Tech this product and love it

I remember being a high schooler awestruck by the personal computer. I’m sure it sounds so silly now to a lot of you kids out there, but I was overwhelmed when I got my first taste of Wordstar (Word-what?). Back then of course, our expectations were simpler. The past’s high tech is today’s museum relic. And for me, the computer, aside from being a great new game platform, meant freedom from the liquid correction fluid and the clanky typewriter. I was in love with the loud whine of the dot matrix printer as it spewed page after page of my work. I felt adequately competent with the precious little that had to be understood.

Now, I don’t just need a compass. I need a navigator and a walking cane. The landscape is all Greek to me. Yes, Pam, it’s really Greek.

Sometimes, I learn just enough to make me confident — then the updates come. Geesh! You have to be zoned in 24/7 or you simply get left behind.

But you know what? We don’t have to be walking tech zombies, feeling our way in the dark. That’s why the term "user friendly" was invented.

Industry giant Hewlett-Packard asserts "real power lies not just in technology, but in how people and businesses use technology to achieve their aspirations." Indeed, what use is high tech if you have to spend a day scratching your head just trying to look for the "on" button?

So the challenge for computer and IT companies is to strike a perfect balance between function and user comprehension. Hey, I won’t use it if I don’t know how — period.

The Hewlett-Packard Tech Academy 2002 recently held in Hong Kong’s Renaissance Harbour View Hotel introduced a handful of local and international journalists (including two from the Philippines) to new HP models — all-in-ones, HP Pavilion PCs, DVD writers and colorfast paper — set for release in the region.

It was indeed an enlightening day for even non-computer dweebs. The morning session with Veronique Malan and Marco Li was particularly informative. They talked lengthily about the HP photo paper and how the worst thing you could do to your printer is have the ink cartridge refilled. Over lunch later, Marco narrated how his friend who tried to save a couple of bucks by refilling his printer cartridge ended up spending on a new inkjet because his tooling and fooling around conked out his unit.

At any rate, Veronique and Marco went into mind-blowing details to underscore just how important it is to use original HP cartridges for your HP printer. My head started to throb when the Powerpoint-aided presentation touched on mathematical models for ink and paper interaction, color-space coordinate systems, photomedia color gamut comparisons... Well, you get the point.

Did you know, too, that when your inkjet is printing, it heats and cools the ink some 12,000 times a second? The ink is said to reach a toasty 300°C! But you don’t have to worry about that. Leave that to the experts in lab gowns. At least now, we know that they take their job seriously. They study factors we don’t even think about. That means we can be assured that when we shell out extra dough for original stuff, it is money well spent. Did you know that HP employs 100 chemists to study ink and paper alone?

One-Stop Shop

HP is the leader worldwide and Asia Pacific in all-in-ones — machines that can do all or most of the following: print, scan, copy and fax. And we’re not talking of monstrous machines that dwarf your fridge. One of the all-in-one’s biggest advantages is its small size. HP likes to think of it as a "one-stop project shop." You can plug in your digital camera and produce contact sheets from which you can choose which to print in bigger sizes.

Unfortunately, HP won’t be bringing in the all-in-one that dropped Pam and myself’s jaw — the PSC 950, a very cute-looking AIO that is perfect for personal use. Instead, look for the bigger D145 that will surely complement office production output anytime.

Then there are the combination DVD drives, the DVD200i (internal) and DVD200e (external). Both new drives offer DVD+RW (rewritable), DVD+R (write once), and CD-RW (rewritable) capabilites.

The HP Pavilion, on the other hand, is the company’s bundled computer package. But one doubts whether clone-happy, budget-PC-crazy Pinoys can take an immediate liking to these machines.

At the end of the day, Pam and I felt like we just finished a molecular biology class. Perhaps any lengthy talk on technology will always have its share of Greek to us ordinary folk. So, just like those tasty products we saw, upgrading our own know-how should never cease.