The Hindu Business Line : Impressive, on paper

The publishing industry is facing two radical changes. On the one hand, it is interacting with technology that's making printing more and more affordable. On the other hand, it is being threatened by newer inventions such as the PC tablet and personal digital assistants (PDAs) which seem to be propagating the mantra of a paperless digital world.

However, while a slew of technological changes may have dynamically altered the way printing is viewed, man's dependence on paper and printed material is unlikely to see a dramatic shift, at least for now.

The invention of the digital camera hasn't eroded the demand for prints but has only prompted equipment manufacturers to include functionality to enable photo print solutions.

With exchange of information and ideas becoming more and more important in today's context, the Web has altered the way we look at printing machines.

Now functions such as copying and scanning are being built into standard printing machines. Some newer machines can even print based on instructions sent from the Web and order their own supplies!

Computer printing has already passed through several stages of innovation, from the first daisy-wheel and dot matrix printers to ink-jets, and modern day laser and thermal-transfer.

It is already being recognised as one of the primary means of disseminating print documents. While Word processing transformed editing and contributed dramatic new flexibility to the writing process, today's optical systems (the technology which powers laser printers) have brought in significant developments in tune with the changing needs of consumers.

When compared with desktop publishing, some of the other advantages laser network printing has are better printing quality since it is not prone to smudges and uses resolution enhancement technology. Also, lasers have a definite edge when it comes to handling non-regular media such as glossy paper, envelopes, transparencies, and labels, among others.

The efficiency of the LaserJet printer versus the copier is a hotly debated topic with vendors of each of the product range trying their best to outdo the others.

Colour laser printers have had a reputation of being expensive, of being hard to maintain, and of being slow, but the perception is changing. The acquisition cost for a LaserJet is now seen to be considerably less to what it was earlier.

Valuable tool or nightmare

Printers are so solidly entrenched in the workplace that most organisations take them for granted. At a time when IT initiatives are fraught with uncertainty, it is comfortable to think of LaserJet printers as an obvious choice for high-volume printing needs.

For IT managers, LaserJet printers can be a valuable tool or a nightmare, depending on the choices made in selecting and deploying them.

The current state of LaserJet functionality required by customers isn't about products, speeds and feeds anymore but rather providing them with valuable solutions to their real business issues.

The old differentiators like dpi, quality, connectivity, etc., for our products have now become basic requirements to compete in the new landscape.

The LaserJet 2 phenomenon, which talks of a printer being more of an appliance, looks even more closely at consumer requirements — of how their needs are integrated with a support platform and with their management systems. And all this has to be done without affecting the affordability factor. For the consumer will not trade sophistication for high expenses. Evolving printing technologies must bring costs down, at the end of the day.

All said and done, despite predictions about the death of the publishing industry and paper, it looks like print technologies will continue to grow. Despite developments in the use of electronic documents and electronic transactions, much business information is still contained on paper. It cannot be dispensed with for now as organisations still conduct paper-based transactions.

But even as the emergence of the print paved the way for advancementsin art, literature, philosophy and politics, in much the same vein, modern printing devices, including laser jets, are paving the way for adoption of non-linear information systems such as the World Wide Web. A host of Internet printing standards are being worked upon.

But of course, all this is meant to ensure that finally the consumers have a better choice, have the best deal of all, not just in terms of price and models but also at how they want functionality to evolve in the future. As the world gets more and more IT-savvy, consumers want functionality, extendibility, adaptability, and ease of purchase, all in one package.

The author is Country Commercial Category Manager, Imaging & Printing Group, Hewlett-Packard India Pvt Ltd.

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