HP introduces printers with e-mail addresses, cloud access
By Casey Johnston
*** begin quote ***
Hewlett-Packard has announced a new line of printers designed to work directly with smartphones and cloud services without the need for a computer intermediary. The printers are designed to take print jobs that are e-mailed to them or uploaded to a cloud service they can access. HP hopes the increased accessibility will encourage the use of printouts, as files can increasingly be carried on a single pocket device.
The new range of printers have Web access, either wired or wireless, removing the need for a print server or connection to a computer. They have touchscreens and e-mail addresses, and can print documents that are e-mailed to them from any source, as well as items from Web services like Google Docs. Users can schedule print jobs on the printers and set up regular print runs of their documents, like weekly menus or itineraries.
*** end quote ***
(1) SPAM! Can you think of junk mail faxes? How long do you think it will take for “Dr (Mrs.) Faith Zenwakolo, a dying woman who has decided to donate what I have to charity through any thoughtful and selfless someone” to guess what the email address is? Or whatever the complicated “security structure” that’s put in place to “protect” it. Wanna bet you’ll get HP advertisements?
(2) I want to print a sensitive document to my HP printer. Email? Unless it’s encrypted — in transit and at each place of residence — and the User controls the keys, and there’s no backdoors.
(3) And is there storage on the printer? How does it get erased?
Seems like a lot of questions!
# # # # #
Reinke Faces Life 