Hewlett-Packard Promises Major Technology Advance

Reprinted from March 2002

On March 18, 2002, as the March 2002 issue was being laid out, Lexmark announced four new ink jet printers, including the $199 Z65 Color Jetprinter model, which prints at 4800 by 600 dpi on plain paper, and 4800 by 1200 dpi on special media such as photo paper. Lexmark would not disclose print speed at maximum resolution. We’ll have more details on Lexmark’s new products in the April 2002 issue. MZ.

On March 13, 2002, Hewlett-Packard Company (Palo Alto, CA) announced that many of its future ink jet printers will incorporate “4800-optimized dots-per-inch” technology. In its news release, HP said that the new technology delivers “up to 4800 by 1200-optimized dpi color printing on premium photo papers and 1200 by 1200-input dpi.” The company said that releasing details about what it has done to accomplish this increase in specification would tip its hand about the characteristics of future product introductions. We were told that the advance is the result of both hardware and software improvements, though. Products using “4800-optimized dots-per-inch” should be on the market in a couple of months.

HP’s Paul Speer, General Manager of the DeskJet/Personal Printing group, told us that increased printing of image-rich documents has increased customer expectations of performance. “We have been the industry leader for many years relative to overall image quality and performance,” Speer said, “and HP wants to stay ahead of those expectations.” We think that, in addition to anticipating customer need, HP is also anticipating competitors’ high-resolution claims. The headline of the news release reads, “HP First to Announce 4800-optimized DPI Capabilities for Future Inkjet Products.”

HP’s parry in the public relations specmanship battle should not be taken as a sign that HP has abandoned the PhotoREt layering techniques the company has used since 1996 to give its customers the best prints in default mode. A precursor to PhotoREt, ColorREt, was added to certain print drivers in 1994. The DeskJet 850 and 870 models offered ColorREt, using layering with four colors. The initial introduction of PhotoREt layering in 1996 was based on six colors.

HP says that the new print mode will produce observable improvements in source images obtained at 600 dpi or higher. Such images are behemoths. Photoshop tells us that a 4" by 6" scan at 600 dpi occupies over 26 MB. A white paper explaining PhotoREt layering written by HP in 2000 says, “Increasing dpi means sending more information to the printhead, which in turn means slower print speeds and larger file sizes. In contrast, HP’s PhotoREt Color Layering technology creates small file sizes because its multi-drop per dot method creates accurate color with fewer dots-per-inch. The result is photo-quality color without the wait.” (HP All-in-One Product Families—What is HP’s PhotoREt Printing Technology? can be found on HP’s Web site. )

As we mentioned when we examined the HP 970Cse in November 1999, the main difference between printing with PhotoREt III and by-passing PhotoREt and printing at 2400 by 1200 dpi was greatly extended printing time in high-resolution mode. There was no discernable difference in image quality. In fact, HP’s print menu warns users that they are entering the slow-printing zone when they select 2400 by 1200-dpi printing: “2400 x 1200 dpi mode is for source images with resolution higher than 600 dpi. This setting will temporarily use a large amount of hard disk space (400 MB or more) and will print significantly slower. If you have trouble printing, please select PhotoREt. Are you sure you want to select 2400 x 1200 dpi?” If 2400 dpi is bad, won’t 4800 dpi be even worse?

When printing, we were told, customers must make a trade-off between print resolution and print speed. HP does not want to deny its more discerning customers the ability to print at higher resolutions if they want to. And HP should not deny itself the advantage of claiming higher addressability than its competitors. “With this major technology advancement, HP directly addresses the increasing consumer demand for high-quality output and the ability to print true-to-life color photos at home or work.” But are consumers really demanding printing that takes twice as long or longer, while providing negligible improvements in image quality? HP claims that 4800-optimized dots-per-inch printing and other un-named improvements “will allow consumers to produce lifelike photo-quality images that rival the quality of current analog prints.” Isn’t that what HP’s current photo printers do? 4800-optimized dpi? We don’t know what it is. The need to out-spec your competitor—that we understand.