HP’s leaner, cheaper, A3+ Photosmart Pro B8850 printer

[DPNow]

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HP says it has made a cheaper and easier to use version of the popular Photosmart Pro B9180 A3+ pigment ink photo printer. And it's called the Photosmart Pro B8850. We've spent the afternoon with the B8850's product manager, Ron Forster, finding out if cheaper means 'nastier' or not.

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[JSR]

New for the B8850 is a sleep mode stand by system. HP recommends that both the B8850 be left connected to the mains electricity supply in order to prevent the print head from suffering the effects of prolonged non-use.

Does anyone else have a problem with this? We're having it constantly bombarded into our heads to turn things off and to not leave anything on standby because the extra electricity kills the planet, yet HP are still bringing out products that they recommend to leave turned on?

Regardless of the truth about the amount of power used on standby and the "Switch it off Campaign", how can a manufacturer be irresponsible enough to bring out a brand new product that they recommend you leave turned on and plugged in? Not only do I tend to turn my devices off wherever possible but anytime there's a lightning storm, I unplug as much as I can from the mains.

Gloss optimiser hasn’t been added either, a feature that remains exclusive to HP’s more up-market Z-Series printers.

Carefully phrased there to make it sound like no other printer in the whole world has a gloss optimiser except HP's Z-series. Can it be exclusive to HP's Z-Series, when a competitor uses it on printers that aren't quite so up-market? How is exclusivity defined?

[Ian]

Originally Posted by JSR

Does anyone else have a problem with this? We're having it constantly bombarded into our heads to turn things off and to not leave anything on standby because the extra electricity kills the planet, yet HP are still bringing out products that they recommend to leave turned on?

Regardless of the truth about the amount of power used on standby and the "Switch it off Campaign", how can a manufacturer be irresponsible enough to bring out a brand new product that they recommend you leave turned on and plugged in? Not only do I tend to turn my devices off wherever possible but anytime there's a lightning storm, I unplug as much as I can from the mains.


Carefully phrased there to make it sound like no other printer in the whole world has a gloss optimiser except HP's Z-series. Can it be exclusive to HP's Z-Series, when a competitor uses it on printers that aren't quite so up-market? How is exclusivity defined?

I mean the gloss optimiser was missing from the lower models, not that it's a HP exclusive.

Ian