Mobile printing is one of the storied death zones of small-business technology. Imaging tools svelte enough for road duty are usually royal pains to use, and print, at most, a few awful-looking pages per minute.
HP is trying to fix that with its new Officejet 100 ($280). The 6-pound, 7-by-14-inch printer, while far from feather-light, is portable enough for checked luggage and prints a surprisingly high-quality 22 pages per minute in black and white, and 18 pages per minute in colour.
The Officejet can connect to various mobile devices via Bluetooth, so printing from, say, a BlackBerry is possible. Perhaps most importantly, the device can run both from wall and battery power. One charge can handle a full 500-page cycle.
“The idea was to create the maximum battery versatility to print brochures and other material while on the road, but only plug it in every few weeks,” says Bret Bottger, market development manager at HP.
This Officejet does have its drawbacks: For starters, no Wi-Fi support. Using it with most PCs requires a traditional wired USB connection with the proper software installed, which can be a drag. And woe betide any business user who forgets to turn it off. The 100 can run itself down lickety-split.
But for providing some high-quality desktop – or should we say car-top – imaging while on the road, it is tough to beat the HP Officejet 100.
Jonathan Blum is a freelance writer and the principal of Blumsday LLC, a Web-based content company specializing in technology news. Follow him on Twitter @blumsday
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