HP ePrint really works: eMails and attachments printed from the cloud (video)
By Richard Lai 
posted July 2nd 2010 2:07PM
posted July 2nd 2010 2:07PM
Once registered, any email sent to the printer will first be screened by HP's ePrintCenter for viruses and spam (white and black lists supported) before the email body and supported attachments (PDFs, JPEGs, and Microsoft Office documents; no more than 5MB in total) are printed. As you'd expect, all of this scanning and downloading over the web does incur additional delay -- in Engadget Chinese's hands-on video below, it took about 30 seconds before the email started printing (this already excludes the ten seconds taken up by a previous document), and then the attached image (258KB) followed about a minute later. Of course, this one test alone isn't enough to judge ePrint's performance, but it sure seems to work.
Hey just don't put that email address on your website, or your gonna have a lot of 'splanin to do with the wife when she sees all those images of naked wimenss, viagra ads and money laundering emails you printed out.
@loadoftoad: The system will only accept emails from specified users, so spamming and whatnot won't work
@loadoftoad
The new printer looks pretty.
@216 Because email spoofing is the only thing harder than plugging a leaking oil rig?
@216 Why is it that Hotmail can't manage that?
@RikF Hate to break it to you, but the 'oil rig' is not what is leaking.
@dcnoren
I'm sorry, I had to go. I have problems holding it in.
@RikF
But the spammer would have to correctly guess not only your randomly generated printer email, but also spoof the correct email on the allow list.
Unless you're putting that info out there publicly, I don't see how that could be an issue.
@krische Still there is no authentication. This system relies on other people not knowing your email address AND your printers email address. That is not a whole lot of security there. I remember other systems that got 'hacked' because the service provider relied on the fact that nobody would know a certain url.... silly
@comix "This system relies on other people not knowing your email address AND your printers email address. That is not a whole lot of security there."
But if you get a randomly generated email address for your printer like:
h76g748kj98@eprint.com
and your allow list has just tom@yahoo.co.uk then it's pretty unlikely that a bot could match them up.
This type of setup will come off worst in businesses if they allow wildcards and there are some disgruntled ex-employees who would like to engage in some g*atse/t*bgirl shenanigans. It would be better if the printers had webcams to capture the reactions of course.
@TinWard
"pretty unlikely" is not secure.
@okok only Apple Fanboys bought i
Pretty good solution for anybody with a mobile phone, iPad, etc.
@Jase
You can turn off the feature if what you demand is quantum encryption standards or nothing.
For most people I doubt it will be an issue. What is the worst that could happen? You lose some ink, it is not like the printer will become an entry point to hack into your computers and pull credit card numbers. Lets calm down guys.
@tybert7
Ink costs more than most printers... waste not, want not.
I wonder how much spam tom@yahoo.uk is going to get today?
Get off my cloud!
@One Love
You don't know me and you don't know my style.
"Once registered, any email sent to the printer will first be screened by HP's ePrintCenter for viruses and spam (white and black lists supported) ..."
So HP can also screen them?? Hmm.... I'll wait for the DIY version.
@Plazmic Flame For a moment there I was wondering what kind of virus the printer could get. Now I'm wondering what kind of virus could have both email and paper vectors.
@fencesitter
w32.hoots ???
This can be cool for business people on the go who have no time and need to have something printed by the time they get to the office.
@donv69 this is also something you could do with a regular internet connected pc that has a printer connected to it.
a very cheap pc.
Yes, but does it run WebOS?
@DrDr
soon.
Nice but I hope they can do something to prevent a bunch of "v1Agra and C1Alis" price lists from sitting in my output tray every morning...
Oh, right, whitelists. Never mind...
Looking forward to a WebOS app for that!
@nefnet13
I'd like a nice WebOS app that adds a nice red and green Christmassy border on each page that it prints out. Make the boss all smiley when he reads Palm's year end sales report.
Cool idea but all of that printing on an Inkjet is going to end up costing WAY more then its worth. No wonder HP wants this on the market...
@KMAN
Not to mention destroying the environment. We are supposed to be moving away from killing trees and towards reading things on tablets. I'm sure HPs printer division would love to change that, but HP as a whole would have been a lot better off using the money to develop an Instapaper clone for WebOS smartphones and tablets.
@DrDr
I agree 100%! I manage a print fleet of over 500 machines and HP has totally gone down the drain (just retired our last 8000, which I think was the last of the HP greats). The only value they have left is their printer standard, EPIC, STAR, and so many other software companies only support HP. Luckly Sharp, Kyocera and a few others can Mimic the HP driver so thats become a non-issue.
DrDr, your on to something, can you image if they had software that took a print job in their standard and e-mailed/sent it to any device, that would save trees and could help people off our paper addiction. However being a business that would mean people would no longer buy their Printers that are simply money traps in the long-run.
@KMAN
This is why we're going to Kyocera.
@DrDr
let's not kid ourselves: the production and operation of e-readers and computers uses more resources and produce more pollution overall than printing. look it up. this will reduce clutter, however.
HP's lists or not, unless there is a password on this, I foresee lots and lots of spa*, sorry, unsolicited printouts buy lots of unknown people.
@rederikus
It will only print from an accepted email address.
They should have a cloud service where you can upload \ edit documents and configure the printer.
@DoctarPeppar
Why add more steps to a simple process?
@PBB
Number one, the email attachment only supports 5MB or less..number two, let's say you have a 20 page word document and you only want pages 2 and 3 printed...there's no way to accomplish that with emailing an attachment. Also, how is navigating a web GUI any less "simple" than sending an email? They are both tasks even a 4 year old could do...And finally, the whole point of this is remote printing, but there is no way to manage the printer through the cloud (monitoring ink, setting up printing preferences, etc.) -- you can only do that locally.
@PBB
Also according to engadget "before the email body and supported attachments (PDFs, JPEGs, and Microsoft Office documents; no more than 5MB in total) are printed" -- so let's say I have an email that has tons and tons of histories (let's say 20 pages of email history going back and forth) along with other useless information -- and I really don't want to have that printed, I _just_ want to have the attachment(s) printed. How would I accomplish that? I wouldn't be able to -- it would waste all that ink and paper on information that I never wanted printed in the first place. There's such as thing as being too simplified, and it's called crippled.
Right on... This printer e-mail service offers zero control. In the example video, what if I wanted the picture to be printed portrait, full page, centered? Without a printing option interface, this is useless to me.
Additionally, it is an ink jet printer, something that after a hundred or so prints will need a new cartridge. A laser jet would be the much better choice.
LEARN TO FOCUS THE CAMERA!
Hey you can't hold your phone like that!
Oh wait thats an Android phone.
Proceed!
I was just thinking today about how badly the printer needs an improved system. I am having an absolutely awful time trying to set up my HP printer on our network. They make it extremely difficult to do anything without installing gigabytes of their own proprietary software.
@FallenArms3
There's already stuff that addresses these sorts of problems. It's just that no one is interested in perusing them. Companies like HP certainly aren't interested.
Everyone's most favorite phone to hate is basically a Unix machine. At the very least it could have a Unix printing system on it and avoid this nonsense. Stuff doesn't need to be hard and it doesn't need to come with gigabytes of spam.
...now that I put it that way I am not sure I would trust HP with this sort of thing.
@jedi Indeed. I'm surprised they are doing this, but I also feel they will somehow botch the simplicity of the whole thing by STILL installing their crapware and forcing you to leave it installed for certain features.
Personally I've boycotted HP as a company, but that's mostly from my personal experiences. 3 HP laptops in the family, two with dead wireless and another with a dead motherboard. One HP printer which now refuses to join the network (the router doesn't see it; I believe it burnt out out its network components as well).
I just don't trust the company to deliver something that will either work well or last.
@FallenArms3
Same problems with HP laptops. Had one for 2 years when within a few months both the wireless card randomly stopped working some of the time (soon completely gone) and the battery died. Yes there was a battery recall conveniently at the same time which affected my dv6000 but I knew that it was time to change.
So did somebody catch the actual address ;) something like agve735ishu79...
Looked like the guy wrote "print" in the subject, but I couldnt tell. It would be cool if you could write commands from the subject line, like Fax, Print, Copies, etc. Fax would especially be useful for business types.
So how exactly do I upload a new ink cartridge from my cellphone?
@okok only Apple Fanboys bought i - These will NEVER get popular. Who would want this? HP seems to get dustier every week. I think the last exciting thing they made was a digital voltmeter, and they sold off that part of the company.
Oh CRAP!
Why do I see webOS destined for this and probably ONLY this!!!!
@greg787
maybe because your a moron.
@greg787
maybe because you're a moron?