Hewlett-Packard has announced the South African launch of the HP OfficeJet Series 700, an all-in-one product with colour faxing capabilities. The 700 series will be in stores during February, costing about R4 500.
"From now onwards every inkjet-based all-in-one launched by HP will have a colour fax solution," says Wim Heuninck, marketing manager for printers and peripherals. Using PC processing and the ITU-T30E standard, the 700 series can fax a JPEG-quality image to a PC or another colour-enabled fax. HP has identified niche markets for colour faxing, such as estate agents and designers, but expects the market to eventually include most office users.
The series consists of four models, with variations in fax and copy features. Black text prints at 5 pages per minute (ppm) and colour images at 2ppm. Text can be copied at 2ppm, after the first page, which takes one minute to scan and print. Photo-quality printing is possible using the standard PhotoREt cartridge and high-quality paper.
A European survey by HP indicated that 75% of 700 series buyers completed the setup in 30 minutes or less. The product uses a single parallel cable and a user-friendly interface, compatible only with Windows 95/98 and NT.
Heuninck vowed that the entire all-in-one range would be available in South Africa by September.
Eric Snick, business unit manager for HP all-in-one products in Europe, said at the launch that marketing the range has been a problem. "People see it on the shelf and it looks like a very expensive printer."
HP is encouraging vendors to create all-in-one product aisles to separate it from the single function products. And strangely enough, it also encourages the display of rival products. "We need to build the perception of a family of products," said Snick, "so our competitors have their place in the picture." He is also concerned about HP all-in-one products dominating the market in some European countries. "If you have 85% of the market share there is something wrong with the market."
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