Ever wish you could have your computer illiterate grandmother receive all of your latest snap shots and thoughts without her having to lift a finger? Or how about the ability to have the latest news or recipes show up in the morning automatically to grab as you run out the door? These are the kinds of things that are possible with the HP A10 Printer with service from Presto!

The Printer

The printer, purchased through Presto (http://www.presto.com/) is an HP A10 printer, which is branded as an printing mail box. This is essentially the printer equivalent of a dumb terminal. There is no user input, but there is the possibility for a whole lot of output depending on how e-mail happy your friends/relatives are (dont worry, you can filter e-mail addresses to control who spam you).

There are only 3 buttons on this printer: volume up, volume down, and stop. One might wonder why there are volume buttons on the printer. Good question! The printer makes a nice sound to notify you of new messages. I found this a little perplexing since you usually want this to check your messages in the middle of the night, so who want a printer screaming out to the house in the middle of the night? I guess its not a problem if your grandmother takes out her hearing aide.

Just as the buttons are limited, so are the connectivity inputs. On the back of the printer there are 3 jacks. One is for power, one for phone line in, and one for phone line out. Thats right, no Ethernet. I know many people who would have the same initial reaction I had, which is I dont support that format!, but what better and easier way for grandma to plug in a device. Just like an answering machine.

The printer also only has one ink cartridge. There is a plus and a minus to this. First, the minus one cartridge means if any one color runs out then youre stuck buying a new one. The plus side is that grandma only has to worry about replacing one cartridge, and you dont have to spend an hour explaining which one is magenta.

The quality of the printouts is on par with that of other ink-jet printers. Although I did not have glossy HP photo paper to print on, I can assume that the printouts would be of high enough quality to satisfy the target end user.

Setting Up The Presto Service
The Presto service is entirely necessary to the functioning of the printer. The entire setup of the printer is performed through the web interface at http://www.presto.com/. When youre first starting up, you sign up for an account and specify whether youre setting it up for yourself or for someone else. Presumably, the person receiving the printer does not already have internet access so you will most likely be setting it up for someone else. Then comes the fun of entering the standard billing information to pay the $10/month (or $100 annually) for the Presto service.

After going through the standard information hand-over (n.b. Visa and Mastercard only), you get to choose a Presto e-mail address where people can send e-mails. For the sake of this review, well call it grandma@presto.com. Any e-mails sent to this account will be printed on the HP printer, provided that the senders e-mail address is in the allowed list (since this is spoofable, the possibilities for mis-use do exist).

You also have to specify the phone number from which the printer will be calling, as well as the times at which the printer will check for new messages. The phone number is important since your printer is essentially identified by your caller ID. Once the printer dials in the first time, it checks the configuration to know what time to dial and check for new messages. This being said, if you make changes to the configuration you must wait until the printer dials in again before the changes take effect.

Finally, you select the font size for the printouts as well as the sender white list to determine who is allowed to send to the printer.

Using the Printer

The first time I plugged in the printer, it dialed up to the Presto service and spit out a page with my security code. This happened to be the phone number I was dialing from (obtained from the caller ID I mentioned before). I have to assume, since it was not tested, that calling from a Restricted/non-listed phone number results in a random number sequence to put in as the security code. This code must be entered on the website (presumably by the person who is setting this up and administering it for grandma). The next time the printer dials in the printer grabs the configuration information (when to call to check the mailbox, etc).

Image 1: Sample Status Message

Now the administrator is presented with a few options. First and foremost is what the e-mails will look like when they get printed. Here is one of my first major issues with the product: the templates all involve a lot of color usage that is not necessary and therefore wastes ink for every printout including service messages from Presto. Presto should include a barebones template that just prints the header (from and subject) with a horizontal line separating the body to preserve the ink. Other options also include signing up for things like news or recipes, although all of the different categories are not yet implemented in the service.

Image 2: Configuration Menu

Another major issue that I determined was that the system stays dialed in for a long time around 30 minutes from my observations. I am not sure if this is standard or not, but it is what I observed on several occasions. This is not a problem when the printer dials in during the middle of the night but it could be an issue if the printer calls during the day. The other issue is that, since this is modem, it takes a while for the printer to obtain the information it needs to print. I do not know what the format is for the incoming message, but I have to assume it is a rendered image (think of a PDF of sorts).

The printouts are in the format of a border around the paper, the text at the top followed by the images. The images are all formatted to be about 5×3 so grandma can even cut them out and frame them.

Pros

This is a great service for someone with a relative who does not have a computer. A good friend of mine with a small child and a grandmother who does not have a computer will continue using this unit and fill me in on their progress. The device is straight forward from the technologically illiterate perspective since there are only 3 buttons and no way to mess up the inputs. I feel confident I could walk my grandmother through the process of plugging in this device (she doesnt even own a TV).

The service itself is very straight forward. In the case of my friend, his mother-in-law has sever grandchildren and would love to have updates pop up in the middle of the night to greet her in the morning. Imagine sending grandma a vacation update with pictures of the grand-kids playing on the beach.

Cons

I have to list a few cons that bother me from a technical perspective:

• No Check New Messages button to force an update.
• No USB/Ethernet this means that the printer is of no use if you do not have the Presto service. I would feel much better about this product if I could use it as a color printer as well (this would make it appealing to more than just the Computer Illiterate Grandmas of America).
• A continuation of the second item mandatory service from Presto which makes your $150 hardware obsolete if you do not have the service.
• Only one printer cartridge. While this might make replacement easy, it means a lot of wasted ink when you replace an entire cartridge for one color running out.
• Gratuitous borders and decoration around the e-mails leading to more ink wasting.

A final item that concerns me about the device that I did not want to put in the list is the fact that the user has no way to prevent the printer from printing service status messages if you put good paper in the machine. I would be rather upset in the morning if I came down to find a stack of service messages printed out on my high gloss photo paper.

Conclusion

If you are in search of finding a way to get updates to someone who has no desire to have a computer in their home, then this device does the job. The service costs $10/month, or $100/year (20% off) and is rather straight forward for someone to configure for the end user. I can see this as a great way for grandparents to stay informed of their grandchilds progress through life.