Daily App: HP ePrint A One-Trick Wonder

The Hewlett-Packard ePrint app does one thing, and does it extremely well. This free printing tool for Android and for iOS can act as an entre for VARs, for which revenue opportunities lie in ePrint Enterprise, a similar app that's part of HP's fee-based mobile printing system for the enterprise.

Both apps start with large buttons labeled for printing Photos, File and Web. The enterprise version adds icons for cloud-based services. Tapping Photos brings up the camera roll, and selecting a photo shows its individual thumbnail with a check box, followed by a larger version of the image with a help screen superimposed pointing to tools for cropping, rotating and scaling the image and for changing printers and app settings.

At the time of installation, we had just a single HP printer -- the OfficeJet Pro 8630 color inkjet MFP -- on our test network, and ePrint detected and selected it automatically. Tapping the File button presented icons for displaying supported file types pdf, doc, ppt, xls and "others." If no such files of a type exist on the device, the icon is grayed. Above that is a folder for displaying all device files. The control for switching printers shows the current printer and those used before, those on the network and a list (or Google map) of public HP printers offered by nearby service providers.

[Related: HP LaserJet MFP M476 Ready For Mobile Output ]

The Web button prints up an embedded browser with a blank address line and prints web pages one at a time. The app sends a notification when print jobs complete, requires email validation at first use and also tap-to-print via NFC-enabled devices. The time required from first installing the app to picking up the first printout was among the quickest we've seen from a mobile printing app.

PUBLISHED FEB. 3, 2015