HP Rolls Out Enterprise Printers

As part of its push to propel the color imaging and printing market, Hewlett-Packard Co. on Wednesday introduced two new lines of laser color printers aimed at businesses.

For small and midsize businesses, the Palo Alto, Calif., company unveiled the 2550 series, which includes HPs cheapest color laser printer, the 2550L, priced at $499. Armed with a 264MHz processor and 64MB of memory (expandable to 192MB), the 2550L prints at 20 pages per minute in monochrome and 4 ppm in color.

The first page prints out in 18 seconds for monochrome and 29 seconds for color. The 2550L includes USB (Universal Serial Bus) 2.0 and parallel ports. It holds 125 sheets of paper. Additional models in this line, which range up to $699, offer extra paper trays and Ethernet connectivity.

For bigger businesses, HP announced the HP Color LaserJet 4650, an in-line printer priced at $1,799. The 4650 prints both monochrome and color pages at 22ppm, with the first page out in 15 seconds. Fueled by a 533MHz processor, the printer has 160MB memory (expandable to 544MB). It has a 100-sheet multipurpose tray and a 500-sheet input tray. Additional models in this line, which range from $1799 to $3999, offer Ethernet connectivity, two-sided printing, and can hold up to 1600 sheets.

Both the 2550 and 4650 printers are available now.

/zimages/6/28571.gifClick hereto read about Lexmark targeting SMBs with its new printer line.

HP predicts that the market for office color printing will grow from $7 billion to $10 billion by 2006. Speaking at an event yesterday, Vyomesh Joshi, executive vice president of HPs imaging and printing group, predicted that color printing will soon become ubiquitous for both consumers and businesses. He said that small businesses can cut their printing budget in half by moving their printing jobs in-house.

“The whole revolution of color imaging is now,” said Joshi. “HP will be able to transform this with the help of our partners.”

On that front, HP announced new and expanded partnerships with Adobe Systems Inc., Apple Computer Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Quark Inc. to produce digital color software and applications.

HPs Imaging and Printing Group is the companys most profitable business, accounting for nearly $23 billion of the companys more than $73 billion in revenues last year.

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