Comments on: Q&A: HP plans reign of ink from the cloud

HP plans reign of ink from the cloud The company wants to move consumer printing away from PCs and onto the Web, shedding drivers along the way.

[danielwsmithee]

Umm ... these will be the first printer I pass up when looking for a new one. Why this just stinks of a solution searching for a problem.

[rapier1]

So if my network is down I won't be able to print unless I have multicast functional on my home network. Wonderful idea.

[BogusBasin]

I think there are things we haven't even thought of that would make this a useful tool. Printing from an iPhone for example. I think it might be a hit.

[ThePrairiePrankster]

Another "solution" in search of a problem. I am much less likely to purchase HP printers if this is their "solution" to a problem I don't have.

I do not want a print device that relies on a web service to print from my computers.

With broadband service providers hellbent on charging per byte and metering web access, this seems like a really bad idea.

I do not want useless multi-casting traffic on my local network either. I don't print that much to justify the usage of my local bandwidth, plain and simple.

The idea is interesting for those with iPhones, cameras and other devices that have web access. I have such devices, yet I do fine printing from PC and can easily move my files off the devices and onto the PC which I prefer since I usually edit those files.

[agent V]

As the others have said, this is a ridiculous idea. Simplifying things sounds like a good idea, they have so many alphanumeric designations for printers, and their printer drivers are unnecessarily large. Hundreds of megabytes for a printer driver, especially a "basic" one is not desirable. I remember when printer drivers were located on floppy disks.

If they do proceed with the cloud mentality, they should at least make it an optional "opt-in" system and not the default.

IMHO it is a bad idea to route local printing to a remote print server to reduce driver and customer installation issues. How about, oh I don't know, downsize and simplify the "drivers" you already put out. The various printer lines can't be so different, they should consolidate the driver packages much like the graphics card manufacturers have done.

[colin519]

Signed up just to post this.

This of the possibilities for web 2.0 or maybe this is 3.0. Great article and good questions. Author deserves a pat on the back.

Scenario One: You are browsing Facebook on your iPhone and see a photo you want to print. You push a button directly on the Facebook website, or I'd assume on a compatible application print menu at the very least. Your HP CloudPrint 1.0 spits out a copy at home.

Scenario Two: Real shared printers. I'm on the way home after leaving a client and forgotten to give them a copy of a document that I showed them on my 4G-enabled notebook. He gives me his HP CloudPrint Share name and password and I type them into a dialog box on my print menu and a copy comes out of his printer.

Of course HP harvests all the info because they know that you printed 4859458898495395 magenta droplets on Tuesday. They can manufacture more or less cartridges in complete synchronicity with their real world usage. Beautiful.

Give me a job HP or CNET.

[danielwsmithee]

Umm yeah because you can't just email a copy of your document, and let him decide to print it or not. Sounds a lot easier to me then getting your clients username/password for his CloudPrinter and entering it on HP website.

[sanenazok]

@colin: Both of these scenarios presume someone wants a hard copy. Do you really want a printout of a picture from a website? Unless it's professionally done, it will probably turn out very badly. If it's professionally done then you need permission. The second scenario smacks of a fax machine, except it requires new equipment and HP server as an interloper.

Working in an office we have not bought toner since December months and all the printers are going strong. People print less and less. HP is looking for a way to keep people printing unnecessarily trying to avoid the one hassle with a new printer (installing their gawdy drivers). This is just like when Kodak came out with its easy to load Advantix film (or whatever it was called). They were trying to salvage a dying business by solving problems few people had.

With "ideas" like that you should look for a job in academia. These people will eat it up. Try throwing something about "renewable energy" or "diversity" in there too!