New printers, scanners offer wider choice

By Zatni Arbi

JAKARTA (JP): For the last two months we have seen dozens of new computer products introduced to the Indonesian market. Just a month after Canon introduced its updated scanners and two weeks after Epson introduced its new Perfection series scanners in Indonesia, HP launched its latest scanners.

In addition, Lexmark brought in three ink-jet printers, which was followed by Canon with its latest BubbleJet printers, then by Epson with its latest generation of ink-jet printers. Within the same week, HP introduced its PhotoREt 3 PhotoPrinter, the HP DeskJet 970Cxi. Canon also introduced four different multimedia projectors.

I've been quite busy attending all these launches, and I really wish I had the time to test drive all the new products to see which ones are the best buys.

Multifunction devices

Two weeks ago HP held its annual New Product Introduction (NPI) event at Shangri-La Hotel in Jakarta. My press kit was packed with fact sheets, press releases and brochures of their new lineup for 1999, and at this time we'll have a look only at the most interesting introductions.

Finally Hewlett-Packard has brought its all-in-one devices to the local market. The products, which are quite popular in the U.S., have enjoyed rave reviews. In the past, HP did not import them to Indonesia because the company was not sure whether it was against the law. It was reportedly illegal to import color copies into the country. As you can guess, these devices, which combine a scanner and color ink-jet printer, make it really easy for people to scan and print fake paper money.

I've long believed that the regulation, if it did actually exist, was quite ridiculous. For many years, anybody who had a PC, a scanner and a color ink-jet printer could print fake money. I once took a cab with a dashboard covered with printouts of Rp 20,000 and Rp 50,000 bills. A neighbor of mine has pasted the same printouts across his doorframe as a decoration. What can we say? We don't have the power to stop technology. The best thing that we can do is increase our protection of the innocents. The good news is that our central bank has made the right move and started to use plastic material for the Rp 100,000 bill. I guess they should continue to find ways to make it harder to scan and counterfeit money rather than make it illegal to import devices that can increase productivity, even if they can, unfortunately, be misused by the unscrupulous.

No fewer than six all-in-one devices were introduced by HP. Five of them -- the officeJets T25, T45, T65, R45 and R65 are based on ink-jet printers and therefore are capable of producing color prints and faxes. The Ts are targeted for SOHO users, while the Rs can serve workgroups in an office. The Ts can scan, copy, print and fax documents, while the workgroup Rs cannot send faxes. The most versatile product, R65, has a 30-page document feeder.

The only laser printer-based all-in-one device introduced was the LaserJet 3100. It can fax and print, but it does not have the scanning function. One interesting feature is the OfficeJet Manager software, which adds the ability to scan and send the scanned image as E-mail. These devices will replace the scanner, fax machine, copier and printer. Needless to say they save a lot of space in the office.

New DesignJets

HP also has been making large format printers, which in the past were known as plotters. These large printers usually stand on the floor and have the roll of paper hanging on both the back and front sides. At the NPI, two interesting printers were introduced. They looked like DeskJet printers, but they were much larger. The DesignJet ColorPro CAD, which you can see in the accompanying picture, is intended for engineers and mechanical CAD designers who need to produce checkprints quickly before sending the print job to the larger-sized DesignJet. The DesignJet ColorPro AG is the result of a cooperation between HP and Apple Computer, and is Macintosh-compatible. It is loaded with high-end features such as PhotoREt II (photo resolution enhancement technology based on color layering, which helps produce photo-quality printouts), Adobe PressReady, which ensures consistent colors in portable document formats, ICC Color Profiles for accurate colors, ColorSync, which allows us to see the same color on the screen as we will get on the printouts, and Pantone Certification which enables us to control and define customized colors.

The DesignJet ColorPro AG also marks the return of the close cooperation between HP and Adobe which was suspended some years ago. That's good news for graphics designers, as most of them still trust Adobe for graphics printing standards.

Other updates

New to HP's CD-Writer lineup is the DVD-Writer Plus 3100i. This device, which is slated for release in December, will enable us to write, erase and rewrite as much as three GB of data on a single DVD-RW disk. With compression, the storage capacity can be doubled to six GB, which is equal to 10 CD-ROMs or 5,400 floppy diskettes. HP has also raised the reading speed of its CD-Writers from 20x to 32x. The SCSI CD-Writer 9200i, for example, writes a CD-ROM at 8x, a CD-RW (rewritable) at 4x and reads a CD-ROM at 32x.

Three new flatbed scanners replaced some already great products. The top of the line ScanJet 6300 Series, which consists of the ScanJet 6300C, 6350C and 6390C, offers 1200 DPI optical resolution and unlimited resolution enhancement. That, of course, will result in a humongous amount of data (no wonder you'll need a DVD Rewritable drive). In addition, ScanJet 3300C also replaced the low-end ScanJet 3200C.

In the server area, HP also introduced the Pentium III Xeon 550 MHz-based Netserver LH 4, LXr 8000 and LXr 8500. The LXr 8500 is really a behemoth. It can be equipped with eight Pentium III Xeon 550 MHz processors and 32 GB of SDRAM. The Brio business PC and Kayak workstations were also upgraded. To round it out, HP introduced two value printers -- the deskJets 610C and 810C -- and the photo printer DeskJet 970Cxi.

Now, with all these new peripherals from three leading vendors, we'll surely find it more difficult than ever to decide what to buy.