#193 - The new printer with a tablet thrown in

HP has released a new all in one that caught our attention. The HP Photosmart eStation 510a is a printer, scanner, copier and fax machine with one special twist. The control panel can detach and be an external 7" Android tablet. It runs on wifi and can take print from ipads, ipods and just about any other computer that can send a print document.

The print quality is the best HP makes for an inkjet printer. Top notch photo quality if you use the good photo paper. Ink costs about $45 total for Black, Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Photo Black cartridges that do 300 printed pages. With max speeds of up to 33 pages per minute, this printer is definitely speedy. Because of the wifi tablet you can print to this printer from ANYWHERE! The HP ePrint service lets you print out your expense reports before you get home! You can print from Facebook, Yahoo or even Snapfish. Printing from the web is the new standard in printers and this one has all the rough spots already worked out.

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The setup for wireless printing is pretty easy and soon all your desktops, laptops, tablet or even smart phone can print to the new printer. It can hold 125 pages of 8.5x11" paper and do up to 12 envelopes at a time. It doesn't have a large duty cycle (1200 pages per month) so don't plan on this one being an office workhorse. The scanner is a flatbed (no sheet feed) with 1200x1200 black/white & color operation. It has an SD card slot for data from cameras.

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Now on to the 7" detachable tablet PC. It uses the Android system and comes with Internet browser, book reader, facebook, and other apps. It will be fully Android 2.2 compatible soon and have complete access to the Android market and 175,000 other apps. You get about 5 hours of battery time and just need to put it back on the printer to charge. It can be a digital picture frame, ebook reader or just a web browser.

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Cost for all this? HP list price of $399. $100 less then an iPad. Amazing. Technology at the leading edge.

#192 - Tech musings on a rainy day

I see that the ipad2 has been released. Same price as the ipad original. The ipad original is available for as low as $349 till the stock is sold. The new ipad is slimmer, faster and has 2 cameras to make your multimedia experience better. Still no Flash player support so 40% of the web pages out there won't work on the ipad original or ipad 2. There is a war between Apple (read Steve jobs) and Adobe. Seems sad the consumer is the loser. Good news is that the use of HTLM5 is growing and displacing Flash so the number of Flash only sites is decreasing.

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PCSS has varied opinion of the ipad. I've played on several and enjoy the size and ability to surf much of the web and add apps that make it more useful. I don't like that it really isn't a full functioning PC. No Office applications that move the world. I think the day of the laptop as we know it will merge into the tablet type PC. I'm very excited about the Motorola Xoom (see last blog) and others that will move the tablet to be a PC replacement.

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On the "you know this was going to happen" front, the Google Android app markets had 21 different apps infected this past week. The infection would send out your personal telephone information to the bad guys. Google stopped the distribution of the 21 apps AND more importantly initiated its Kill App program to terminate the 50,000 infected apps that were downloaded before Google found the infection. Who knew that Google had a Kill App program that could reach every Android enabled telephone? I wonder if Apple has the same on the iphone.

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J.D. Power has declared that Verizon has the best call quality of the big nationwide cell phone providers. I think most knew this, but now there is data to back it up. T-Mobile was at the bottom of the list. Let the crowing ads begin!

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And on the electric car front, although GM and Nissan aren't crowing about them the sales of electric cars in the US was released for February. A whole 281 Chevy Volts and 67 Nissan Leafs were sold. Wow are you impressed yet? As I will continue to say, Electric cars will NEVER be anything but a niche market until they can get 300 miles of range on a single charge. I'll stick with my Honda Insight and the 45 mpg I get on the highway and around town.