Peripherals Special: Technology

USB2 to lead peripheral technology march

USB2 will be unstoppable while Bluetooth will continue to wait in the wings in 2004. Digicams will plant their flag on Mount Film as entry-level models start offering a respectable two to three megapixel resolution. Colour will gain ground in the enterprise as colour laser printers play catch up with their monochrome siblings in throughput and duty-cycles, says Prashant L Rao

According to Alok Bharadwaj, Canon India will introduce a mobile Bluetooth printer in Q1 2004

Peripherals technology spans a wide gamut of devices; from printers to digicams to personal storage, there’s a lot happening. The biggest thing in peripheral technology on the consumer or desktop side has to be USB. After a long time, USB is the dominant connection technology for new PCs and USB2 should move into that slot in 2004 even if many peripherals will work just fine with its predecessor. Bluetooth has been hyped to death but it is still just around the corner and likely to stay there a while longer. There’s not a lot that’s wholly new in laser printing; vendors are building on the foundation they established a couple of years back. If anything, the value-add here is in software for tracking and accounting for who’s printing what. Personal storage on the other hand is seeing a lot of action; now, if only there were more USB-ready PCs out there. Last but not least, digicams are getting there. 2004 will see entry-level digital cameras shipping with two and three megapixels. That will mark the beginning of the transition from film-based cameras to digital ones.

Technology: Bluetooth

* Devices affected: Phones, PDAs, printers, luxury cars

* What it does: Bluetooth connects gadgets over a short-range wireless network. This is useful for cordless earphones, connecting mobile phones to notebooks or printers and so forth. Bluetooth is still more a technology in waiting than one whose time has come.

* What to expect in 2004: Guhesh Ramanathan, director and CEO, Help.com, a Bangalore-based IT support company says, “People are using Bluetooth-enabled headsets with their cellphones. While it is being used today mostly for enhancing personal productivity there is tremendous business potential for this technology.” Ramanathan gives the example of an FMCG company that uses SMS to capture sales reports on a daily basis. By using Bluetooth, this application can be enriched by substituting HTML messaging for SMS. “You could have a sales guy walking into a supermarket where a Bluetooth device is installed. This guy could then use his Bluetooth enabled phone to log into the corporate network and file his report. Today the cost isn’t justifiable for commercial use [Bluetooth enabled phones from Nokia are high-end models such as the Nokia 3650 priced at Rs 23,399 or the Nokia 6600 at Rs 28,399]. Once equipment prices drop, it will gain acceptance,” adds Ramanathan.

Printer vendors are supporting Bluetooth on specific models, mostly on mobile printers. “In Q1 2004 we will be coming out with a mobile Bluetooth printer,” says Alok Bharadwaj, director & GM, Consumer Imaging & Information Division, Office System Solutions (Vol.) Products at Canon India.

Technology: USB2

* Devices affected: Printers, digicams and webcams; scanners, portable storage (USB flash drives), external CD/DVD drives.

* What it does: USB2 upgrades the original USB spec to 480 Mbps, 40 times faster than its predecessor. While Firewire has always been around for high-speed data transfer from digital video cameras, the number of USB devices vastly outnumbers those supporting Firewire.

* What to expect in 2004: USB2 is rapidly becoming a standard as its speed is close to that of Firewire and the number of USB2 devices is very high. Better yet, some very innovative gadgets are appearing. Belkin has a credit-card sized USB device that plugs into a USB2 port and transmits via FM up to a 30-foot radius. “You can use your stereo to play music from your PC using this device,” says Ramanathan. Another such device is a combo box that acts as a network hub, IP router and a WiFi access point.

“The higher speed makes a difference when the size of data transfer is huge for external drivers and scanners,” says Bharadwaj. USB2 makes sense for scanners, thumb drives and cameras. High-end scanners, photo printers, large format printers and some colour lasers support USB2. Mini USB drive capacities are rising. Iomega will introduce them in capacities of 512 MB and 1 GB in the near future. The caveat is that USB2 devices don’t work with older machines.

Technology: Network printing

* Devices affected: Enterprise class network printers.

* What it does: High-end lasers are shared over enterprise networks. Today these machines offer direct Ethernet/fast Ethernet connectivity.

* What to expect in 2004:

For enterprises, sharing printers over their LANs makes business sense and network-printing gets more sophisticated every year. Speed is the issue here. The printer bus should not get saturated with data, leading to network congestion. “We have a very fast bus architecture on our enterprise-class printers to handle data over Fast Ethernet networks. The bus can handle 4.5 Megabytes/second (40 to 50 Mbps),” says Girish Krishnamurthy, technical consultant, Imaging and Printing Systems at HP India.

Canon offers both built-in and external networking options on its laser printers. The key issue here is cost. “A SOHO buyer doesn’t want an internal board that may cost as much as Rs 20,000 for a 20 PPM high-end laser printer. The cost of the board should halve by mid-2004,” says Bharadwaj.

Technology: Remote printing

* Devices affected: Enterprise-class multi-function printers.

* What it does: Remote printing lets enterprises send documents digitally to be printed in any location while ensuring that only the user who sent the document can print it. Digital transfer lets a multi-function printer scan a document and e-mail it using the organisation’s mail server.

* What to expect in 2004:

Canon’s high-end MFD, the ImageRunner, has supported IPP (Internet Print Protocol) for the past two years. Heavily networked offices use the ImageRunner. You can fire a printout and lock it with a password so that only you can pick up the printout. A document sent from the head office can be printed at a branch office instead of having to courier it. While this technology is not new it is moving into the business mainstream. HP has digital sending where hard copy documents are converted into a digital format such as PDF, TIFF or JPEG and the multi-function printer (MFP) connects to the organisation’s mail or fax server and sends the document via e-mail or fax. “It is revolutionising inter-office communications at large companies,” says Krishnamurthy. Courier companies such as DHL use this technology extensively.

With the C63, Epson India has brought pigment-based ink to a sub-Rs 4,000 model for the first time, says Suresh Govindachari

The reverse is true as well. Every HP MFP has an internal e-mail ID. You can send a PDF attached to an e-mail message to this ID and get a printout. MFPs can use hard drives to store documents for printing multiple copies without increasing network load by sending the same document over the network umpteen times. The big payoff of having a hard disk in a MFP or networked laser printer is that password-protected printing and e-forms come into the picture. Here forms are stored on the printer’s hard drive and merged with data on-the-fly to create finished documents adding sundry elements such as signatures, barcodes or currency symbols as required. “We link with SAP and Oracle applications and provide our consulting expertise to help companies script printing into the workflow. HP’s JetCAPS (Corporate Account Printing Solutions) partners provide unique solutions for different verticals,” says Krishnamurthy.

Robert Bosch India uses HP’s printing solutions to ensure that printing, copying and imaging are fully tracked and costs are allocated. Internal security is maintained by means of encryption and print jobs are decrypted within the printer only as they are outputted so that only the owner of a print job can print it.

Technology: Colour laser

* Devices affected: High-end colour laser printers.

* What it does: Colour printing has different meanings depending upon whether you’re talking about enterprise usage, photo labs or colour in a home/office set-up. Lasers dominate colour printing in the enterprise and both HP and Epson offer colour laser printers that print colour pages at the same speed as monochrome.

* What to expect in 2004:

Colour and monochrome throughputs are the same on high-end colour laser printers. HP uses a process called inline single pass colour printing to achieve this result. Epson’s technology for this is called the tandem engine. Companies such as Reliance print the first two hundred copies on a colour laser. Multi-function finishers take care of stitching, folding and stapling copies. At the other end of the spectrum, lower-end colour lasers from HP are available starting from Rs 50,000-55,000. “Most Indian enterprises are buying four to five lasers of which at least one is a colour laser printer,” says Krishnamurthy.

The difference between the use of monochrome and colour laser printers today is that monochrome models continue to offer higher duty-cycles though the gap is narrowing. Today, a high-end monochrome laser offers 3 lakh pages per month vs. 2 lakh pages per month for a monochrome unit. Printing costs for colour lasers run at about Rs 4 to 5 per page (with 20 percent coverage; think of a brochure).

Technology: Photo printing

* Devices affected: Photo printers, entry-level inkjets.

* What it does: Photo labs use photo printers (inkjets with six or seven colour ink systems) to print digital snaps. For home users, entry-level inkjets offer better photo printing capabilities than before.

* What to expect in 2004:

Logitech's Cordless Presenter is a triple-function Bluetooth remote with an in-built laser pointer for making PC presentations while strolling up to 30 feet from your notebook

Photo printers: A lot of work has been done on ink systems. High-end inkjets aimed at pre-press and advertising offer six- and seven-colour printing. “Photo printers have made the transition from four colours to six and now some printers can print in eight colours,” says Bharadwaj.

Epson offers a seven-colour system with its UltraChrome Ink where it adds light black to CMYK and light cyan and light magenta. Normally a printer uses cyan, magenta and black to create grey. With light black subtle greys come to life. Finally there is Matte Black that has three times the pigment density of Photo Black, providing a deep black colour for CAD users printing monochrome drawings or artists.

Inkjets use either pigment or dye-based ink. Pigment-based inks have traditionally been relegated to high-end machines priced between Rs 1 and 10 lakh. They have some significant advantages over dye-based ink, the most important ones being that they are waterproof and the colour pigment sits on top of paper fibres, unlike with dye where it soaks in a bit. This lets you highlight pigment-based inkjet printouts without having to worry about smudges. “With the C63 we have brought pigment-based ink to a sub-Rs 4,000 model for the first time. It offers high photo quality on plain paper,” says Suresh Govindachari, business manager, Consumer Products, Epson India.

Technology: Dot-matrix

* Devices affected: Transaction printers, high-end DMPs

* What it does: Dot-matrix technology is alive and kicking for applications such as printing bills, end-of-day statements at bank branches, railway reservation lists and much more.

* What to expect in 2004:

9 pin DMPs are used by SMEs while 24 pin technology has found favour with large businesses and in e-government projects where there is a need to print in vernacular languages. 300 cps (characters per second) is the standard today on entry-level dot-matrix printers. “We expect this to go up by 8 to 10 percent in the next year,” says S Narendran, general manager, Marketing for TVS-E.

“Paper handling needs to be looked at in more detail,” says Narendran. Some recent advances have been in this area. Built-in roll paper holder (for customers who predominantly use roll papers for billing) come to mind. “Until now the focus has only been on the print head. The slew rate, the speed at which paper moves up on the roller, is the other factor that needs to be looked at. If the print head is ready but the paper isn’t in place, precious seconds are lost,” says N V Mahadevan, product manager-Printers, TVS Electronics.

The cost of printing is the key issue with DMPs. Here dot-matrix technology beats laser printing due to its lower cost per bill. Printing a standard 6-inch bill on a DMP costs just six paise vs. 36 to 37 paise on a laser printer.

TVS-E’s patented ink tank technology helps owners of dot-matrix printers to save on consumables by replacing only the ink tank, which costs Rs 50, instead of changing the entire cartridge that costs Rs 150 to 200. The ribbon has to be changed only after three refills with the ink tank. TVS-E initially offered this technology only on its own printers but starting from August 2003 it offers ink tank technology for DMPs from all leading manufacturers.

High-end dot-matrix printing involves printing large statements running into 300 or 400 pages such as a bank’s end-of-day report or printing railway reservation charts. In such applications the print head tends to heat up and it pauses after printing every two-three pages to cool down. TVS-E designed a print head to take care of that issue by changing the arrangement of the needles within the print head and using materials that would dissipate heat faster. There is also a market for mid-level printers that handle workloads of 50 pages per hour, which TVS-E intends to focus upon in 2004.

Logitech's credit card-sized Pocket Digital Camera takes advantage of USB and flash memory technology to shrink a traditional device till it is almost unrecognisable. While devices like these don't offer the highest resolution or capacity (the PDC offers 1.3 megapixels and VGA image quality), their compact nature will help them win the hearts of gadget aficionados

Technology: Desktop storage

* Devices affected: PCs, notebooks

* What it does: Data storage, backup and transfer

* What to expect in 2004:

There’s a fair bit happening here, hard drives are not only getting bigger they’re also getting faster. “Today 40 GB is the standard, however the market is witnessing a swift change to 80 GB. By the end of this year 80 GB should become the standard configuration,” says R Manikandan, DGM-Sales & Marketing, IT Products, LG Electronics India.

On the optical drive front the feeling is that combo drives will replace CD-Writers and gradually give way to DVD-Writers. “The first shift would be towards combo drives with both CD and DVD functionality,” says Sanjeev Gupta, senior manager, Business Development, Iomega Pacific. That said, prices of DVD-Writers have been dropping steadily. In 2002 you had to fork out Rs 30,000 for one, but that halved in 2003. Another similar drop should see DVD-Writers becoming an option on premium desktops. Capacities will have to go up before they are a suitable back-up option, however. 4.7 GB may seem a lot but any tape drive can do better.

prashant@expresscomputeronline.com