Apple Pushes Third-Party HP Printer Driver 1.1.1 Update

Today, Apple pushed another third-party update - this time for HP Printer Driver 1.1.1. As Palluxo! readers may recall, Apple also used its Software Update in June to push out updated printer drivers for both Canon and Brother’s line of printers. Then again in July, Apple delivered two third-party printer updates - one for Lexmark and the other for HP.

The HP Printer Driver Update includes the latest drivers for printers you have used on your system. This update is available via Software Update and will only be visible if the printer is connected to your computer or a print queue has been created for an earlier version.

To download the latest HP Printer Driver 1.1.1 update manually, you can do it directly from Apple Download’s web site. The latest update requires Mac OS X 10.5.3 or later and weighs in at 405 MB.

Source: palluxo.com/2008/09/11/apple-pushes-third-party-hp-printer-driver-111-update/

HP Intros Large-Format Home Printer

Hewlett-Packard announced a large-format home photo printer and new scanner at the Photokina trade show, here, this week.

The Photosmart B8550 HP photo printer can produce photos up to 13 inches by 19 inches in size, down to 4 by 6 inches. The unit also supports printing 12- by 12-inch scrapbook pages and 11- by 17-inch calendars.

It features memory card slots, a 2.4-inch color display, five individual ink cartridges and prints black text at 33 ppm and color at 31 ppm.

It will ship this month for $299.

The company also announced the G3110 photo scanner, which features a resolution of 4,800 by 9,600 dpi and 48-bit color depth, built-in photo restoration, several one-touch buttons for automatic functions and the ability to scan three-dimensional objects.

A built-in trasparency adapter lets users scan up to four 35mm film slides or five negatives. Up to three 4- by 6-inch photos can be scanned at once and saved as separate files.

It ships this month for $99. Starting in 2009, HP will begin promoting its Creative Print projects and Windows Live Photo Gallery across its Photosmart and Deskjet line of products.

Source:twice.com

Wireless HP printers have arrived

Printers go wireless: HP Photosmart C6388, all-in-one, will be among the first wireless-enabled printers to be launched in India. But owners of older printers can add a wireless adapter.

Internet access increasingly goes wireless — thanks to home, office and public WiFi hotspots — PCs are freeing themselves from Internet access cables. It was inevitable that the printer, too, should unshackle itself from the mess of wires.

Last week’s annual regional tech showcase of printer leader Hewlett Packard underlined the trend: At least half the consumer printers due for launch in India in the coming months will have wireless connectivity, through a built-in 802.11 link, otherwise known as WiFi.

As almost all laptops now sold come, by default, with the same feature, it will be easy to send files and pages from laptop to printer. “Wireless-enabled printers will be the rule rather than the exception,” Mr Chris Morgan, HP’s Vice- President for the Imaging and Printing group in Asia-Pacific and Japan, says.

India launch

Wireless-enabled HP printers, whose launch in India is imminent, include the Photosmart C4580, C6388 and C5380 — all multifunction print-scan-copy inkjets. In addition to WiFi capability, they have an optional Bluetooth link which enables quick transfer of pages or pictures from mobile phones or digital cameras, over a few metres. The machines are internationally priced at $139, $149 and $199 respectively. Even the cheapest of these can print 30 pages a minute in monochrome and 23 pages in colour. The HP trend means wireless is coming to the budget end of printing, and not just to the pricier offerings. Indeed, wireless will first be common in the consumer end of the printing spectrum — and not at the enterprise end, Mr Morgan says.

For legacy printers

For those who have legacy, non-wireless printers of any make, wireless kits (mostly Bluetooth) are available; so the old printers can print wirelessly by simply plugging in the USB device. This costs about $50 equivalent.

For home users who increasingly have at least one desktop in the family as well as a laptop for professional uses, wireless-enabled printers allow greater use of a WiFi home network. As home WiFi routers now cost less than Rs 2,500, many domestic as well as small-office users have already installed one to better utilise their wired broadband connection.

A wireless printer for such home or corporate users is just the last piece to be slotted into their wireless Web world.

Source:thehindubusinessline.com

HP OfficeJet J4680 Inkjet Multifunction Printer

HP's OfficeJet J4680 is a $130 multifunction color inkjet printer that gives small- and home-office users a reasonable helping of business features at a really low price. Unfortunately, it falls short in speed and long-term economy.

The OfficeJet J4680's star attractions are its integrated 802.11b/g wireless and fax connectivity, and its 50-sheet automatic document feeder (ADF)--rare features on such a low-priced machine. Those features make up somewhat for the minimalist 100-sheet input tray, which doubles as a 20-sheet output tray--yes, printed pages drop right on top of any blank paper you have loaded. I dislike this design: there's too much going on in one place.Duplexing (two-sided printing) is not available. The similarly priced Dell V305W lacks an ADF or faxing, but it has separate input and output trays, and supports manual duplexing.

The control panel of the OfficeJet J4680 consists of a one-line monochrome LCD and a second line of simple arrows that point to function labels beneath the display. You use the two navigation buttons to choose a major function and to drill through the menus. This system is easy to use--except that longer messages scroll across the display like ticker tape, making them hard to read.

In our tests, the OfficeJet J4680 delivered good-quality output at adequate speeds. It printed plain-text pages at a rate of 7 pages per minute and graphics pages at 2.1 ppm or worse. On plain paper, text looked dark, crisp, and precise; color images looked natural though somewhat grainy. On HP's own photo paper, color images improved, acquiring a smooth and natural appearance. Scans and copies looked okay, but scans came out very slowly.

The OfficeJet J4680's ink costs are reasonably good--and far better than those of the Dell V305W. The machine ships with a standard 200-page black cartridge and a 360-page tricolor cyan, magenta, and yellow cartridge. Both cartridges yield consumables costs of around 7 cents per page. A high-yield (700-page) black cartridge costs $28 (approximately 4 cents per page).

The OfficeJet J4680 might be too slow to show well in our rankings, but it's still a nice machine. A small office that doesn't do much printing would probably be happy to have the OfficeJet J4680's feature set in such a compact, low-cost package. HP's performance in our recent Reliability and Service survey was average.

Source:washingtonpost.com

iYogi Computer Repair, PC Repair Support Video

iYogi Announces Launch of Monitoring and Performance Tool For SMBs

iYogi – a leading provider of technical support services with horizons in the US, UK, Canada and Australia – today announced the launch of its exclusive server monitoring tool for small businesses. The new product offers integrated technology solutions to surmount the users’ unique IT support requirements thereby enabling them to derive and share information, data, enable network performance analysis, and security trends critical to plan and manage their set of servers – 24x7.

Uday Challu, iYogi’s CEO commented, “Holding a significant niche for itself in the computer support industry, iYogi has always known to be on the forefront of adapting breakthrough technology to exceed customer service expectations. This time we have developed a tool offering value-add functionality which will help small business customers maximize the business outcomes of IT.”

iYogi’s monitoring tool provides real time observation and monitoring solutions to ensure more robust and reliable IT infrastructure for small buinesses. Small Business owners also get a comprehensive assesment of their IT environment to meet technology needs with the scalability for future growth and create preventative measures based on quick analysis of network device alerts, pre-failure indicators, performance benchmark and security issues.

The new Monitoring and performance tool will provide small businesses with the opportunity to test all technical and non-technical aspects of their servers and help them to strengthen overall IT infrastructure. The array of services will include: Patch Management, Security Auditing, Site Inventory, Real Time Alerting Script Based Management, and Remote Management for all critical server issues.

“Irrespective of the business being small or large, when the consumer chooses iYogi, he leverages the potential of an elite taskforce of Microsoft Certified System Engineers and Cisco Certified Network Associates, ready to service their critical assets, using the most advanced network asset tracking and Performance monitoring”, adds Challu.

Another factor where the Company aims to distinguish itself from its competitors is product pricing. Embracing the concept of service quality, iYogi offers competitively priced technical support services at no-haggle, low prices.

As for its small business support, the Company has integrated its exclusive Monitoring and Alerting Services under one price umbrella of just $480 annually. per server i.e. $49.99 per month. The price is certainly hard to find anywhere else.

For more information on iYogi Small Business Support, visit www.iyogibusiness.com

HP Makes Wireless Network Printing Easy

HP recently introduced the HP JetDirect 690n Wireless Print Server, an enterprise network solution that allows extended printing capabilities over a larger number of users. Providing 802.11g printer connectivity to telecommuters and remote offices, the HP JetDirect 690n Wireless Print Server is bound to meet numerous printing needs, thus, increases workgroup productivity.

Easy to install and configure

Installing the HP JetDirect 690n Wireless Printer Server is easy and convenient. With a modular internal card that slides into the EIO slot of any compatible HP peripheral, there is no need to deal with bothersome cords and other accessories. Some HP printer series, such as the HP LaserJet P4014n, P4015n and P4515n, even come already equipped with it. Meanwhile, setup is made even faster by a revamped installation wizard which ensures that the print server will be up and running in no time.

Enterprise-class security

The HP JetDirect 690n Wireless Print Server provides robust security functions. To protect business-critical data, it is equipped with IPSec wireless security that provides advanced authentication and encryption. Other security features include Kerberos, 802.1x authentication, SSL/TLS, Access Control List, password protection, SNMPv3, and IPP over TLS.

Full manageability

To further ensure convenience, the HP JetDirect 690n Wireless Print Server works seamlessly with these HP management tools:
• With HP Web JetAdmin, one can install, configure, monitor and troubleshoot a variety of printing and imaging devices—and supplies—from anywhere on the network.

• Use the HP Embedded Web Server to easily configure, manage and monitor your network printing from any standard Web browser.

• HP Universal Print Driver solutions provide easy, familiar and consistent set up and printing across a network of HP printers.

• HP Easy Printer Care Software is the simplest way to monitor and maintain about 15 HP devices.

Broadly compatible

To improve efficiency, the HP JetDirect 690n, with its wireless 802.11g and 802.11b capabilities, is compatible with qualified HP peripherals with EIO slots—including HP Color LaserJet MFPs with scanning capabilities. It also fits into a business’ existing IT capabilities, supporting a wide range of operating systems such as Microsoft, Novell, Apple, UNIX and Linux. Meanwhile, network protocols supported includes TCP/IP (IPv6/ IPv4, IP Direct Mode, LPD, FTP and IPP), IPX/SPX, DLC/LLC and AppleTalk. Future enhancements can also be added with flash-upgradeable firmware.

Source:hardwarezone.com/news/view.php?id=11207&cid=8