InformationWeek

Speeding Words Into Print

By Rich Raimondi, general manager of the business LaserJet division of Hewlett-Packard in Palo Alto, Calif.

s recently as 15 years ago, typewriters were the lifeblood of business-then came the personal computing revolution. With the advent of PCs and laser printers, people could produce professional-looking documents with the push of a button, and the use of typewriters diminished. Although it was a trying transition for some, these changes usher ed in the information age.

I like to think that Hewlett-Packard pioneered desktop laser printing as we know it by shipping the LaserJet printer in 1984. By today's standards, the $3,500, 70-pound printer offered modest capabilities. Yet the LaserJet was the first laser printer to offer high-quality, reliable printing at the desktop. Since then, advancements in processors, font technology, and print quality make today's laser printers smaller, faster, more feature-rich-and more affordable than ever.

Now, after 12 years of innovation, new technologies have once again emerged. These promise to make copiers and fax machines obsolete. They'll also change the way office work is done.

The departmental copier is an aging icon. In today's workplace, professionals find that high-speed laser printers can handle many tasks associated with copiers. According to Dataquest Inc., a market research firm in San Jose, Calif., 43% of laser-printer users bypass the copier and use their printer to create multiple origi nal prints, or mopies.

The benefits of mopying are compelling. People can produce mopies without leaving their desks. By eliminating the trek to the copier, workers complete more work in less time. Also, mopies cost less per page than most photocopies and offer superior print quality. Already, the industry offers high-speed network printers optimized for producing mopies, as well as electronically sorting and stapling documents.

Scanners play a key role in our vision of office printing. By combining scanning technology with laser printing, businesses can obtain the core capabilities of copiers and fax machines. A scanner can take paper-based information, digitize it, and send it to a printer for mopies, or to a PC for viewing. Network scanners can also send faxes when attached to a LAN fax server. Network scanners can distribute scanned paper documents directly to people across the network, whether just around the corner or across the world.

Just as black-and-white television was superseded by co lor TV, monochrome computing has been quickly overrun by color computing. Almost every personal ink-jet printer sold today prints color. This trend is quickly crossing into the commercial sector, as more businesses use color-driven technologies such as the Internet. The industry is working to make the transition to color printing simple for businesses by driving down the cost of ownership for color laser printers. I foresee a day in the not-too-distant future when more than half of all laser printers sold will offer color.

IS managers demand reliable printing solutions that require low maintenance. Consequently, printers will become smarter network devices. Today, software lets administrators view status remotely, receive diagnostic information, and manage printers anywhere on the network. New Web-based technologies bring these same sophisticated capabilities to administrators through a standard Web browser. As the Internet and corporate intranets grow, the capabilities of Web management tools will expand .

What's next?
I envision a day when people will be able to easily send and receive information from a range of intelligent devices. For example, what if during a business meeting, you could send notes from your whiteboard directly to a laser printer or desktop PC, even if those devices were located around the globe? This kind of simple, direct communication would speed the decision-making process and, in turn, make companies more competitive.

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Read on about the "Future of the PC" from:

• Robert Gilbertson , president and CEO of Network Computing Devices Inc. in Mountain View, CA
  
• Steve Luczo , executive VP of corporate development at Seagate Technology and chief operating officer at Seagate Software in Scotts Valley, CA
  
• Bill Raduchel , chief information officer of Sun Microsystems in Mountain View, CA