We?ve had extreme PCs for some time now. The Athlon FX and Intel Extreme Edition lines form the foundation for those who want to push the performance envelope reliably. Increasingly, photographers are using these extreme systems for photo editing, but there really hasn?t been a reasonably priced printing solution that addresses the needs of the semi-pro, performance-oriented photographer, as well as folks who just need to get their documents printed faster. I?m almost sorry to admit that I?m one of those folks who feel “the need? the need? for speed.”
Today, HP addressed that need by announcing the fastest family of inkjet printers in the world. Unusually, at volume, these printers should actually be the least expensive. Estimated cost to print from these printers is under $.25 per 4×6? photo, which is approximately $.05, less than what it costs to have prints printed from a development service. Until now, it has generally been more expensive to use a home printer for photo-quality prints.
At fourteen seconds per 4×6? photo print, the product is twice as fast as previous generations of printers. This speed improvement also holds for regular text, generally outputting a page at twice the speed and half the cost of the older generation of printers.
As you would expect, these printers are a bit more expensive; the consumer version of the printer is $199 for just the printer and $399 for an all-in-one with all of the bells and whistles; the professional version of the product (more robust and optimized for even higher volumes) is also $399 but doesn?t have the scanner or FAX capability. Now, from my view, $200 to $400 for an extreme product is kind of cool; it means that many more folks can afford this more than extreme PCs, and you don?t need one to get the benefits of the other (because printing doesn?t bottleneck at the PC, but at the printer).
What?s Different?
To get this performance, HP spent $1.4B (yes, that?s billion) to develop a completely different print head technology. They actually use a very similar process to how you build microprocessors in their new print head design; they even build them in similar plants. This massive reduction in print head size allows them to get massive improvements in quality. The new printers have 3,900 print heads. This gives them the extremely fast Silver Halide (what is used by traditional commercial photo printing) quality printing.
Another change is that they both use independent ink reservoirs for each individual color. This means that when you run out of a color, you only have to replace that one color, rather than an entire cartridge. The consumer version of the product uses six different color inks to create a vastly better picture; the commercial (small business) version uses four inks because it is optimized for text and much higher volumes.
Finally, the ink circulates over the heads. Part of what causes you to waste a lot of ink with traditional ink jet cartridges is clearing the heads. What the older technology did was pump ink into something like a diaper in the printer to clear the heads, wasting ink. By circulating the ink, you can blow it through the head to clear it, and have that ink flow back to the reservoir, so that no ink is wasted during the head clearing process. Ink is expensive; if you were doing a lot of printing, you were probably wasting a lot of it.
The Printers
The HP Photosmart 8250 is the bargain of the family. At $200, it is the product that sets the bar in regard to high performance at a low initial cost. With the fourteen-second photo speed and thirty pages a minute for draft quality color documents, it is both blazingly fast and affordable. It even has a built-in LCD screen. I wish I had one of these when I was doing my Master?s project.
The coolest of the family is the 3310 All-in-One. It has the same blazing speed but it also has built-in wireless, so you can share it widely in your home or home office; also, it has a built-in scanner with built-in slide and negative adapters (for those of us who haven?t yet digitized our old pictures or are even still using ancient film-based cameras). It too has a built-in LCD screen.
The Officejet Pro K550 is for small offices that mostly print black and white, but need to do occasional color. While the consumer printers use six ink cartridges, the K550 uses four high capacity cartridges because it is optimized for speed and cost. Black and white prints come out at twelve pages a minute in laser quality (thirty-seven a minute in draft quality) and per page cost is estimated at $.077 per page in color and $.015 per page in black and white.
A Word of Caution
To get these speeds, there is a catch: you must use the appropriate paper, because the ink has to dry very quickly. If you were to run the wrong paper, particularly for photos, the ink would probably smear badly and ruin the prints. This is important for text as well, so it would be wise to purchase paper that was specifically designed for ink jet printing to avoid smearing if you want to experience the very high speeds. The printers do scan for the right paper and should adjust their speed based on what you use; however, as with most high performance products, it generally is best to use the supplies that are designed for them if you want to ensure both the performance and the long-term reliability of the offering.
Are Extreme Printers for You?
If you only print occasionally and in small volume, honestly, you don?t really need this level of technology; you’re probably served better by a less expensive ink jet printer. However, I could say the same about many who have purchased high performance PCs, or high performance cars; they really don?t need them, either, but it is fun to have the best of some things (in terms of performance). Of course, if you?ve ever been late for class, late for a meeting, or needed to print your itinerary as you ran to a plane, speed can be incredibly important?and one heck of a stress reducer. Maybe you can convince your spouse, parents, or boss that the purchase is a medical expense.
Most high performance things are way out of budget; this printer line isn?t, and that itself is kind of cool.
