Hewlett-Packard takes color laser printing to new heights

Hewlett-Packard takes color laser printing to new heights

By Zatni Arbi

JAKARTA (JP): At about this time of the year, Hewlett-Packard
often introduces new products and nice surprises. At Shangri-La
Hotel here last month the company again demonstrated its
adherence to this strong tradition.

Since I bought my HP LaserJet IIIP, which is still working, HP
has been cutting its products' prices drastically each time it
releases new printers, scanners, PCs, etc.

The Enhanced Color LaserJet 5 Series is among its latest
products, which you will probably be reading more about in the
next few weeks.

On color laser printers, most of us used to feel completely
hopeless because we knew their prices would start from Rp 14
million (US$5,766). At this price, it would be out of the
question for us to justify such an investment. But last month HP
boldly slashed the price of its Color LaserJet 5 by more than 30
percent, making it more affordable. At the higher end, the Color
LaserJet 5M already has network capability, Postscript Level-2
and 36 MB of RAM. Medium-sized businesses can now join their big
brothers in going color.

What makes this news so exciting? First of all, we all like
color. Life is more exciting in color, and communication will be
more effective in color.

Because of HP's aggressive price reduction, other color laser
printer makers will have no choice but to reduce prices. Once
again the color laser printer industry is going through a
shakeout and we, the end-users, are always the ultimate
beneficiaries.

By the way, if you're an early adopter and already have the
earlier version of HP Color LaserJet 5, you can upgrade it for
enhanced capability: HP has an upgrade kit available. But, if you
have the original Color LaserJet, you're out of luck because the
kit cannot be used for it, and the effort and the cost wouldn't
be worth while.

Beyond DPI

HP has never been a leader at increasing dots per inch (DPI).
While other color printer makers are glorifying their 1,200 DPI
printing resolutions, HP is sticking to 300 DPI. But HP's
engineers have compensated this low resolution with more detailed
images and richer color. The result is a color printout that can
look better than many of the other printers that boast higher
DPI.

Equally important is that the fewer picture elements that you
have to print, the less the time your printer will need to print
each page. For a higher resolution printout -- let's say 1200 DPI
-- you will need a four times faster processor to print within a
time comparable to a low resolution printer. You will also need a
lot of memory to store high resolution image files. Therefore, as
long as image details are high, low resolution printing will be
preferable since it means faster printing and cheaper machines.

How are richer color printouts achieved? Basically, there are
two different printer methods to produce colors. The first method
is called dithering; the colors are created by putting dots of
different but limited colors adjacent to each other on the page
to give an illusion of many different colors. This method will
yield a printout that doesn't look very detailed. The other
method, which is the one that HP applies in its Color LaserJet 5,
consists of mixing the four basic colors -- cyan, yellow, magenta
and black -- in precise amounts. This will result in millions of
different solid colors. When these blended dots are applied to
the page, the result will look crisper and more detailed.

Speed is of prime importance, too. To print bitmap images even
faster, the Enhanced Color LaserJet 5 also comes with CLJ5FR,
which basically follows the trend of freeing processors from the
chore of formatting images inside the computer. This software
feature lets the processor process bitmap images before they are
sent to the printer. HP claims that, since we now have faster
CPUs, bitmap images can be printed up to five times faster.
Examples of bitmap files are the image files that you have
scanned, downloaded from the Internet, or shot with a digital
camera.

And speaking of digital cameras, of which HP now has one,
today's printers seem to be geared up towards digital
photography. If you buy a new printer, it has the capability of
producing photo-quality printouts. And, while the prices of
digital cameras are still expensive, the printers -- like the
DeskJet 690 -- tend to be very affordable.

As color printing becomes more pervasive, being able to print
a hundred or so flyers in house is bonus. There are several
choices. We can create flyers on a desktop PC and take the file
to a professional printer for printing. If we do this, we must
print a large volume to get a good price. The more we print, the
cheaper the flyer. The problem is that, if we have too many pages
to print at once, we may end up with stacks of flyers or catalogs
that may not be distributed. Besides, going to professional
printers is time consuming.

Our next option is to use the color inkjet printers sitting on
our desks. But such printers are not designed for high-speed and
high-volume printing. As the four HP 850Cs in my office prove,
the paper pick-up mechanism will struggle and other components
will die early. We need a printer with a higher duty cycle for
printing hundreds of flyers and catalogs.

Now, if we have a fairly fast color laser printer, we can
print as many pages as necessary. If it turns out that we need
more, we print more pages. With this printing on demand approach,
we can avoid having stacks of printed materials that may never be
distributed.

Furthermore, laser printers are faster than inkjet printers,
which have print heads that must slide from side to side spraying
ink over the width of pages. But laser printers use direct-to-
drum imaging technology which usually requires a single pass to
transfer the toner particles from the drum onto the paper.

Laser printing technology is more robust, too. If you look at
the spec sheet of this printer, for instance, you'll read: "Duty
cycle is 30,000 pages per month." This means that the printer is
expected to be able to print up to this many pages a month
without components wearing out excessively. Come to think of it,
to print 30,000 pages a month you would have to print a thousand
pages a day. This means 400 pages an hour, which the printer
simply cannot produce. In fact, no color laser printer has been
able to do it.

Finally, the main reason for having a color laser printer for
creating your business flyers and catalogs is that color laser
toners are cheaper than ink for inkjet printers. Many people
might see this as contradictory because they can get an inkjet
cartridge for less than a third of the price of a laser toner
cartridge. What they forget is that laser toner cartridges print
far more pages than inkjet toner cartridges.

Incidentally, if you're new to color printing and aren't
really sure which colors to pick for your pie charts or your
slide presentations, take heart because HP bundles its LaserJet
printer with a CD titled Jazzing up with Colors. It contains
tools and software that will help you create stunning and
professional presentations. It includes software such as By
Design and HP Color Tools for novices and experienced color
users.