HP's Got Laserjet Liftoff

The new HP LaserJet 4345mfp is twice as fast as its predecessor, the 4101mfp, and fixes flaws in that machine's fax capabilities, said Glenn Gano, vice president of Lewis and Lewis Computer Store, an HP solution provider in Anchorage, Alaska.

"The fax with the 4101 was an analog one attached to the side of the [printer]," Gano said. "We had trouble with it and customers had trouble with it, and as a result it slowed our sales," he said.

But the 4345mfp has an internal digital fax and HP Digital Sending Software 4.0, he said. "We have a lot of customers that want a centralized scanner [so] they can scan a document and have it go straight to a folder on [a PC] without having to e-mail it to someone on the network," he said.

Jim Fall, director of strategic planning at Cannon IV, a document management solution provider in Indianapolis, said the 4345mfp should accelerate the displacement of office copiers. "Over the last two years, we have been taking pages away from the copier because of the capability of printer devices to produce and distribute documents," he said.

HP said the 4345mfp is part of a strategy to wrestle business from copier vendors and to fuel the competition brewing between them and printer vendors.

With an estimated street price of $2,599, the 4345mfp was one of 14 new imaging hardware and software products introduced by HP last week. All will be available Nov. 30.

"The more IT-centric resellers that communicate how [the new multifunction LaserJets] work on the network can sell functionality beyond basic printing and move into capturing the pages and devices and services that are wrapped around copying, faxing and document capture," said Manny Kostas, vice president of marketing for HP's Imaging and Printing Group, Palo Alto, Calif.