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Hardware

HP Introduces A Bluetooth Printer 165

Posted by timothy from the priming-the-pump dept.
man_ls writes: "I found this on C|Net, it's an HP Printer that also supports Bluetooth. You can read about it here. Not that the Bluetooth will do anything except interfere with 802.11 wireless networks, but it's an interesting feature to have." Actually, Bluetooth shouldn't interfere with 802.11 except in confusing product marketing, right? Nice to see that at least one printer will actually hit the market with a short-range radio interface instead of wire (inconvenient) or IR (poor interoperability).
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HP Introduces A Bluetooth Printer More

HP Introduces A Bluetooth Printer

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  • Why would I want a bluetooth printer?

    whats wrong with pport ?
    • What's wrong with a standard, ethernet-connected postscript printer? Can't they just throw a 802.11 network card at it?

      • Re:why (Score:3, Funny)

        by Lars T. ( 470328 )
        Hell, what's wrong with pen and paper? ;-)

    • Re:why (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      this is just a marketing gimmick, beleive me, any color printer can print a blue tooth

    • Re:why (Score:3, Informative)

      by Ed Avis ( 5917 )
      Yeah, a network interface on a printer is often a cause of trouble. It's bad enough if it has an open lpr port where anyone can print to it - you end up having to firewall the printer to stop unauthorized printing. It's worse if there is some fancy-schmancy 'control panel' available with a web browser; again, either there's no security or at best it involves a plaintext password.

      And the sophisticated queuing software installed on many printers tends to crash, with no way to fix the problem (since you don't have the source).

      But none of this is necessary. It would be much easier just to have a parallel port connected to a print server (which you will probably need anyway) and do any queuing or other fun stuff on the print server, with software you can fix, on an operating system you're familiar with. Removing an extra layer of queuing (the printer's own queue) would also lessen the black-hole-ness of submitting a print job and make it easier to cancel or promote jobs (can be done on the print server). Cutting out the unncessarily bloated firmware would probably make the printer a bit cheaper also.

      The only intelligence that needs to be on the printer is a PostScript rasterizer, and even that isn't necessary if you can get a 600dpi bitmap page to the printer fast enough. It's a shame that SCSI-based printing never really took off. Although parport is pretty fast these days too.

  • Now I can walk all over my room with my printer and print! Also, I can synchronize my cellular phone with the printer, whew great!

    Wait a sec... What good will that do?

    Another useless application of bluetooth...

    • I take you don't have a notebook?
      • I don't, but in any case, the Printer doesn't have to be wireless-activated. That's what network printing is all about. Connect the printer to the net and connect the laptop via 802.11. No drivers to install 'cause you're using standard PostScript UNIX lpr mechanism and no need to buy expensive bluetooth technology.
        When did you actually just want to print from your laptop and not be connected to a wireless lan?
        • Are you guys totaly out of touch with reality? There are even less people with a wireless network than with ethernet.

          Anyway, I have my printer hooked up to my 'puter via direct satellite link, so there.

          • Are you guys totaly out of touch with reality? There are even less people with a wireless network than with ethernet.

            I may be out of touch with reality. Of all my friends with a ethernet network at home, they all also have a wireless network. Many of them have a wired network in only one or two rooms while the wireless covers the bulk of their houses (and part of the yards).

            I know of a much smaller number of people with no wired network who are thinking of doing a wireless network.

            My theory is that a wired network in one room is cheap and easy (the hardest part is getting an ISP to support it, or setting up NATing yourself). A wired network covering more then one room is normally kind of hard and/or costly (it is pretty easy and cheap if the house is still being built though!). A wireless network for a whole house is modestly expensive, but just as easy to install (plug a wireless card into all machines, plug in a access point).

            So anyone with a single room network and get a whole house network quite easily by setting up 802.11. If you have a laptop it's a really easy choice :-) If you already have a multiroom network, I'm going to assume you are a true geek, and be quite intrested in having a wireless network as well. So both those cases make sense.

            The no wired network, wireless only makes less sense. In part because it is so easy to do a one room network, and it is faster and somewhat safer. The one case where it makes sense is someone who can get a "cable modem" (or regular modem) into a room they don't want the computer in, and it is hard to get that access to the computer room. Then a wireless network might make more sense. I'm not sure people that don't want computers in every room really deserve wireless networks though :-)

  • Now i can't fid out who's printing p0rn on my printer. damn it.

    --- windows is not the answer. windows is the question. The answer is NO.

  • Linux Support (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Don't forget that with kernel 2.4.17mb22 you too can use this printer.

    Sincerely, Mike Bouma (Linux Kernel Hacker)

    PS: Yep, I did it before Alan Cox
    • Don't forget that with kernel 2.4.17mb22 you too can use this printer.
      The current kernel release is 2.4.9 with prereleases being 2.4.10-pre9 (Linus) and 2.4.9-ac10 (Alan).

      Sorry if it sounds anti-democratic, but it's about time to forbid moderation from closed-source browsers.

  • poor interoperability of IR? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mj6798 ( 514047 ) on Sunday September 16, 2001 @07:35AM (#2305195)
    I don't see why you think that IR has poor interoperability. In my experience, IrDA works pretty well, allowing data objects to be exchanged between different devices reasonably well.

    IR seems like a much better choice than Bluetooth in many applications because it is intrinsically more secure and doesn't suffer from RF interference. The latest IrDA standards are also a lot faster than Bluetooth. Visibility and propagation restrictions for IR are usually not all that serious in an office environment.

    There are a few niche applications where Bluetooth may be better, but I'd like to see IrDA used much more widely. Too bad that IrDA has lost its buzz.

    • No, IrDA doesn't suffer from RF interference - it suffers from sunlight interference. Sometimes it won't even work when you put the devices side by side with a cover over them. Much better, that ;-(
      • It didn't occur to me that anybody might be computing during the day :-)

        Seriously, though: a reasonably well-designed IrDA system will work fine in diffuse daylight. IrDA may not work if the receiver looks directly at the sun, but that's not so good for electronics anyway. The IR signals can be amplified to allow for diffuse reflections. If two devices don't communicate even if there is a cover, then clearly the problem isn't sunlight, it's a hardware or software problem.

    • Indeed, the primary complaint I hear against IRDA is short distance. While Bluetooth will adress this somewhat, simply replacing the infrared LED with a laser LED (like those in cheap laser pointers) would extend the range of IRDA beyond that of 802.11b. I LIKE the requirement for line-of-sight; knowing that the communication is intrinsically secure is a major benefit. Improvements in the application level protocols would allow improved recovery from signal interruptions (like someone walking between the IRDA units). Palm pilots do this pretty well now.
      It seems that instead of evolving existing facilities, the are introduced and then discarded in favor of the next big thing. This make consumers even more hesitant to adopt technology for fear of obsolescence.
      • Too bad that IrDA has lost its buzz.

      Could happen to Bluetooth as well. My employer's already shelved Bluetooth support in our new telecom product, and we are now talking about following rather than leading demand.

      In other words, our internal evangelists are currently skimming the trade glossies for a new buzzword compliant technology to beat us round the head with... ;)

  • ... it can replace my power cord.
    ... it's affordable.

  • People are missing the point (Score:4, Insightful)

    by brunes69 ( 86786 ) <slashdot@keir[ ]ad.org ['ste' in gap]> on Sunday September 16, 2001 @07:42AM (#2305206)

    Alot of people are wondering what the point of this, talking about carrying the printer around, etc. The point of IR and / or Bluetooth on a printer, is now anyone can walk into the office with his laptop/pda/cell/whatever, and print instantly. No need to dock it, hook up a cable, install drivers (cause they'd already be instealled), etc. This is a godsend for people who do most of their work on the road. This is the reason printers have been IR compatable for some time.

    • This doesn't require the printer to have wireless networking. It just requires a laptop with wireless networking and a wireless wired bridge somewhere on the LAN. 802.11 is a much better choice for this.

      This Bluetooth solution is more relevant in the home, where there may not be a wired LAN. But even there, 802.11 is probably a much better choice for all the devices involved, especially as multiple computers in the home become more common. Bluetooth is far too limited to replace a wired LAN. Are you really going to use it to transfer files between your computers, share your broadband connection, etc.? And if you're already using 802.11 between all your computers, isn't it convenient to be able to use it with your other devices too?
      • It was never intended to replace LAN.
        The article states:

        Bluetooth isn't meant to replace other wireless technologies such as 802.11b

        It's intended to replace wires, therefor it has been limited by design, in order to make it cheap.

        Among others, mice, headsets, keyboards and apparently printers are the targets for Bluetooth.

        Granted, a WLAN printer would make sense, but show me a WLAN mouse/headset/keyboard, that makes sense.
      • True, a wireless access point on the network would suffice, but if you're visiting another office? Using the printer in a coffee shop/library/other public place? Some folks wouldn't know how to walk into a different place and set up a network printer. Then you can throw in oddities like pc-on-mac or mac-on-pc networks, or groupwise, etc.

        With a wireless LAN card in the printer itself, you just have to be able to add the drivers for the one printer (which for some, is still just as difficult as a network printer...but still relatively easier) and then whenever you encouter this type of printer (which would be often, since this is the only offered as such ATM) it'll connect and you can print.

        Granted, anyone on this site could manage to connect to a strange network, but not everyone with a laptop is a computer whiz.
  • WTF? Since when is bluetooth incompatible with Macs? Is Mr Johnson just really ignorant does he have trouble saying what he means?

  • this is a press release (Score:3, Informative)

    by pangu ( 322010 ) on Sunday September 16, 2001 @07:51AM (#2305219) Homepage
    From the article, "While we haven't had a chance to test the DeskJet 995C, ..."

    Ummm, this may as well be an HP press release.

  • 802.11 & the purpose of bluetooth (Score:4, Informative)

    by Matt_Bennett ( 79107 ) on Sunday September 16, 2001 @07:54AM (#2305221) Homepage Journal
    Bluetooth does interfere with 802.11- they are both using the same 2.4 GHz band (as a bunch of other things too) but they do interfere- they don't completely knock each other out, but they will degrade each other's range and total throughput. I wish I had a good reference for it- my information comes from a talk I heard from a guy on the Bluetooth committee. That 2.4 GHz band is a free-for-all. Telephones, Bluetooth, 802.11, wireless cameras, and whatever the next big thing is. You only have so much bandwidth, and you have to share.

    As a cable to something like a printer- yep, that's the whole idea behind bluetooth- as a way to eliminate wires, and I'm sure we'll be seeing more of it. Eliminating wires is just the beginning- the real amazing stuff will come when things are truly interconnected and it's cheap- cheap really is the selling point behind bluetooth. The manufacturers I've talked to have a goal of about a $5.00 cost for the bluetooth solution. When we get there (802.11 is a more complex solution that is aimed for the higher end, and that is getting pretty cheap- the cards are way under $100, which means that the chipsets are probably under $20). Aside from the irritating marketing potential, having everthing interconnected is the way things are going- where you don't have to worry about synchronizing your Palm Pilot and your phone with your computer, they do it automatically when you're nearby.

    Bluetooth has the potential to really change the way computers work with everything- we just have to see if it will really happen. It's not the only thing that we need- and it won't happen tomorrow.

    • Re:802.11 & the purpose of bluetooth (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Of course, you can narrow the transmission so it doesn't take up as much 'airspace', therefore allowing multiple protocols to communicate on the same band simply by directing them rather than broadcasting them.

      Sort of like the difference between a star topology and token ring networks.

    • I think you are correct. Bluetooth will intefere with 802.11b because both systems use the same frequency band. The intereference will be very strong if the distance between the two systems is very small. This happen if you use both systems in the same computer ....
    • This is starting to get somewhat offtopic, but
      I've had bad experiences trying to mix a Logitech Cordless Keyboard/Mouse (Freedom Pro? I believe was the moniker) with 802.11 Wireless LAN cards (D-Link PCI/PCMCIA cards).

      I tried to mix the two when creating a 'set-top box' type computer system for TV use -- mostly to play MAME games and such on the big screen, but I added an 802.11 card and cordless key/mouse for some comfy web surfing.

      At any rate, I had tons of connection problems with from the 802.11 in this machine to the 802.11 access point even though they were well within 802.11 range with very little obstruction..On a hunch I pulled out the cordless keyboard/mouse system and shelved it and the connection problems went away. I wish these devices were a bit smarter about collisions and finding some way to avoid them.

      • I've had bad experiences trying to mix a Logitech Cordless Keyboard/Mouse (Freedom Pro? I believe was the moniker) with 802.11 Wireless LAN cards (D-Link PCI/PCMCIA cards).

        That's interesting; we use the same Logitech cordless keyboard/mouse (it comes as a pair) but with Lucent (ORiNOCO, god I hate that name) wavelan cards. The cards are on separate floors of an office building (wood frame), about 150' apart I'd say. The "access point" is the company firewall which is in an encassed metal rack. We have absolutely no problems at all.

        I'd be curious to try out other vendor's cards to see if there really is a difference between these expensive Lucent cards and the cheaper DLink and other cards or if I'm just lucky.

        • Logitech cordless keyboard/mouse (it comes as a pair)



          I have one of those too and though the cordless-ness is great on the whole I get incredibly annoyed with the thing. It took me a while to realize that it is only one way; there is no "ACK" and so characters get dropped.

          This relates to the interference thing because the mouse intefers with the keyboard! Yes even though they are a set, if the mouse is directly in line between the keyboard and the receiver (which I have on the table quite close to the mouse) then the keyboard starts dropping characters.

          There is nothing more annoying for a touch typist than to press a key and not have it appear on the screen. Even more annoying when trying to do Ctrl-V and Ctrl-C moving stuff between two windows.

          I am just waiting for a Bluetooth wireless keyboard/mouse -- I'm presuming that two-way, and hence error-check, connection would then be possible/cheap enough to do.

          R.

      • I've got a Logitech cordless wheel mouse and an Ericsson Bluetooth headset and the two do fight. Depending on how far apart each pair of devices are, and whether or not the signals actually cross in the air, typically when I start talking on the headset the mouse stops working.

        Of course, this problem would go away if Logitech produced a Bluetooth cordless mouse and/or keyboard solution.

    • Some Carnegie Mellon University folks conducted this experiment [cmu.edu] (PDF format). A continuously-operating Bluetooth link in close proximity to an 802.11 link caused a few percent 802.11 packet loss, and sometimes caused the 802.11 link to fallback to lower data rates. This is even with one of the 802.11 nodes right between the BT nodes, which were 6 feet apart. Sounds tolerable to me...
    • Both 802.11 and BT uses Frequency Hop Spread Spectrum (FHSS) meaning that two communicating nodes will hop frequency on a predetermined sequence within the 2,4Ghz band. BT devides the band into something like 79 channels and hops every 612,5 us (I think) while 802.11 hops much much slower. Meaning that the likelyhood of a BT transmitter acidentially hitting the same frequency as a nearby 802.11 device is quite high.

      So yes they will interfer.
    • First a little note on the way that BT and 802.11 work:

      802.11b is a direct sequence spread spectrum technology, which means that it uses a set channel for a particular base station or network.

      Bluetooth is a frequency hopping spread spectrum technology, so it hops around the whole 2.4GHz spectrum available to it (varies by country) and if it encounters interference, it moves on.

      Because both technologies work in the ISM Band (Industrial, Scientific and Medical), it is very noisy, so they both use interference robustness. This coupled with the differences in the usage of the spectrum mean that it is very easy to create overlaid BT PANs and 802.11b LANs which don't cause unnecessary interference.

      Aside from that, BT is useful for some very simple reasons:

      It is cheap (when they say $5 chipsets, that is really the target in about 12 months time) - WLAN can't reach the same pricepoints because of the complexity of the technology and because it won't reach the same volumes as BT (if BT penetrates even 10% of the phone market, it is more than the whole WLAN market!)

      It is very low power - 802.11b uses too muc power for phones or PDAs

      It includes automated device and service discovery, which 802.11 doesn't. This makes it ideal for non-technical users.

      It works with a huge variety of devices (PDAs, PCs, printers, cameras, phones).

      It can do a lot more than cable replacement - think more of automated P2P service provision between intelligent appliances.

      And the killer apps: BT printers and BT phones for now. Wait until next year for some really interesting uses of BT!

      DS

      • Trouble is, as things stand they do interfere, a lot of work has been done on this. FHSS (including 802.11 FH devices) can ruin the performance of a well-tuned DHSS running in the band. IEEE 802.15 TG2 [ieee.org] is working on mitigating this in Bluetooth by firmware changes to existing/new kit to reduce likelihood of both transmitting at the same time. Plus in the US, FCC has recently approved changes to band usage [planetee.com] that will allow FHSS (incl. Bluetooth) to be more adaptive. Looks like there may be a path to allow OFDM on 2.4GHz soon too (I'd be interested to know if anyone has read anything on OFDM/BT interop? I guess it stands better chance than DSSS since it's multiple carrier - maybe there is still a chance for 802.11g...)

        Start here [google.com] if you want to know more...let's just hope that any modifications to Bluetooth required are done now before many mobile phones are sold. It is next to impossible to get firmware updated on non-tech consumer kit once it's out in the wild (unless there are other, show-stopper, bugs which stop the phone from working correctly - ha, like that's never happened before has it Nokia... ;)

        Funny really, I'd have thought Bluetooth would have been better suited to 5GHz. The higher bandwidth available would be useful (both to increase speed and keep bursts short), and the lower range that's possible isn't such a problem for the intended use of Bluetooth.

        Of course, 3G licensees [theregister.co.uk] and their mobile phone/infrastructure/cash injection suppliers [theregister.co.uk] who don't really want free-net hippies eroding the geek local bandwidth market share - after all they have hospitals and cheap booze to pay for [theregister.co.uk] - have their own agendas when deciding what tech to push in what band.

        Mind you, it's not all bad - personally I'd be quite a bit more interested to see this kind of tech used for the backbone - a neighbourhood is much easier to wire than a long distance link... to get this kind of DX you'll be using fairly tight beams, much less subject to interference, and as long as Bluetooth can be made to tread a little less heavily over local 802.11b base-station installations than it has in the past and share the band fairly then the current generation of cheap(ish) WLAN kit will still be useful and there will be much fun to be had by all...

        I hope it does get sorted, things like this [custhelp.com] could be very cool and while I really don't think d*mned wireless mobile phone headsets are worth the use of free spectrum (*why* can't this kind of thing be run out of *licensed* band if it's run by a commercial service! there should be plenty of that available for lowpower...) I live in hope that everyone'll be able to live together, not stomp all over each other's signal and be happy...

        (:
      • The manufacturers I've talked to have a goal of about a $5.00 cost for the bluetooth solution. When we get there (802.11 is a more complex solution that is aimed for the higher end, and that is getting pretty cheap- the cards are way under $100, which means that the chipsets are probably under $20).

      And let's all bear in mind economies of scale. Bluetooth will only get cheap to make when lots of people are buying it. Flipside, it'll only take off when it's cheap at retail. Early adopters are really going to take it in the shorts, and someone will have to bite the bullet and absorb those costs to drive demand.

      As an equivelant HP935C can be had for $200 as opposed to the $400 for this beastie, it looks like HP won't be the ones doing the biting.


    • Here is the message [yahoo.com] (REG) [mailto] containing most of the useful references for co-existence and interoperability of 802.11b [yahoo.com] and Bluetooth [topsitelists.com]


      Bill Austin
      Top WLAN Sites [topsitelists.com]

  • intereferance? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Alien54 ( 180860 ) on Sunday September 16, 2001 @08:23AM (#2305264) Journal
    I have seen a situation where a 900 mhz wireless phone and a wireless keyboard/mouse combo had some interferance problems, mostly in the headphone audio.

    So the obvious question is if there are other similar problems possible/probable with all these other wireless devices.

    Of course, technically, it is possible, but I am wondering about the practical worries, be it from the office next door or whatever, given the coming explosion in the range of wireless devices.

  • Actually TI and HP demonstrated this in last year's CES itself. I wonder whats new in this report. While the majority of the industry is moving over to other wireless technologies, I'd really love to know the reasons behind HP's movement here. Probably they just want to try out their old wares...
  • When I surf for pr0n, using mozilla 0.9.4, blocking all the pop-up ads they will now be printed using the bluetooth.print.popup function to my wireless printer?

    So does this mean the next HP innovation will be a combination printer/shredder?
    Will it print and then shred the popup adds? or will it print on shredded paper making re-assembly illegal under the DMCA/SSSCA?

    (snicker, guffaw)

    Moose
  • I haven't had any trouble with my IR stuff. I've got an HP 2100M with IR on the front, and I can print to it from all my IR stuff: laptops, my newtons. Even all my server motherboards have connectors for IR, I just haven't been able to find modules to plug in. I'm really happy with my IR stuff. Unfortunately, I can't print from my palm pilot that way, but at least they recognize each other.
  • In a building currently being built, installing cat5 cable was ignored, as well as power outlets in the floor.

    Ok, well wireless access was being considered after explaining that it would work around the lack of network ports.

    Guess what the next questions was?

    Can we install wireless **power sources** as well.

    BWAAAHAAAHAHAHAHAH

    Uhhh, yeah, its called lightning!! Here hold this copper rod.

    Moose
  • 3Com demo'd a Bluetooth PC Card with this HP printer at N+I in Atlanta - it was pretty cool.

    One of the nice things about a bluetooth printers is that you don't have to let someone onto your corporate network (wired or 802.11b) just because they need to print something out.
  • The problem with using bluetooth as a complete replacement for wires is power. The keyboard, mouse, and other similar devices will have to be battery powered. That will just be annoying.

    • I already have several Logitech cordless mice and keyboards and apart from changing the batteries twice a year, this is not a problem. I'd like to find AAA-size rechargeables, though... My electrical toothbrush has a magnetic induction recharge system and I think this could be a good idea for the mice too - at the end of the day, just put it in the cradle (which also acts as the transciever) and it recharges. Since a fully charged set of AAA batteries lasts six months, it wouldn't be a disaster if you forgot to put it to sleep a few nights either.

      Oh, and one of the main design goals of Bluetooth was to lower the energy comsumption compared to other solutions like Logitech's and the 802.11b.

  • Many vendors will only support it to a nominal distance. Dell, for example, only supports wireless transmissions from 15 feet or less, in the same room, on wireless products sold with their consumer lines. Go ahead, try and call them on a support issue, and tell them you can't get a transmission at 20 feet.
  • It sounds as though Bluetooth is transport and protocol, eliminating the need for addressing every device that wishes to interact with the Bluetooth enabled printer. The Bluetooth PDA or whatever casts out and discovers what's around and they work out who's who. OTOH it sounds as though 802.11 is transport only, and that every device wishing to interact must be addressed and identified on the network. Is all this correct?

    If my understanding is correct, it's going to be a classic tradeoff of convenience versus security.
  • if someone can rig a powerful enough bluetooth transmitter, wardriving with Goatse.cx. Bad enough doing it back in the early cablemodem days when networks were unprotected...

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