HP Delivers "Plug and Print" USB LaserJet Printers
HP is shuffling off the CD driver tradition with their latest line of printers announced today. This new USB LaserJet lineup keeps the drivers for several operating systems built in. Just plug in the printer and the drivers show up from flash memory hosted inside the printer. Dubbed HP Smart Install, this will keep you from losing the driver discs and spending all that time hunting for them. You also get all that time back trying to find the drivers on websites, searching for hours trying to find model numbers or revisions of the same printer. Plug in the printer, drivers are right there. HP P1100, M1130, M1210 P1566 and P1606dn are the first five LaserJet printers to support this technology, but more should follow.
We're not sure why this has taking so long to make happen, this was one of the original selling features of USB 1.0 way back when. Kudos to HP for making this happen and with any luck more software will show up built into hardware. While this is great news, remember that at the rate that operating systems are being overhauled that the next time you plug this in to a new computer, it may be on Windows 9 128-bit edition or after the Apple-Amiga merger on AmigOSXVI. Heck even BeOS may make a huge comeback. That is if we can avoid having the whole planet assimilated into the iPhone OS, anything is possible.
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PhotoFast Nifty USB 3.0 ExpressCard - Set it and Forget it
Leave it to the Taiwanese to design the most practical USB 3.0 laptop upgrade adapter yet. The PhotoFast GM3000EX tackles a well-known problem of any USB ExpressCard whose ports sticks out of the side of a notebook. This is inherently a major inconvenience to road warriors who often have to worry about the dongle breaking off. The GM3000EX takes another approach by integrating the SuperSpeed USB port into the ExpressCard itself. There's a hidden Type A female connector; when inserted, the USB interface isn't exposed outside of the laptop.
The obvious tradeoff is the card limiting access to just a single device in which case isn't so bad considering most of notebook users would likely need one external USB 3.0 drive plugged in at any time. PhotoFast also gave some thought to the bundled 80cm USB 3.0 power, data split cable. Instead of shipping just another auxiliary cable, the company combines the USB 3.0 micro-B cable with a USB 2.0 power line. This will get you 800mA current to spin up any USB 3.0 drives and also frees you from worrying about losing another cable. Too bad current MacBook Pro 15" skips ExpressCard; otherwise, this card is definitely a worthy upgrade.
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