Last month we touched on the dual role of IT managers as both internal support and tech influencers at GigaOm. It’s pretty much the same story at companies around the world, as are the core principles for doing business: maximize efficiency and productivity while reducing costs. HP sent us a shiny new toy to help us accomplish those tasks, and asked us to share our thoughts in a series of sponsored posts. You can check out our initial thoughts HERE, but now it’s time to talk tech.
We set up our new HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M477 and decided to show it no mercy. If we were going to really #ReinventTheOffice with HP’s help, we needed to go full Thunder Dome on that machine. In the corporate world, that pretty much means we printed a lot of stuff on a tight deadline. The task at hand: financial reporting packets. That translates to 8 full color pages times eight packets plus spiral binding, stuffing, and labeling all before the UPS driver arrived at 3 p.m. We started at 2.
HP states their JetIntelligence toner cartridge technology is “engineered to make the printer print faster and enable higher page yields.” This is highly important when two-day versus overnight shipping is on the line (see need for cost effectiveness in paragraph one). As previously stated, we were pushing the limit by starting at 2 p.m., but we like living on the edge. As it turned out, we had a bit of time to spare: it took just under four minutes to print 64 pages. Printing the mailing labels went even faster. The packets were done so far in advance we vowed to procrastinate even longer next month. You might be thinking the quality had to go down for the pages to come out that fast, but you’d be wrong. The graphics looked great, even in full color, and the black and white was crisp. We were pretty pleased with round one.
Over the next few weeks, it was business as usual at GigaOm, except it wasn’t. It was better. The MFP M477 kept right on printing at top speed, producing quality pages at an impressive clip. The first page out was particularly fast at under 10 seconds, under nine when printing black and white. Most jobs printed right around the top posted speed of 28ppm, which we loved. And changing the dreaded toner cartridge wasn’t very dreadful at all, as it turned out. The built-in toner indicators were accurate and prevented premature replacement, and when it was truly time for a new cartridge, the auto seal remover feature made it easy and efficient. No more fighting, cramming, and messy hands.
One feature we were particularly interested in is the anti-fraud technology touted in the product materials. Printers are part of our network, as they are in most businesses, and if not protected, they can provide unsecured access for hackers. This is not good. To prevent unauthorized access, HP employs three security tactics to protect our data: HP Sure Start, which validates the BIOS code; whitelisting, which authenticates the firmware; and runtime intrusion detection, which monitors and detects anomalies in firmware and memory operations. Those are abbreviated descriptions of some rather complex processes, but you get the idea.
Adding a faster printer to the fray might seem like an obvious way to improve productivity in business, but it’s not that easy. Speed is great, but not when it means sacrificing graphic integrity, increasing cost, or complicating procedures. The MFP M477 goes beyond faster printing and really does simplify many aspects of office life. Removing the headaches of paper jams, toner explosions, frequent cartridge replacement, watching pages trickle out at a snail’s pace, and fearing a security breech are all big steps forward. You might even say they’re ways to #ReinventTheOffice.
