Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Hewlett-Packard Presents their Latest - Aug 2010 Meeting

What did we learn from Greg O'Donnell (HP's GTA East Territorial Sales Manager) and Rob Morris (Manager of Staples Bowmanville)? We learned that Staples handles not only all of HP's retail products, but their commercial devices as well. And, Staples will recylcle old electronics dropped it off at the store. Call first. HP produces a complete line of low, mid and high end computers - desktops and laptops. Some are specially equiped for media; some are tuned for gaming and graphics; and some are made so that a touch screen and computer are contained in a single unit. Most importantly, we learned about the new e-printing technology exclusive to HP. Each e-printer (multi-funtion units for now), have been given a unique email address which can be used to send print jobs directly to the printer (wirelessly). The owner of the printer has complete control of the printer by way of a web interface. That is to say, the owner tells the printer who can send print jobs and when to print (or simply hold for approval). The printer can automatically decide whether the output should be on 4 by 6 photo paper, or 8.5 by 11 office paper. HP's servers in the United States will translate many common formats for correct output, hence no print drivers need to be installed or understood by the applications used to create the job. Sending Word, PDF or any number of image file formats should be no problem.
What did HP learne from us? One of our members suggested that HP's competitor to the iPad should be named "HiP-Pad".