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Hewlett-Packard Co. on Tuesday will expand its stable of office and enterprise printers and copiers with a new line-up of multifunction devices, and a new large-format color copying machine.
The new HP LaserJet mfp units, the 3300, 4100, and 9000 are targeted at the home office, work group and enterprise customer, respectively. With an over arching goal of helping customers reduce cost, each device combines a range of functions including printing, faxing, color scanning and copying.
To be sure, the new mfp line isnt HPs first stab at the multifunction device market. The company has been shipping all-in-one devices for several years for the home office, as well as office devices dubbed “Mopiers”. But this line-up is different, officials say.
“We think we have really understood this market from our mistakes,” said Vyomesh Joshi, president of HPs Imaging and Printing Systems. “Ill be the first one to tell you our Mopier was not that successful. We didnt have holistic view of looking at the product, solutions, services, and go-to-market. And thats different with this introduction.”
A feature unique to the mfp line is HPs digital send, or, send-to-email, technology which is embedded in the devices and allows users to send scanned paper documents directly to an email address. As a result, the amount of faxing is reduced, and color images or documents can be sent and received in their intended form. In addition to the technologys support of a range of document management systems, such as Microsoft Corp.s SharePoint Portal Server, and Documentum, digital send also provides authentication for secure transmissions.
Balukoff Lindstrom & Co. uses the digital send feature quite a bit, according to Diane Stewart, network administrator at the in Boise, Idaho, accounting firm. The reason is both time and cost.
“Right now were sending [files] to emails,” Stewart said. ” [Accountants] email it to themselves, then through [Microsofts] Outlook, they save it to the network, where each client has its own separate folder.”
Stewart is an early tester of the 4100 and the 9000. Though she said CPAs ultimately must print the end product, the send-to-email feature saves the company the time and expense associated with hard copy faxing. It also pushes the company ever closer to its goal of becoming a paperless company.
“Because were doing so much more scanning, its allowing us to cut down on things like toner and paper,” she said.
Balukoff Lindstrom, which will be given the two mfp machines at the end of its testing period, is using the 4100 for a work group of between six to eight people, while the 9000 is being used as high volume machine.
Designed for the home office user, the 3300 mfp starts at $499 and combines printing, faxing, copying and color scanning in a compact design. It offers print speeds of 15 pagers per minute (ppm), and digital copying at 14 ppm.
The 4100, designed for workgroups with higher volume needs than the 3300, offers print speeds of 25 ppm. Copying features include a 30-sheet automatic document feeder and a 25 ppm copying speed, as well as 600 ppi color scanning. The machine starts at $3,749.
For high-volume work, the 9000 mpf supports printing speeds of 50 ppm. A 100-sheet auto document feeder copies at a speed of 50 ppm and supports single-pass 600 ppi color scanning. Pricing for the 9000 starts at $13,999.
The HP Designjet Copier cc800ps is the companys large-format color copying machine, that comes integrated with printing and scanning as well. The cc800ps supports a wide range of copying functions including multiple copies, enlarging, and reducing, and requires no external PC for stand-alone copying.
The machine can scan and copy full-color documents up to 2400dip and up to 42 inches for original documents.
The cc800ps will ship April 3 for street price of $19,995.