HP’s Photosmart Premium TouchSmart Web All-in-One Color Inkjet Multifunction Printer………whooo! That’s a mouthful….is a new printing device with an innovative new feature: the ability to access Web-based applications for viewing and printing items on the machine without controlling it from the PC. The idea has been a long time coming. The 4.33″ Touchsmart front panel is a capacitive touchscreen interface with several online applications tasks such as Google maps, pictures, movie tickets, games, and even video streaming. There’s also a primitive Apple-like “Apps” store with an SDK being made open for developers. And at $400, accessing the web from your printer better be an important priority of yours.
You can also connect to Snapfish and directly from the HP Photosmart Premium with TouchSmart Web, which saves time and enables you to archive or print photos from the site. You can also access projects from the HP Creative Studio. With two-sided print, fax, copy and scan functionality, the HP Photosmart Premium with TouchSmart Web has a full range of wired and wireless connectivity options: Wi-Fi enabled PCs, Bluetooth®-enabled devices, and the iPhone™ and the iPod touch™ using HP
iPrint Photo.
The HP Photosmart includes a 100-sheet, letter/legal input tray and a 20-sheet photo tray, plus a 50-sheet output tray. The automatic duplexer is an especially nice feature. Slots accommodate CompactFlash, Memory Stick, SD Card, and XD-Picture Card, and the unit also has a PictBridge port. Web functions do not work unless the machine is connected directly to a network with Internet access. A typical installation via USB to your PC gets you nowhere (even if your PC has Internet access). This seems like an important point, but HP confirmed that it isn’t documented anywhere.
Here are a few other things you can print directly from the HP Photosmart Premium TouchSmart Web Printer, as specified by HP:
-Google Maps for printing maps
-Fandango for movie tickets
-Snapfish for accessing and printing photo albums
-Google Calendar for viewing and printing personal calendar
-USA TODAY for the latest news
-DreamWorks Animation for movie trailers and family printables such as coloring pages
-Coupons.com for printing coupons and recipes
-Nickelodeon for activities kids can enjoy based on the network’s characters
-Weathernews Inc. for up-to-date weather information
-Web Sudoku for printing puzzles
-Download new apps as they become available on the HP Apps Studio, to suit a variety of interests and needs.
-Create and share apps to customize the printing experience starting in late 2009.
-Quickly print fun and useful templates such as fax cover sheets, calendars, notebook paper and games such as Sudoku, with the convenient Quick Forms button.
-Use the HP TouchSmart Web control panel to edit and print photos, send faxes, scan documents and make copies, in addition to printing from the Web.
-Easily drag and drop photos to a desktop icon from virtually anywhere – folders, applications, e-mail and websites – for printing with the HP Photo Print Gadget.
-Prevent common printing mistakes and save paper by ensuring that prints are loaded correctly and that settings are optimized for image quality and print speed with HP Auto Sense technology. Simply touch one button for wireless set-up-making adding the printer to a home network easy.
-Print borderless 4 x 6-inch photos stored on an iPhone or iPod touch using HP iPrint Photo, the first photo printing application of its kind-available for free in the Apple App Store.
-Directly print from a PLAYSTATION 3 (PS3) – capture and print screens to show off as proof of achievements.
-Use Windows Live Photo Gallery to easily edit, store and print photos, make photo cards, calendars and more.
The Photosmart Premium TouchSmart Web All-in-One Printer definitely announces a new frontier in printing devices. It will be interesting to see future apps, especially the SDK. The TouchSmart has some bugs, and the apps are fairly primitive, but the overall concept and HP’s first stab at this new product category shows tremendous promise.
