back to article Mail my printer - I'm busy!

Take a picture on your phone, email it to your printer and Hey Presto!, it's waiting for you when go home. This is what HP has in mind with its launch today a bunch of printers that all come with their very own email addresses. The company has already spilled the guts of the announcement to The NY Times' Ashlee Vance (once of …

COMMENTS

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  1. Glug
    Stop

    OK, but...

    Would there be some sort of whitelist attached to this?

    Otherwise what's to stop some nasty spammers getting hold of my printer's email address, so I come home to find a rainforest's worth of viagra adverts waiting for me?

    I wouldn't be happy if my elderly Auntie Flora was playing a nice game of Solitaire on my PC and a graphic penis enlargement ad suddenly appeared. She might be, mind you.

  2. gaijintendo
    Stop

    SPAM much?

    I guess you could have an email address whitelist, but even then...

    1. Martin hepworth
      Thumb Up

      printed spam

      great, now i get printouts of the watches and mortgate spam and no-ink when I actually want to print something out!

  3. NickyD

    Oh dear

    Cue loads of spam using up all your paper and inks? Not surprised an ink manufacturer thinks this is a great idea!

    1. Andy ORourke
      Joke

      Too right

      I wonder if the printer "phones home" to say it hasn't been used much recently, best generate some SPAM get the ink useage up!

  4. Pete 2 Silver badge

    Every spammers dream

    It's like getting SPAM faxes, but whithout all the hassle of having to actually fax the spam.

    And try explaining to your kids what all the graphic information for male extensions is doing on the family printer.

  5. Natalie Gritpants
    Thumb Down

    No thanks

    I'm guessing that the email will go to a server somewhere and the printer will poll it for print jobs. I don't want my print jobs being stored on someone else's servers and I don't want my printer to be open to anyone that can guess an email address.

  6. Maria Helm
    WTF?

    sounds like a wonderful device...

    ...for a company that makes money off of ink cartridges.

    But aren't most of us moving in the "paperless" direction?

    Some flaws in the thinking here:

    1. Impulsivity: "This is an awesome picture. I can't wait to see it big. I'll just email it to my printer..." LATER: "Why on earth did I think I needed a paper copy of THIS?"

    2. "I just knew you were going to want to see the latest picture of little Billy with a bowl of spaghetti on his head. It is even funnier than the one from last week! So I sent it to your printer..."

    3. And, God forbid, the moment someone-you-know gets malware that sends itself to every address in their email contacts. Including the one they saved for your printer.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Troll

    fax over IP

    So this is fax-over-IP then. Or just auto-printing of emails. And like the other comments, please have security enabled out of the box. There are junk faxes but not too many cos they cost money to send, but email is free hence the spam.

    And oh what fun to send emails to these ending with "please consider the planet before printing this email".

  8. Paolo 1

    Chrome OS?

    Hmm, could this be the solution to printing from ChromeOS (especially as Google appear to be involved to enable apps and docs tie-ins)? Maybe it's just a happy coincidence.

    Either way I also worry about the direct-spam, effect. It was bad enough with fax machine spewing out pages of crap at work back in the day, I don't want my home printer doing the same!

  9. Dale Richards
    FAIL

    Print 2.0?

    Sounds more like reinventing the fax machine to me. This just makes things cheaper for the spammers.

  10. phil 21
    Stop

    spam gateway ?

    will this herald the return of fax spam ? :)

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Alert

    yeah because you know what's GREAT?

    the fax machine! Boy I wish there was a modern alternative so that I could receive spam in full colour. Christ, all it needs now is a way to receive teletext and a Morse telegraph terminal on the side and it'll just be 2 carrier pigeons short of the perfect communications device.

    oh lordy.

    1. gerryg
      Coffee/keyboard

      This is only the second time...

      ...I've snorted all over my keyboard. Perfect, well done.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Boffin

      Uh...

      There ARE colour fax machines. I've seen them. Good thing few people actually own one.

  12. David Gosnell

    Password

    I would imagine a password would be required in the message, at least optionally - and probably not enabled by default, old-time wi-fi stylee...

  13. Duncan Hothersall

    Can't you already do this?

    I'm pretty sure various network printer drivers have been supporting this sort of thing for yonks, though perhaps this is the first time it's been built into the printer itself. Nonetheless, I am unmoved. Unless there is a button which tells the printer to go to my shelf and load a single sheet of photo paper first.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    "Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it..."

    Didn't we have exactly the same problem with ye olde fax machines, when each morning we came into work to find a forest of useless rubbish in the output tray?

  15. Rich 30
    Heart

    ha!

    This has got hillarious jokes written all over it....

  16. 0laf
    Gates Horns

    LOL

    I don't doubt HP has thought of the SPAM angle.

    What I'm thinking of is your mates stealing your phone in the pub and taking pictures of their cocks before sending them to the missus.

    Maybe that's just my friends.

    1. frank ly

      Maybe that's just my friends.....

      No, I do that as well.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      FAIL

      "I don't doubt HP has thought of the SPAM angle."

      I do. They make very nice printer hardware, but the associated software is unmitigated crap. Some of it doesn't even know how to do a reverse DNS lookup correctly. Fully-qualified name has 4 parts, with three dots between them? Ah, must be a numeric IP address, never mind that it is entirely alphabetic. Frankly I wouldn't be surprised to see these printers virus-laden and *sending* SPAM mail, never mind *printing* it :(

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    @ Glug

    "so I come home to find a rainforest's worth of viagra adverts waiting for me?"

    Perhaps there's a way to be safe. They might not send viagra spam if its unexplored territory, which I beleive is referred to as virgin rainforest.

    Should save most of the lower orders of techies.

  18. Robin

    All of the above

    This is a shit idea, out-shitted only by my 'email by post' idea (I've already submitted the patent, so hands off!)

    It's also a solution in search of a problem. I've never had the need for anything to be printed by the time I get home. I can usually take the 5 seconds hit.

    (Sorry, I've had a bad day)

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Pint

    this is a wonderful idea !!

    then again, I sell toner cartridges and printer maintenance kits. Think I might branch out into secured email relaying ....

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Please god...

    Have a "Local Network Only " or "Disable Email Printing" setting and turn this utterly pointless feature off.

  21. Liam Thom
    FAIL

    This is the worst idea in the history of technology.

    Only an epic muppet would consider buying this rubbish. Mind you, only an epic muppet would consider selling this rubbish.

    Fax was pretty rubbish in the eighties, we don't need its putrefying corpse dug up and resuscitated.

    1. Eddy Ito

      dug up?

      The fax is alive and thriving! Of course it is doing it alongside IE6 in thousands of gubbermint offices. Hell, I've had the official types asking me to fax them a copy of a service manual... fully knowing that it was 90+ pages long. Why? This particular government office prohibits email attachments and those that are sent get stripped out by the server. He was, fortunately, able to receive an overnighted CD.

  22. informavorette
    FAIL

    They missed something

    In this age, I really tote a smartphone all the time. I can take pictures with it. I can also use it for many other things, like accessing web sites and documents anywhere, as well as reading e-books.

    That's why I threw out my printer three years ago and won't be replacing it.

  23. Jeff 11
    WTF?

    Whoopee

    Just what I've been waiting for! Finally a chance to print my grainy blurred camphone pictures on a printer that gets 10 photos to the £60 cartridge set...

  24. jake Silver badge

    New?

    I'm fairly certain that I've been able to print to any of the printers on my network, from any machine on my network, for over 25 years.

    I'm equally certain that I don't allow anyone NOT on my network to send print jobs to any of my printers ... They can make it available via FTP on their system, and *IF* I deem it worthwhile (rare), I'll download it, examine it ... and then (maybe) print it. And please, Please, *PLEASE!* don't attach it to email!

  25. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Now I can print from my iPad!

    Of course, I'll have to wait 30 minutes until the Printer decides to check if there's anything in it;s inbox.

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