifting off the flatbed scanner allows you to access the toner cartridges – these are compact and easy to replace should you need to. Overall the unit is just a tad bit big for placing on your desk, but otherwise would be fine to accommodate.

Setup & features
The TopShot has a number of features that makes it quite a robust laser printer. The wired and wireless options allow it to adapt to almost any environment – I opted to set it up wirelessly which took me all of 2 minutes to accomplish. The bundled CDs come with the HP software for both Mac and Windows, and takes a couple of minutes to install and detect the printer. There’s a stack of software that unfortunately comes along with the installation, so opt for a custom install if you don’t want to have unnecessary programs running on your machine.

This printer also has tight integration with HP’s suite of ePrint services. Once connected to the Internet, you can register your printer and obtain an ‘email address’ for it – this will allow you to send documents to the printer via email for printing, which is great for instances when you don’t want to setup the printer manually on a PC. You can also choose to scan documents and send them instantly to Google Docs, making them available to other users as well. There are also a number of ‘apps’ that you can download to the printer for one-touch activities such as printing news headlines, daily Sudoku puzzles, craft items, and much more.

Print & scanning quality
I ran the printer through a variety of print tests, and each document was produced beautifully every time. From full pages of text to A4-sized photo printouts, the TopShot performed well in all the print jobs I queued up and was able to print things within an acceptable time frame. Colors were bold across multiple paper types, and fonts were crisp without any toner smudges or fading.

Given that producing laser printouts was a no-brainer, I turned my attention to the 3D scanning aspect of this device. The TopShot scans in 3D by taking a series of photos using the mounted camera and LED flashes, and then makes some minor adjustments before printing out the result or saving it to your PC. Now the term ‘3D’ actually can be a bit misleading, as it’s not really a proper 3D image that’s being taken, but rather a ‘top-down’ photo. The only 3D that comes into play is that the device is able to supposedly capture better depth than a traditional scanner. To test just how good the 3D scanning was, I tried the following items:

- Snickers bar: this came out looking like you could grab the bar off the paper! The wrapper wasn’t distorted in any way and was reproduced beautifully.
- An apple: this also came out quite well, though the apple’s texture and skin tones were slightly lightened because of the TopShot’s flash.
- Motherboard: we did this just for kicks really, but it also illustrated that the photos taken by the TopShot are very zoomed in, so if your item is larger than about 6 inches, then you’re going to get parts cut off.
- Lifesavers sweets: what this scan showed was the difficulty the TopShot had with shadows (see photo below). The shadows were a bit tricky to mask out in Photoshop and also appeared quite grainy, probably caused by the TopShot’s automatic contrast and color corrections.

Frankly though, while the 3D scanning was a neat and fun thing to try out, I see it having very limited uses. Many of the promotional content for the TopShot featured jewelry being used in the scanner, so I scanned a watch and pendant to receive fairly standard\ results. Again the shadows here were starting to get in the way, so experimenting with different positions in your scans is highly recommended.

Apart from scanning in 3D, how did the TopShot do with traditional flatbed scans? To be honest, not spectacularly. The TopShot essentially just takes a photo of whatever document is on the flatbed, and that’s your scan. There’s no option to scan multiple pages, and if you’re trying to scan a page from a book, you’ll most certainly get your hand accidentally included in the photo or the shadows from the curling pages if you don’t manually specify that you’re scanning a document and not an object.

So who exactly is the HP TopShot LaserJet Pro M275 catering to? Well if you’re looking for a laser printer for light to medium workloads, this printer will fit the bill. If you’re constantly items up for sale (small items that is), then the TopShot will do a decent job. But that’s about it – it’s a niche product that a few consumers will drift towards, as its lack of other scanning options doesn’t make it too friendly to use for other purposes. The touch-panel can also get a bit sluggish at times, and there’s no option for printing items from USB or memory cards. In short, the TopShot is a great laser printer but the 3D scanning isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

I’ve had the HP Office Jet 8500A working really well at home for the past year. In fact, it’s been working so well that even my wife considers it hassle-free and easy to use. So when HP sent me the Envy 110 for reviewing, I knew I was going to meet with some resistance swapping the 8500A out. Luckily, the extremely sleek and non-printer like form factor of the Envy helps in situations like these. At less than a third of the size of the 8500A and with much better looks, the Envy 110 certainly looks awesome. But lets find out if its a capable All-in-One device.

Design

Measuring just 427×336.5x102mm, with a beautiful off-white finish and no visible buttons, the Envy 110 certainly does not look like a printer. You can tell that HP has gone back to the drawing board with an empty canvas and not many preconceived notions when designing the Envy. With everything from your computers and monitors starting to look like fashion items, HP wanted to make sure that the printer does not get second-hand treatment on your desk.

HP has done that by hiding things you normally associate with the printer- such as a document feeder or the output tray. To add paper, you pull a concealed tray from the bottom of the device and just fill it up. Because of the small size of the printer, you don’t get rooms for a large stash, but the Envy 110e can still accommodate upto 80 sheets of A4 sized paper or a few 4×6 inch photo paper. There is no output tray but an automatic arm extends from the printer when it detects a print job and can support upto 25 sheets of paper. Once you pick the paper up, the arm hides back into the body.

Connectors are also well concealed with the front side hiding the SD Card slot and the USB port with a flip-door while all buttons are touch based and present on the sides of the touch-enabled 3.45-inch LCD panel. Two LEDs are present on the front- one for power that blinks for any printing activities as well as one for Wi-Fi connectivity. Finally, the back has connections for power and USB if you don’t want to utilize the wireless capabilities of the device.

Features

With regards to features,, the HP Envy 110 will provide you with printing, copying and scanning functionality, however traditional faxing is missing. you can still set up efax on the device that basically lets you send and receive faxes using a virtual phone line through email, however, UAE is not supported as a country meaning you won’t find a local number to use for faxing. One feature that I found lacking is the ability to scan and email directly from the device instead of using a PC. The 8500A allowed me to do this and is certainly one of the features I missed.

The Envy 110e is web enabled which gives the printer an email address allowing you print to it by simply sending your document as an attachment to that email address. Air Print is also supported so you will have no issues printing from your iOS devices. Finally, you can add applications on the printer itself- things like Soduku or Sesame Street activity sheets for kids. Interestingly, some applications disappeared after an update to the printer’s software such as Disney and Nickelodeon- it could be region specific.

Performance

Printing and scanning speeds on the HP Envy 110 are a bit on the slower side, but not necessarily to the point of being frustrating. I was able to print a full color page in 27 seconds but a larger document with tens of pages shows the weakness of Envy. Scanning a full color document took 31 seconds while copying that same document took 49 seconds. Scanning to and printing from SD Cards/USB is well supported- certainly a handy feature for people who want to print their photos from their digital camera.

Coming to the quality of documents, the HP Envy 110 does a decent job- especially with photos and colored charts/drawings. While text quality of documents is good, I have seen better output form the likes of the 8500A which are still a bit lower in quality compared to laser printers. What hurts is the capacity of ink cartridges which only gives 200 pages on the black and 165 on the color and costs $17 and $20 to replace respectively. Needless to say, the HP Envy 110 is certainly not for someone who prints day in and day out.

However, I don’t really think HP is after the crowd that prints a large number of documents with the Envy 110. It’s more of a home printer that you can use to print documents and pictures a few times a week. It’s also priced a bit on the higher side at roughly AED 900 but then so is anything that likes to be associated with fashionable and cool.

During a brief break at the HP Global Partner Conference in Las Vegas last week, I had a chance to play around with the HP TopShot MFP Laserjet Printer. Now HP’s expertise in the printer market is nothing new, but this was one printer that certainly caught my attention. What makes the TopShot different from any other printer in the market is its revolutionary 3D scanning technology.

While traditional flatbed scanners are suitable for scanning documents or pages from books, attempting to scan any kind of other object usually produces a ‘flat’ scan of whatever parts of the object are pressing against the glass. With the TopShot MFP, objects can be placed in the scanning area and scanned to produce a much more realistic 3D scan. Not one to shy away from new gadgets, I decided to give it a try and placed my phone on the scanner to produce a copy. After a few moments of analyzing the object, the printer started up and worked its magic – a few minutes later I had a scan of my phone printed out for me. Below is the same phone, scanned on the left with the TopShot and on the right with a flatbed scanner.

You can see that the scan with the TopShot actually shows the depth of the phone in greater detail, compared to what is achieved with a flatbed scanner. This makes it handy to scan everything from jewelry to miniature figurines, or whatever items might not be able to fit into a flatbed scanner, effectively eliminating the need to have a white background or studio shots.

The printer has a touch-screen interface and supports a host of cloud-based services. You can scan an item and store it instantly on the web, or print directly to your printer from any device using ePrint technology. It even has a number of apps for printing headlines and financial information, all updated from the web.

Even if you don’t necessarily have 3D objects that need scanning, the TopShot LaserJet Pro M275 is a robust printer that delivers excellent color output and rapid, web-enabled scanning.

Do you have a printer at home? Is it an inkjet or a laser printer? Chances are it’s an inkjet printer, probably a multifunctional one. But would you consider a laser printer instead?

We’re looking to buy a printer for our home. As we don’t actually have one – strange, I know – and it’s been increasingly common lately that we’ve had to print the odd paper here and there. Now, I can, of course, print at the office at work, but I don’t want to have to rely on that. See, I have this secret plan that I’m working on, that I’m slowly trying figuring out all the ins and outs of my job, so I can eventually go to my boss and say “now I can work remotely from home every day.” Having a printer at home plays a role in that scheme, albeit a very tiny role.

The most obvious choice is then to go for an inkjet printer, one that sprays small dots of ink onto a paper to form whatever it is you’re printing. These printers are cheap, almost free, and typically produce good results. Some can even print in color and some produce stunningly good looking photo printouts.

There are also lots of inkjet printers to choose from, with different sizes and options. A common thing is for manufacturers to throw in a bunch of functionality in one product, and call it a multifunction printer. Often you can find a printer, scanner, and fax in one, but who uses a fax anymore?

But with inkjets, it bothers me that you’ll be paying out of your nose for the actual ink, even though the printer might be almost free. The razor blade effect in essence.

Then there are some really affordable laser printers. Especially Samsung seems to be active in the low-cost laser market, at least one mode that is cheaper than some inkjets. The lasers can often be faster than the inkjets and produce stunning results, at least in black and white. And that’s what I’d need a printer for mainly, just print out typical business documents without color. In that sense, a laser would be better suited for me, but I’m sure I’d one day need to scan something too, and then I’d be stuck.

And let’s not forget being able to print in color – that would be nice wouldn’t it? To be fair, you also have to buy the consumables for a laser, including the powder that it uses to make the print on paper, but when you buy a laser cartridge you feel as though you get so much more than you do when you buy an inkjet cartridge. Most of the time that is also true, that you do get more pages for less cost per page with a laser.

There you go, my present predicament is nowhere closer to being solved. So my search for a reliable and affordable printer continues.

Photo by tom_bullock.

As much as I’ve dreamt about a paper-less office, I have come to realize that it will simply not happen. From employee contracts and payslips to vendor invoices, it is almost impossible to run a proper business without a printer in this day and age. Thus, I contacted some of the printer manufacturers we deal with to send out their latest All-in-One solutions and I got an interesting selection of devices ranging in sizes and technologies. Lets talk about some of these technologies first:

Inkjet vs Laser

When it comes to printing, there are two leading technologies that you need to decide between- laser or ink-jet. Traditionally, home users and small business users have opted for inkjet based printers while medium to larger organizations have chosen laser based ones. The reason for that is that ink-jets are cheaper to buy, however, they consume ink cartridges faster thus ending up more expensive in the longer run. Laser toners on the other hand last much longer and end up being cheaper in the longer run. Another reason is that Lasers are better at printing text based documents or graphics, while ink-jets generally produce better photographs- something many home users print.

Connectivity

Back in the old days, printers used to connect to your computers through the “Parallel” port that was represented as LPT1 in Windows. Over time, printers moved to USB which was not only faster but also supported the plug’n’play standard making printers much easier to install. With the explosion of networking, most modern printers now support being connected directly to your network- either through a wired or a wireless connection. All of the printers we tested for this article supported Wireless connectivity.

When we sent out an email to printer manufacturers, all we mentioned was that we are doing a round-up of All-in-One printers. Interestingly, the four models we received were quite different from another. Lets take a look at these four printers.

I never thought a printer/all-in-one device would get me excited but after playing with the HP Envy 110e, I must say that I am mildly amused. We have an AIO round-up coming up next week and this was one the printers that I got to test. In a nutshell, it defies the traditional printers by offering a lot in a small packaging and is ideally suited for the home user. With wired and wireless connectivity as well as apps downloadable from the web that include everything from spreadsheets to Disney coloring pages, it is sure to keep everyone in the family entertained.

HP was in full force at GITEX this year showing some of their new printers such as the very good looking Envy as well as the upcoming 3D scanning Top Shot.

We managed to steal some time from a couple of their execs to talk about their new products.

LG LSM-100 mouse looks like a conventional laser mouse from the outside, but once you flip it over the mouse can be used to scan documents and photos without need of any other dedicated bulky scanning hardware. The mouse is delightfully small and packs in two very different devices in a single package which is really nice if you want less clutter on your desk or have scanning needs on the move.

The built-in scanner scans at 320dpi and has really crisp results with good filters built-in to remove the wrinkles etc from pages you scan. As the mouse is moved over the surface, it will use reference coordinates to fill in the picture and combine it as a whole image which can be saved in popular image and pdf formats.

The scanner mouse has been launched in Europe and will soon be sold in other countries too. It will cost approximately around 500 to 550 AED when its launched later in Middle East.

Press release:
HP Middle East today announced new imaging and printing solutions and devices designed to help small and midsize businesses (SMBs) and enterprise organizations enhance employee productivity, both in the office and on-the-go.

“Customers need a partner that can help them solve complex business issues,” said Amin Mortazavi, General Manager, Imaging & Printing Group, HP Middle East. “Our new technologies and innovations are designed to transform paper-intense processes into simple digital workflows, allowing businesses to identify new opportunities for growth.”

Today’s launch includes:

- HP LaserJet Enterprise M4555 MFP series – A secure, easy-to-use mono MFP designed to help businesses increase efficiency and improve document workflow. The HP Laserjet Enterprise M4555 MFP series starts from 2,440 AED.

- HP LaserJet Pro 100 Colour MFP series – Ideal for small midsize businesses, provides professional-quality print, copy and scanning capabilities along with time and cost saving features that make the printer a smart strategic investment. The HP Laserjet Pro 100 Colour MFP series starts from 1,175 AED.

New additions to the HP Officejet range are:

- HP OfficeJet Pro 8000 Enterprise Printer – Designed for printing environment managers and IT decision makers who want to integrate affordable, professional colour printing into existing enterprise environments. The HP OfficeJet Pro 8000 starts from 849 AED.

- HP OfficeJet 100 Mobile Printer – Designed for mobile professionals who need to be able to print professional-quality documents directly from selected Bluetooth-enabled notebooks, smart phones and other mobile devices. The HP OfficeJet 100 Mobile Printer starts from 1,099 AED.

New additions to the HP DeskJet range are:

- The HP DeskJet 3050a. This easy to use unit is web-connected, and allows users to print wirelessly, scan and copy while also incorporating HP’s new ePrint technology. The DeskJet 3050a eAiO will be available from July for 289 AED.

- The DeskJet range is also joined by two new entry level models; the DeskJet 2050a which is a stylish all-in-one colour printer, copier and scanner with a recommended retail price of 199 AED, and the DeskJet 1050a which retails at a smart 179 AED.

By making strategic decisions about their imaging and printing investments – including streamlining paper-intense processes – businesses can improve office efficiencies and uncover new revenue streams.