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Printing

Banishing print traffic from your WAN with PrinterLogic

by Philip Sellers May 29, 2018

written by Philip Sellers

Requirement – secure and centralize print management. But moving traditional Windows print servers into your datacenter will cause a lot of WAN traffic from your branches. WAN links are expensive and bandwidth is a premium resource. Even with SD-WAN solutions that enable companies to use standard internet, instead of MPLS circuits, for branch connectivity, the bandwidth is usually limited. On top of bandwidth issues, print sessions cause bursts of traffic that can trjgger other performance issues for users. All around, its not a great situation.

Enter PrinterLogic, a St. George, Utah, based company that does printer management and enables direct-IP printing, avoiding the WAN entirely. The PrinterLogic solution is straightforward and easy to manage. It allows the central control and reporting of a single print server while avoiding the cost and problems associated with moving print data from the branch to the datacenter and back again.

Management Server

PrinterLogic has a main management server – called the PrinterInstaller server – that is primarily a discovery and management point for their solution. This web application allows administrators to setup lists of printers organized by site locations with nice features like maps and location discovery. PrinterInstaller also allows profiles to be created and the printer driver to be centrally administered and configured.

Getting started is a breeze with two different ways to setup printers. First, you can point PrinterLogic to existing Windows print servers and import printers, drivers and default configurations directly into the product. The second is a network discovery method that allows you to scan and find any previously unmanaged printers in the environment.

The main management server is also a reporting server, allowing administrators to gain insight into their print environment, including unmanaged printers that may be connected to managed workstations. While PrinterLogic doesn’t make any changes to these unmanaged printers – even USB connected printers – it does allow administrators to get analytical data about these devices to be able to bring them into a managed situation or replace them.

Client Agent

The other component is the print agent (aka client) on each workstation. This agent is the primary access method for users. With a click, it launches you into the web portal so you can add and discover new printers. Users can self-service and find the correct or closest printers. Assistance is provided by automatic correlating IP subnets to locations and defaulting users to those locations.

Once the print agent is deployed, any currently configured printers will automatically be converted for you. This is a huge aid for deployments and bringing all the systems and printers into management. The only real work required is deploying the agent to your workstations which can easily be accomplished with SSCM or scripts.

Licensing & Optional Modules

PrinterLogic licensing is very straight forward also – with the base licenses enabling everything discussed so far and it licensed based on the number of printer objects. One of PrinterLogic’s big sales pitches is around reducing the number of queues required for different use cases by allowing a single printer object to have multiple profiles and even print drivers associated for different use cases – like Windows workstations versus a Citrix server. With that, the licensing would roughly equate to the number of printers in your environment.

In addition to base licensing, PrinterLogic offers two optional modules for pull printing and mobile printing. These capabilities are licensed in the same way, by the number of managed printer objects.

Pull Printing

Pull printing, “follow me” printing, or release printing are all ways to describe the same basic functionality – of printing to a queue where the job is held until you walk up and release it from the printer. You can release by authenticating with user and password, with a proximity badge or by authenticating with your mobile phone. When you print a job for a ‘virtual queue’ the job is held at your personal workstation until it is released. This is another way PrinterLogic avoids WAN traffic – by keeping the job onsite since it will likely be released in the same site without having to cross a WAN link.

Mobile Printing

Mobile printing is exactly what it sounds like, enabling printing from phones and tablets. Since these devices are not necessarily on your internal network – possibly sitting on a cellular or guest WiFi network, the printing method changes a bit – however, mobile printing looks a lot like pull printing. Instead of holding a job in a local queue at the workstation, in the case of mobile printing, the queue is at the main management server.

Cloud Option

PrinterLogic also offers a print mangaement solution in a SaaS form, where they host and manage all the infrastructure of your printing environment, and you simply have to configure your printers a web console. Dubbed PrinterCloud, the solution is targeted to SMB users. While it doesn’t offer every single feature of the on-premises version, it is a great solution for smaller environments where IT wants to avoid running the local infrastructure. PrinterLogic says PrinterCloud now has 97% feature parity with the full version, and that the exception is fewer choices for pull-printing release mechanisms. (PrinterCloud does not have simple badge release or all of the support with printer control-panel apps.) The company is working on closing this gap.

May 29, 2018 0 comments

HP offers a portfolio of products to solve enterprise print security problems

by Philip Sellers March 31, 2017

written by Philip Sellers

In the enterprise space, many of the free vendor tools simply don’t scale and address the wide range of security issues around printing. Enterprises have to deal with compliance and regulations, the potential for audits, and most nagging is finding the time to address printing security. While the security of the PC, servers, networking, and storage are the forefront of the security strategy in enterprise environments, printing is not one that typically has human capital and attention allocated.

Enterprise customers facing the task of securing, particularly without additional staffing, must turn to automation to solve the problem. While ignorance is bliss, now that you’re aware of the significantly lacking security of your printing fleet, you have to do something to shore things up. Fortuntely, HP has a solid set of offerings for its print customers – a set of offerings that really sets it apart from its competition.

HP uses the JetAdvantage Security Solutions suite as branding for its solutions that address many of the pain points for enterprises looking to manage printer fleets on large scale. Inside of the suite, there are three major components that help enterprise lock down their original IoT devices — printers.

HP Access Control
HP JetAdvantage Security Manager
HP JetAdvantage Secure Print
HP JetAdvantage Private Print

On-Premises Solutions

Authenticating Users

The first step is knowing who… HP Access Control is foundation of enhanced security, when looking at data security. At its core, it is about establishing authentication at the device for users and so it is the foundational product of the suite. With authentication, you tie a user interaction at the device to print jobs. This should eliminate misprints and secure documents being routed or left on a printer by accident.

Access Control also solves the problem of the “print and sprint” – running to a shared printer to retrieve a sensitive document.Most company acknowledge that it is far more cost effective to buy bigger and more capable printers and share them across a wider pool of users. But shared printing leave the doorway open for a paystub or customer data being left in the print tray where it can be picked up by an unauthorized user. Once authentication is established, you can leverage Access Control to setup release printing or pull printing – where the job doesn’t actually print until a user releases it at the printer. This is a walk-up technology that allows better data security.

It prevents the absent minded user from leaving data lying around the office. It can be leveraged to add and address scanning and routing and by adding the aptly named Capture and Route product from HP, you can use the known user to intelligently send documents to locations, shortcutting manual steps and routing by the user.

Securing Devices

While much of the configuration management that the JetAdvantage Security Suite can be accomplished with HP’s free Web Jetadmin tool, this tool falls short of reporting and ensuring compliance of desired configurations.

HP JetAdvantage Security Manager fills in the next layer of config management for your HP printers. It is best described as a tool like System Center Configuration Manager for your printer fleet. Like SCCM, it not only allows you to deploy configuration, but also audit and report on the system configuration to demonstrate compliance. The tool goes out and helps you to discover and then apply a baseline profile to each printing device, but to do that you must first find your printers. Security Manager is able to run discoveries against your environment and collection a list of devices and their current state. From there, it can make recommendations in the assess-only mode and for companies that want a white-glove service, Security Manager can also remediate any of the printers that do not match their baseline or recommendations. Like any good config management tool, it is packaged with reports and dashboards to give a quick look into the fleet and the current running state of the printing environment.

One of the other big features for Security Manager is the ability to administer certificates. Most administrators are accustomed to the untrusted certificates that come pre-installed and simply clicking through the browser prompts. Security Manager can workflow and handle the deployment and upkeep of trusted certificates across your printing fleet, making sure that anyone tampering with software would not pass the muster if they tampered with a device. Certificate management on printers is generally cumbersome and time consuming, taking 10 to 15 minutes per device for experienced admins. Security Manager can automate that process quickly and completely.

Cloud Solutions

HP has been working hard to bring print capabilities to the cloud and to its devices. It has developed HP JetAdvantage On Demand as an app store, of sorts, to enable new applications on your HP printers. These apps are cloud-based, so there is nothing that you need to install or maintain on-premises. These solutions are great for small to medium businesses.

HP JetAdvantage Secure Print is essentially HP Access Control running from the cloud. It is a fee-based SaaS solution to enable pull printing in your environment. With Secure Print, you have a cloud queue or a local workstation queue where jobs are held until you walk up to a printer and release them. The primary difference between Secure Print and Access Control is the location where it is installed and who maintains it. With Secure Print, HP maintains the software and you simply consume it.

Secure Print supports for both HP and non-HP printers. HP printers offer more integration and possibilities, but any third party can be enabled with a simple QR code and mobile app to enable job releases at a particular device.

HP JetAdvantage Private Print is a free service, with features much like Secure Print, except it is only for HP devices. While the free service does not have feature parity with Secure Print, it does offer a lot of capabilities and puts secure printing within reach for many SMB customers.

Also within the data security segment, JetAdvantage Insights offers analytics and insight to your printing environment. You get all the basics you would expect from printing analytics – who printed, how often, page counts, which printers have heavier load, etc. Insights can be deployed with agents on each workstation and at each printer in order to gain full visibility of the print landscape. Once deployed, administrators can monitor for attacks, monitor for device failures and watch passive data loss and corruption.

HP is also busy bringing other apps into its JetAdvantage On Demand portfolio, so keep you eye them for more capabilities in the coming months.

Disclaimer: HP, Inc., invited me to their Palo Alto headquarters and paid all expenses associated with this educational trip. This blog post is a result of that trip and the information shared, however, the information I have written in this post is solely written by me without any editorial input from HP.

March 31, 2017 0 comments

Printing

Taking the new HP PageWide Pro 577dw for a test drive

by Philip Sellers March 8, 2016

written by Philip Sellers

HP PageWide Pro 577dw MFP Printer For the first time in forever, HP has birthed a new line and brand of printers – well, sort of. A couple of years go, HP introduced the OfficeJet Pro X line of printers. These printers looked a lot like a LaserJet printer, they were built for business, but the actual print tech was more closely related to an inkjet, and so they were placed in the OfficeJet line. But, there was so much different than other OfficeJet printers. These printers didn’t use a moving print head, they didn’t use the same type of ink and the print speeds were much faster than any other inkjet. This was all enabled because of a print bar that spanned the entire width of the page – something HP dubbed PageWide Technology – and pigmented ink.

Fast forward to today and HP has taken the PageWide name and started using it as a brand for large-format printers, including the PageWide XL printer line. PageWide is the both the enabling technology – a stationary print bar that spans the width of the page – and it is also a brand name – a catchy one. With the broader use of the name, HP thinks its is time to rebrand the HP OfficeJet Pro X line to HP PageWide. (I for one, think that’s a smart move.)

So, HP sent me one of the new PageWide Pro 577dw for a test drive. I was lucky to test the OfficeJet Pro X 576dw a couple years ago, so the model I was shipped allowed me to compare the two head to head and see where HP has made some improvements. I wanted to compare the same print jobs head to head on these two printers and clock the differences between them. Those results are near the end, but first, take a look at how the PageWide Pro 557dw is equipped.

PageWide Pro 577dw Specs

Three print modes
- Professional mode speed: Up to 50 ppm black or color
- General Office mode (fastest mode) up to 70 ppm and Presentation mode (highest quality)
Scan resolution: Up to 1200 x 1200 dpi hardware and optical
Copy resolution: Up to 600 dpi black or color (text and graphics)
Standard connectivity: 2 Hi-Speed USB 2.0 Host; 1 Hi-Speed USB 2.0 Device; 1 Ethernet 10/100 Base-TX network; 2 RJ-11 modem port/phone line; 802.11 b/g/n Station; 802.11 b/g Access Point
Paper handling: 500-sheet input tray, 50-sheet multi-purpose tray; 300-sheet face-down output bin
Duty cycle (monthly): Up to 80,000 pages

PageWide Pro 577dw versus OfficeJet Pro X 576dw

For the 500 series, ink has been relocated into the previously empty space below the output tray — but the PageWide 300 and 400 series are configured like the OfficeJet Pro X 577dw.
Pro X was rated at 42ppm and the PageWidePro is rated at up to 50 ppm in Professional mode – general office is also faster and the output tray has been redesigned slightly to handle increased speeds – my tests saw better than these advertised speeds, if you deduct the time for the first page to print.
The duplexing scanner now includes two scan heads – one for front and one for back of page to simultaneously scan – increasing duplex scan speeds tremendously
Improved Embedded Web Server with AirPrint and Google Cloud Print integration, and HP ePrint and Apps
Wi-Fi Direct and NFC touch-to-print technology

‘General’ Impressions

Overall the printer firmware is a big improvement over the previous generation. The touch screen seems to be much improved and the ability to move and customize the display is great. There are also new app additions to the onboard software.

Many of the great features of the OfficeJet Pro X made their way on the PageWide Pro including the ability to scan directly from the printer to a network folder, scan to email and scan to SharePoint. These shortcuts are handy as you place the PageWide in walk-up situations. In addition to these shortcuts, you can also walkup and retrieve and print jobs – directly from a USB and from cloud services.

General Office Mode is nothing short of incredible. When printing in the fastest mode, its sort-of like watching to a machine gun fire as the pages come out so quickly (but not as loud). And the quality of the print in General Office mode is still very high quality – not at all what you would expect of a ‘draft’ mode. This is why HP doesn’t refer to this as draft mode – because there is nothing draft about the quality of the print.

Scanning, in particular duplex scanning, is much improved on the PageWide Pro 577dw. The addition of a second scan bar for the document feeder allows for a single pass duplex scanning and also allows for the profile of the document feeder to be slimmed down. The duplexer required in the OfficeJet Pro X 576dw is no longer needed with a second scan bar. This provides up to 5x faster duplex scans without the worry of paper jams due to a cleaner paper path.

Print durability is still incredible in the PageWide Pro 577dw. When I reviewed the OfficeJet Pro X, this was one of the remarkable things about the ink system and the printer in general. The paper would deteriorate under water before the ink would run, particularly with Colorlok paper. I posted about this and even included a video and in testing, this still holds true with the PageWide Pro prints.

As I wrote about back in 2014, the PageWide Pro is a greener alternative to printing, consuming much less power that the laser printer counterparts and also producing less waste than that of many other printers – both laser and inkjet. That tradition continues with the PageWide models. The consumables for this printer only include the cartridges and a waste tray. Comparable laser printers have bulkier toner cartridges with more plastic, fuser kits that have to be replaced during the lifecycle and they consume 50% more energy than the PageWide Pro models.

The PageWide Enterprise models ship with HP SureStart and FutureSmart firmware capabilities along with integration with HP Flow and other enterprise features, but this doesn’t mean the PageWide Pro models are lacking. From a networking perspective, the PageWide Pro supports every major computing platform – from Windows to OS X, iOS and Android in a variety of ways. The PageWide Pro also includes support for 802.1x, SNMP and other enterprise requested features, so it can fit comfortably in a small home network, a branch office, or medium sized business all the way up to the enterprise network.

Where does it fit?

HP is positioning the PageWide lineup between the OfficeJet and LaserJet models. It has compelling DNA from both lines – sharing similar form factors and enterprise-ready features from the LaserJet line and combining those with the economies of ink and a more compelling price point. Below is a lineup for HP’s business printing options and where the company positions each brand.

HPBusinessPrintLineup

Speed Tests

Printer	Pages	Page Type	Job Type	Mode	Time (seconds)	PPM Equivalent
PageWide Pro 577dw	42	Single	Print	Professional	56.6	44.52
PageWide Pro 577dw	42	Duplex	Print	Professional	82.64	30.49
OfficeJet Pro X 576dw	42	Single	Print	Professional	62.2	40.51
OfficeJet Pro X 576dw	42	Duplex	Print	Professional	115.47	21.82
PageWide Pro 577dw	37	Single	Print	Professional	50.3	44.14
PageWide Pro 577dw	37	Duplex	Print	Professional	73.29	30.29
OfficeJet Pro X 576dw	37	Single	Print	Professional	51.71	42.93
OfficeJet Pro X 576dw	37	Duplex	Print	Professional	103.1	21.53
PageWide Pro 577dw	37	Single	Print	General Office	32.02	69.33
PageWide Pro 577dw	37	Duplex	Print	General Office	67.89	32.70
PageWide Pro 577dw	37	Single	Scan	Color 200dpi	100.15	22.17
PageWide Pro 577dw	37	Duplex	Scan	Color 200dpi	77.29	28.72
OfficeJet Pro X 576dw	37	Single	Scan	Color 200dpi	140.1	15.85
OfficeJet Pro X 576dw	37	Duplex	Scan	Color 200dpi	310	7.16

The times reported include the initial wake-up/warm-up time, once the print job is submitted, until the last page hits the output tray. If this time is removed, these ppm ratings exceed the ppm rating from HP Inc.

Availability and Price

HP expect the PageWide Pro 500 series printers to be available in April, 2016, with a starting price of $699. In addition to the PageWide Pro 577dw multifunction printer, a PageWide Pro 552dw single function printer will be also be available.

Disclaimer: HP Inc. provided the HP PageWide Pro 577dw at no charge for me to review. The views and opinions I share here are my own and were not previously reviewed or dictated by HP.

March 8, 2016 0 comments

Printing

Officejet Pro X redefines the Inkjet Printer

by Philip Sellers November 18, 2014

written by Philip Sellers

The Officejet Pro X is to inkjet printers what the Prius is to traditional cars. While it looks a lot like all of the cars before it, the Prius completely redefined the core drivetrain and its power source, inventing a new category of car – the hybrid. In the same way, the Officejet Pro X completely redefines the core print system of an inkjet and its ink. Like the Prius, the Officejet Pro X defines a whole new class of printer in the marketplace.

It has been a little over a month of testing the Officejet Pro X576dw multifunction printer. The results are really impressive. First, this printer has lived up to the hype and marketing promises that it came with. It’s ink is something completely different – something revolutionary – for an inkjet and it offers superior durability. It prints with a speed comparable or better than laser printers in its class. It offers better cost per page costs for its owners. It delivers on features that enterprise will require and small business may not know to hope for.

Amazing Ink Durability

aka Prints You Just Can’t Destroy!

As I wrote in my introduction post, the Officejet Pro X features a new formula of ink that was developed by HP to be more durable than traditional inkjet ink. The new inks have a formula with more pigment and less water, meaning that prints of the printer come out dry to the touch and resist smearing and running when the page comes in contact with water or a highlighter, which has been one of the major complaints of inkjet prints. So, I decided to test the new ink in the worst possible ways I could imagine – by submerging printed pages and photos from the Officejet Pro X in the sink and seeing how the prints fared. I had seen a demo of this last year at HP Discover, but I thought that there was no way a page could survive under a running faucet. But I was absolutely wrong. As a matter of fact, it was such an amazing test, that I had to recreate it and film it. It is something you have to see with your own eyes. So, take a look at this video below where I take regular copy paper, normal photo paper and a page of HP’s Premium Glossy Photo paper and test them in the sink.

So what did I learn from my water testing? I’d highlight 3 things:

Prints on standard paper are extremely durable. HP recommends ColorLok paper for superior color and clarity of prints, but even in my testing with the cheapest copy paper I could find on the shelf, the prints look fairly crisp and clear, but on cheap paper the prints do look dull. The prints on ColorLok paper look fantastic. HP ships about 20 pages worth of ColorLok paper for you to use and see the results. ColorLok, by the way, is not an HP brand but rather a brand from International Paper, so its not to HP’s benefit in recommending ColorLok.
Glossy presentation and photo paper lend to incredible looking prints. The glossy page combined with the HP pigmented inks really stand out and the are very durable, surviving my intense water testing. If I were in sales, I would be foaming at the mouth to have one of these for customer presentations and leave-behind materials. For a small cost per page, you can produce incredible looking materials without the need for professional printing. Talking with HP, they tell me that they’ve had a lot of success using the Officejet Pro X for on demand printed materials at conferences and events internally and customers are adopting the same.
The durability of photo prints has a lot to do with the type of paper. Semigloss and matte finishes tended not to endure my water test, however, the testing I did was pretty extreme. Still, I’d stick with HP’s recommended papers listed on the HP website under the supplies for PageWide array printers.

One really interesting story that I was told was about a mining company in South America. Where laser printers could not hold up in the damp and high humidity conditions of a mine, the HP Officejet Pro X is really doing well. While the printer wasn’t designed specifically for those operating conditions, its design along with the pigmented inks provide this mining company with a solution where laser printers had failed. After running prints under streams of running water, I can see why.

The ink seems more akin to what you’d find from commercial printing companies, offering durability and resisting water unlike anything I’ve seen with a home, ink printer. But that may be the only disappointment for the Officejet Pro X. At this point, there aren’t color matching controls that would allow this printer to be used by graphic designers and agencies – not the type to ensure color matching to Pantone colors or swatches. I really see that as a huge potential market and perhaps HP will bring these kinds of color matching to the line so that it can address the needs of graphics professionals.

Blistering Fast Print Speeds

One of the features that was most highly touted were the print speeds of this inkjet printer. Inkjets, generally work with a reciprocating print head that moved back and forth across the page, printing one line at a time. The OfficeJet Pro X uses a PageWide print head that had nozzles across a page width of area and can deliver blistering fast prints. In fact, there are a lot of black and white Laser printers that don’t print as fast as the OfficeJet Pro X when printing full color, normal prints. Again, to illustrate this, I thought a video would be the best possible way to convey the results I found in testing. I could write about it, but its really something you need to see to understand.

One of the things the HP team told me during my briefing on the product was that the General Office Mode prints were still a very high quality and that the development team worked hard to ensure that even the fast prints were still crisp and clear. There is a bit more over-spray and jaggedness to the individual letters of printed documents in General Office Mode, but you have to get close to the page to really notice it. The ability to achieve over 70 pages per minute in full color is incredible.

One other thing I noticed from a speed perspective is that even pages with lots of graphics print very quickly, usually without any noticeable delay, unlike laser printers. Sometimes on a complex image, Laser printers will stop and process the image before printing the page, significantly slowing down the printing process. The Officejet Pro X didn’t seem to suffer from the same issue.

There are actually even two more printing modes for the Officejet Pro X – Presentation mode and Maximum DPI mode. To a normal user, I could not tell a difference between these two modes. They were both extremely high quality prints and looked fantastic. Maximum DPI mode seemed to be selectable in the driver when paired with HP Premium Photo paper as the media, while Presentation mode is available on plain paper as well as glossy presentation paper and other media.

In testing, I found that printing slows down when duplexing due to having to change paper path and print the other side. The same goes for moving up to a higher quality of print. As the video illustrates, one of my test documents was a 24 page text document with full color images on several pages and colored headings. This document took just 23 seconds to print in General Office Mode and about 35 seconds to print in Professional mode (5 seconds until first page and then 30 seconds of print time).

Copies are slower than print jobs, also. But the quality of the copies was excellent. As a matter of fact, I put an original print and a copy side by side and if I didn’t know which was which, I would not have been able to tell a difference. The automatic document feeder had a tendency to feed in pages slightly crooked. It didn’t happen all the time, but the more pages in the document feeder, the more often this would happen.

At the same time, I have not experienced a single print misfeed while testing – which is a big thing. With pages moving so quickly through the printer in General Office mode, I can’t believe that i have not had a single misfeed for the print path, but it hasn’t occurred. That’s not to say it couldn’t, but in printing several reams of paper in testing, there hasn’t been a single print misfeed.

Other Functions of a Multifunction Printer

The Officejet Pro X line are all different variations of a multifunction printer. The touch control panel is extremely responsive and responds well to touch commands including swipes to scroll between screens. Handy shortcut icons lines the top of the home screen, including network settings and ink level buttons. There is a shortcut for ECO settings that let you adjust screen brightness, set two-sided fax and copy prints, standby and sleep times for the printer. There is a shortcut button for ePrint and for fax settings. All of the same settings are available from the full Settings menu also. The display is intuitive and easy to use.

Drivers

On Windows, the model specific HP software and drivers worked extremely well for scanning. On Mac, the scanning integrated with Image Capture and worked well. Apple’s automatic driver discovery downloaded the print drivers specifically for the Officejet Pro X and the printer also worked with AirPrint driver enabled. The HP Universal print driver worked extremely well with the printer. This is a huge plus for enterprise and business customers who don’t want to maintain lots of different driver versions and who want to avoid compatibility issues on their print servers.

Scanning

Scanning, both from the document feeder or flat bed, produces very clear scans. The software on the computer, both PC and Mac, worked extremely well for initiating scans and controlling the settings of the capture. Beyond scanning controls from the computer, the touch screen display also provides users with a lot of control from the printer itself. This is particularly helpful in shared office environments where the printer may be around the corner. Administrators can setup file share locations, computers and even email where scans may be routed with easy touch controls on the front panel. The printer also features two USB ports (one below the touchscreen panel and one on the back of the printer) that can be used as a destination for scans also. Configuration of network locations and computers to route scans is very simple from the web-based control panel or the HP utilities that ship with the printer.

Direct & Secure Printing

In addition to writing to USB devices, the printer can print directly from USB for recognized formats using the “Plug and Print” option in the touch controls. The USB port on the back of the printer is a USB 2.0 port and it can be used as a temporary location for confidential print jobs to be stored and then retrieved and printed once you’re standing at the printer. This is a hugely popular feature for shared printers, because you never want your co-worker looking at your paystub when you print it to a shared printer (or some other situation like that).

One Touch Apps (News & Forms)

Also, while talking about the touch screen controls, you have to look at the Apps section of the controls. This section allows you to select from a number of web services delivered through hpeprintcenter.com that allow you to print common forms, daily news or many other things directly from the web, all without a computer. Need music paper or graph paper, the OfficeJet Pro X can print that without you ever needing to search and find a template. The ForbesDaily or TimesDigest apps allows you to print the latest newspaper or even schedule a daily print of news delivered directly to the printer, just like your daily paper used to be delivered to your doorstep. With the decline of newspaper, this is a really nifty use for printing your news on-demand. Oh and the TimesDigest (from the New York Times) even includes the crossword…

Networking

Network configuration is straightforward and simple. The touchscreen controls make it a breeze to join an existing WiFi network, even a password protected one. Connecting Ethernet is even easier. The printer will obtain and address from DHCP or you may specify a static IP address easily through the web control panel or HP Utility on the computer.

Consumables

Another huge plus is the number of pages you’ll get per cartridge. The ink consumables of the Officejet Pro X are priced around $75 per color retail, but in all my thousands of pages of testing, I have barely moved the mark on any of the 4 ink wells, so in my experience, you’ll see thousands of pages per cartridge before needing to refill.

Disclaimer: HP provided the OfficeJet Pro X576dw MFP to me free of charge for review and a second unit to giveaway. HP in no way influenced or had any editorial control over the views, opinions and conclusions that came to in the course of testing the printer.

November 18, 2014 6 comments

Datacenter Printing Storage

Is there such a thing as an Enterprise InkJet? HP’s OfficeJet Pro X thinks so…

by Philip Sellers October 30, 2014

written by Philip Sellers

Laser printers and enterprise seem to go together like peanut butter and jelly. But a little over a year ago, I was introduced to an enterprise inkjet printer line – the HP OfficeJet Pro X. In many ways, it resembles an HP LaserJet printer in size and design. It looks like an office printer – something substantial that could handle the demands of an office printing thousands of pages per month. It looks like it belongs in an enterprise. But everything I knew about inkjet said, there is no way this could work for enterprise. Inkjets print slowly, I thought, one line at a time. Inkjets are more expensive than laser, I thought, and ink smears. But, the OfficeJet Pro X is not a traditional inkjet and what makes it enterprise ready is a long list of differences from what normally defines ink printing. HP has rethought core inkjet technology in a way that makes it a viable enterprise solution for printing.

OfficjetProX

The OfficeJet Pro X Differences

A Whole Lot of Pigment and Less Water in the Ink

Sad Water Droplet One of the key differentiators of the OfficeJet Pro X line is the ink used for the printer. According to Larry Tracy, a product manager for the Pro X, the inks have a heavier pigment load and less water than traditional inks. Less water means the print dries faster as its moving through the device. Unlike laser printers that use heat and a fuser to transfer the image to the page, the ink printers have no drying mechanism in them – no fans or heaters. In addition, the durability of the print is much better, according to Tracy. The print on the pages doesn’t smear or run. You may use a highlighter over the print without smudging it and it has superior life versus other inkjet printers. In fact, Tracy says that in their testing the paper will begin to degrade long before the print itself begins the break down.

The PageWide Print Bar

The OfficeJet Pro X features a stationary print bar that is the same width as the sheet of paper, something HP calls PageWide technology. The PageWide print head features over 420,000 nozzles. Unlike traditional inkjets where the ink well and nozzels are integrated into the print cartridge, the OfficeJet Pro X print head is not changed with every ink replacement. This print head has monitoring built in to detect a misfiring nozzle and can allow surrounding nozzles to increase their volume to fill in. In addition, there are spare nozzles that can be used in the event of a blockage or failure.

Heavy Pigment Ink + Pagewide = Speed

An inkjet that prints up to 70 pages per minute is remarkable. Demos that I have seen of the OfficeJet Pro X576dm during HP Discover and on a demo unit that HP has provided hold true to that speed. 70 pages per minute is available in what HP calls General Office mode, but don’t make the mistake of calling it draft mode like other printers offer. Draft mode is a degraded quality print with less precision and crispness. The OfficeJet Pro X’s General Office mode doesn’t significantly compromise the quality of the print. The print is still very crisp and clean on the page.

LaserJet Cross-Pollenation

For enterprise, there is a second, higher-end line printers known as the OfficeJet Pro X Enterprise line that integrates HP Flow scanning and routing with other enterprise features. Similiar the HP Flow models of LaserJet printers, these machines are meant to replace traditional copies and scanners with multi-function printers. In addition, the HP Universal Print driver that allows businesses to use the same driver for many HP printer models also works with the OfficeJet Pro X line.

When talking with Larry Tracy, I also found out why the OfficeJet Pro X looks like a very close cousin to the HP LaserJet printers. This printer was developed in Boise, ID, in the birthplace of the HP LaserJet. A lot of enterprise features created in the LaserJet line are also in this OfficeJet Pro X Enterprise line of printers, including software for pin based secure printing, integration with HP’s Flow workflow and scanning software, and badge readers.

Lots of Traditional HP Printing Goodness

In many ways, the OfficeJet Pro X line is a departure from its ink predecessors. But its not a complete departure from its heritage. The OfficeJet Pro X includes many of the expected features like HP ePrint and AirPrint support, both wired and wireless connectivity, USB storage and print from USB thumb drive support, and a multi-page document fed and flatbed scanner integrated. The OfficeJet Pro X also has faxing and copying capabilities from a touch-screen display and with a bit of configuration, the touch screen can be used to scan documents directly to a file share or HP software on a networked computer. According to Tracy, a software update earlier this year allows for one of the two onboard USB ports on an OfficeJet Pro X to be used for persistent storage so that secure documents can be stored until accessed and printed by PIN code. The OfficeJet Pro X printers will also duplex prints and copies automatically, which is a required business feature.

The OfficeJet Pro X Cost Advantage

As a consultant years ago, I performed printing studies for companies and comparing the cost of buying a personal or workgroup laser printer versus the cheap inkjet printers (think $50 big-box variety printers) I often found in their offices. For a normal office workload, the inexpensive inkjet costs the company more in ink than an laser would cost per page. Plus, buying the printer-du-jour from a big-box store means stocking multiple different ink refills, increasing costs and frustration. Calculating the cost per page over the course of a year or several years, I would surprise each customer I worked with at how much they could reduce their printing costs by switching to workgroup or personal laser printers. And while its been ten years since I was a consultant, many of the things I found then are still true today. But the OfficeJet Pro X seems to be a very different animal.

When Buyers Lab, an independent testing institution, reviewed the OfficeJet Pro X printer, they found that the cost per page is about 1.1 cents per page for black and white and about 6.5 cents per full color page. Those prices per page beat out all small laser multifunction printers Buyers Lab had tested. Buyers Lab reported the average small workgroup laser MFP costs 2.4 cents per page in black and white and 11.5 center per page in full color. But, the OfficeJet Pro X beat even the lowest cost per page laser multi-functions cost 1.5 cents per page black and white and 7.8 cents per page for color. Buyers Lab defined the small laser multifunction printer as printers with duty cycle less than 5,000 pages per month. When you move into a mid-size workgroup MFP, the results change a little with some higher-priced laser multifunction printers able to beat the OfficeJet Pro X’s cost per page, but the OfficeJet Pro X still slightly better than the average cost per page for this class of printers.

Printing and the Environmental Impact

When you think of printing, you think of paper and you may think of trees. Boldly saying that a printer is eco-friendly may seem a bit counter-intuitive, but the fact remains that some documents must be printed, so when given a choice, choose a printer that uses less resources.

OfficeJetProXink One of the lesser talked about stories with the OfficeJet Pro X line is the eco-friendliness of this printer compared to lasers and other inkjets. The OfficeJet Pro X printers produce less waste than other printers, both laser and inkjet. Ink cartridges for the printer yield 9,200 pages from the black cartridge and 6,000 pages for each of the three color cartridges. As a comparison, most laser printers in the same class yield 4,000 – 7,000 pages. The Buyers Lab performed a study and pitted the OfficeJet Pro X against a Lexmark and found that the Lexmark required almost twice as many ink replacements to produce 150,000 pages. HP has also worked hard to reduce the amount of waste associated with each ink replacement in terms of packaging and precious metals included with the ink wells.

The second major aspect of environmental friendliness for this printer is its power consumption. Compared to Laser printers, the OfficeJet Pro X consumes about 8 to 10 times less power – which equates to using less power when printing than a Laser printer when sitting idle. Many Laser printers do not completely power down the fuser because it would require extra time to before the first page is printed. Keeping the fuser warm pulls more power than the OfficeJet Pro X when it is in full print mode. The printer is Energy Star qualified.

But its not just HP’s word. Marlene Orr, a senior analyst for printers and MFP’s for Buyers Lab, was quoted as saying “From an environmental perspective, these units also use significantly less energy and create less consumables waste than comparable small workgroup laser printers and MFPs recently tested.”

Any of these environmental features will benefit its owners from a total cost of ownership – aka “in the wallet.” With less power consumption and cheaper cost per page in printing, these printers will save long-term for their owners. Plus, from my perspective, I despise the throw-away printer mentality, with the uber-cheap printers whose ink refill costs more than the printer. These are designed to be cheap and not last, which isn’t a good use of natural resources. The OfficeJet Pro X is a system that’s built for a business level workload, with a duty cycle of up to 75,000 pages.

Next Steps…

My demo HP OfficeJet Pro X 576dw arrived a week ago and I’ve just started setting it up for evaluation. My initial reaction is really positive. To be completely transparent, I’m a big HP printing fan. I made the choice a long time ago to stick with HP printers in my home office and advocate for the same at work. I’ve attempted to help my former customers with printers of all makes and models, but when I came to my picks for my home, its always been an HP. So, I will be the first to admit my bias, but it does come from years of experience dealing with issues from other printer brands – Epson, Lexmark (Dell) and Canon.

So, in a couple weeks, I’ll be posting a personal review from my experiences with the OfficeJet Pro X576dw. And, look for an announcement for your chance to win an OfficeJet Pro X for your own environment.

Disclosure: HP provided the Officejet Pro X576dw to me free of charge for review and testing. All views and opinions in this blog post are my own, gathered from research and first hand information. The views expressed were not dictated by HP.

October 30, 2014 5 comments