Printing record speeds combined with Web-enabling technologies

Hewlett-Packard South Africa today announced its fastest laser printer to date with an output speed of 50ppm (pages per minute) with the first page delivered within 6.6 seconds.

The HP LaserJet 9000 is an internet-enabled, monochrome printer designed to bridge the gap between lower-duty cycle office printers and centralised, higher-priced, production systems.

"We are creating a new market for printing with the HP LaserJet 9000 series," says Ashley Flinders, market development manager, imaging and printing solutions, HP South Africa.

"The market need is for high quality, high speed, flexible printing solutions. By marrying speed with the latest HP Web-enabling technologies, we`re offering our customers a truly unique print solution to meet those needs," says Flinders

According to figures from the Delphi Group, there is an increasing need for high speed and high volume printing within the business printing market place. Although the percentage of printed information is decreasing, the total volume of information is actually doubling every three to seven years.

HP attributes this increased demand for higher monthly print volumes to general, shared and specialised office segments and distributed printers. The general office segment consists of businesses printing in work groups averaging 15 to 25 people.

"These workgroups share printers via a network and typically need to print word processing, spreadsheets, presentation graphics, e-mail and information from the Internet. Their monthly print volume typically ranges from 5 000 to 10 000 copies and these figures are expected to rise over the next two years," says Flinders.

Specialised printers in the general office are often located in smaller workgroups and print longer print jobs, with particular requirements. Users include sales and marketing departments, who need to produce large amounts of marketing literature, and the accounts department, who work on many versions of financial plans and reports. Such departments using specialised printing needs require larger input and output capacities, and stacking capabilities.

Equally, many large businesses are moving printing resources out from the data centres and closer to the end-user in order to reduce costs and increase output flexibility and turnaround time. In this segment very large print jobs, such as ASCII reports and forms, need to be networked to distributed printers.

"In each of these three segments the MIS manager and the end-user need a high-performance printer with top-level productivity to enhance their business results.

"It must be easy to use and easy to manage with no printer downtime and no trade-off regarding performance and speed. At the same time the IT manager wants to ensure that the printer offers a good return on their investment and creates professional and high quality documents," says Flinders.

The HP LaserJet 9000 delivers high volume, high speed, performance printing with minimal downtime, and is simple to integrate into existing IT infrastructures. It is also the first HP printer to offer an integrated services, software and support package to meet the needs of transaction printing.

"On the one hand, it`s an ideal solution for the growing demand for merged copying and printing facilities, while on the other, it offers a company an affordable entry into high volume production print work normally carried out on huge, expensive machines," says Flinders

"The advantage of the HP LaserJet 9000 in such a production environment is that you can start with one machine and link up to five units as needs grow. This not only maximises your investment, but also gives you built-in redundancy," says Flinders.

The new printer is simple to use and easy to manage, requiring minimal user interference. It benefits from HP`s ChaiServer, an embedded Web server, allowing the systems administrator to manage and control the printer from anywhere via an Internet link.

Combined with HP`s Web JetAdmin software, the ChaiServer enables e-mail alerts, real-time status updates and diagnostics, firmware upgrades and dynamic self-help.

The HP LaserJet 9000 also incorporates HP Chai Virtual Machine, an embedded virtual machine, recognised as an industry first. This means the HP LaserJet 9000 can run Java programs, allowing users to add new features and printing e-services capabilities, making this a future-proof printing solution.

Additionally, a smart print cartridge and the ChaiServer allow for supplies ordering via the Internet. The HP LaserJet 9000 maximum capacity smart print cartridge (C8543X) is part of HP`s new range of Smart Print Supplies that will deliver new features that include:

• supply status notification

• enhanced output quality

• easier cartridge installation

• simplification of supplies ordering

An economical printing solution, the HP LaserJet 9000 brings control over the creation and printing process in-house. The HP LaserJet 9000 is the most versatile department printer available, including paper handling, heavy and custom media capability and the fastest duplex printing possible (up to 25 sheets per minute - duplex at speed). Its capabilities make it the ideal printing solution for all general office printing requirements, as well as for in-house printing systems and mission-critical printing.

General office printing

The HP LaserJet 9000 delivers high-speed printing with a range of added capabilities, such as duplex printing and flexible media printing, which makes it ideal for general office printing. Due to HP Web JetAdmin and the ChaiServer, the HP LaserJet 9000 is simple to install and manage. With a duty cycle of 300 000 sheets and a toner cartridge that prints 30 000 pages per month, user intervention and overall downtime are kept to a minimum.

Mission-critical printing

The HP LaserJet 9000 is also particularly suited for mission-critical printing that requires high-volume, accurate and fast printing of high quality. The printing solution runs smoothly on all major business software applications, producing outstanding print results.

In-house printing

With the HP LaserJet 9000, companies can afford to take more of their printing operations in-house, giving them more control over the print process and the final print product. The solution delivers consistently high quality, with 600 dpi resolution (dots per inch), edge-to-edge printing, and excellent media handling. Paper handling options available for use with the HP LaserJet 9000 include a 3 000 sheet stacker, 3 000 sheet stapler/stacker, a high capacity input device and the duplex unit.

Together with the worldwide network of HP JetCAPS partners HP offer a full range of business printing solutions that complement the HP LaserJet 9000:

• e-forms and corporate design

• barcodes and cheque printing

• SAP/erp printing

• Print and copy job accounting

• Host and volume printing

• Secure printing

• Paper handling and customer media

• Custom solution development

For more information please refer to http://www.jetcaps.com

Key features of the HP LaserJet 9000

Key features of the HP LaserJet 9000 include:

• 50ppm printing

• first page out in 6.6 seconds

• 600 dpi at full engine speed

• 30 000 page toner cartridge

• 300MHz microprocessor

• 64MB synchronous DRAM, memory expandable up to 384 MB

• smart print supplies

• 300 000 pages per month duty cycle

• hp PCL6, PCL5e and Postscript 3 emulation

• ChaiServer; Chai Virtual Machine for Java Applications

Further products in this range include the following additional features:

HP LaserJet 9000n

• +10/100 Base-TX JetDirect card

• 100-sheet multi purpose tray

HP LaserJet 9000dn

• Duplexer/duplex at speed

• +10/100 Base-TX JetDirect card

• 100-sheet multi purpose tray

Pricing and availability

The HP LaserJet 9000 is available now from all major HP resellers at the end of May.