The Print Shop: Practical, Possible, and Peculiar Printer Technology

As PC World's printing expert, I'm most often on the lookout for new models promising improvements in ease of use, cost per page, or photo output quality. As important as these key points are, the world of printers also has its fair share of headline-grabbing innovation. This month I run through hot new models available for purchase now, and discuss some interesting concepts that may find their way into products of the future. And don't forget to read down to where I discuss the printer that prints on toast!

Hey Presto! Print Photos and E-Mail via a Phone Line

HP is targeting what it says are the nearly 65 million American adults who have yet to jump online. The new $150 HP Printing Mailbox device (pictured left and available now), pairs with the company's forthcoming Presto Service, which is set to launch mid-November.

Here's how the concept will work. Friends and family can send an e-mail or photos to a loved one who's signed up with the Presto Service, which will then convert the messages into a customizable themed layout (such as "holidays"), ready for print. The Printing Mailbox then automatically receives and prints messages on a regular schedule that you can program.

A Presto Newsstand option will also allow the Printing Mailbox to receive and print popular columns, puzzles, recipes, and feature stories on a daily basis. The Presto Service will cost $10 a month, or $100 a year.

This is an interesting idea from HP, for two reasons. First, it's quite clever, and I might personally look into it for my not-so-tech-savvy grandparents. Second, it will obviously also help HP tap into the broad base of those who haven't yet discovered photo printing, and sell more replacement ink to those who have.

Look for an upcoming review (as well as my previous PrintShop columns) at PC World's Printer InfoCenter.

World's Smallest Color Laser Printer

Samsung is launching a new CLP-300 line of color laser printers that weigh just 30 pounds and boast a compact footprint of just 15.4 by 13.5 by 10.4 inches (width by depth by height). The company claims the CLP-300 is the smallest color laser printer in its class, and is designed for small businesses, home users, and even students. Available now, the standard CLP-300 costs $300, while the $350 CLP-N adds a built-in 10/100 ethernet port for network operation.

Both models have a base resolution of 600 by 600 dots per inch (dpi) that can be enhanced up to 2400 by 600 dpi, and they also feature easy-to-install toner bottles with yields of up to 2000 pages for black and up to 1000 pages for color.

Paper management comes in the form of a 150-sheet semi-cassette input tray, while output capacity is 100 face-down pages. As has become quite common, the CLP-300 series can also print onto special media such as envelopes, transparencies, labels, and cards. Finally, either unit will support Windows 98 through XP, Mac OS X, and various flavors of Linux.

Though we didn't receive a test unit in time for our latest Top 10 color lasers roundup, the PC World Test Center will definitely put one through its paces as soon as we can get it.

Bless USB and Parallel Printers With Bluetooth

OK, here's a quickie but goodie. The BT-0260(pictured left, courtesy of USBGear.com) is a Bluetooth version 2.0 combination printer adapter for current USB printers and older parallel port models. The adapter lets you print wirelessly from Bluetooth-equipped devices such as a notebook, desktop, PDA, or phone.

USBgear.com sells it for about $68, and--as an aside for the geek elite--it's actually made by Taiwan's CC&C Technologies.

Printing Future? 1000 Pages per Minute

We recently compiled an ambitious list of PC World's 100 Fearless Forecasts. One research project to make the list of future technologies was JeTrix. Instead of a small printhead that moves back and forth across a sheet of paper, JeTrix heads can be built as wide as the sheet, allowing for some truly amazing output speeds.

The folks over at Physorg.com have interviewed the developers here.

A Printer for Toast

The Zuse compact toasting device (pictured right) can burn images of 12 by 12 pixels onto bread using line-by-line toasting, a technique similar to that of early dot-matrix printers. The concept uses an optical sensor instead of a switch to know when to start toasting and currently stores up to 50 pictures in memory that are randomly "printed" onto your bread.

Drawing inspiration from products such as the classic "Toast-O-Lator," the Zuse was created by Jokob Illera of Inseq Design as his diploma project at Vienna's University for Applied Art. Jakob tells me that he's currently in negotiations with different companies to bring the product to consumers and hopes that in about six to nine months, the Zuse will be available for about $50.

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