FOSTER CITY, California -- It wasn't too long ago that technology idealists were predicting the advent of a paper-free world. Paper-thin electronic displays, they said, would take the place of wood pulp and ink, and civilized society would never again bear the indignities of dog ears and paper cuts.
Perhaps that age is still to come, but for now, at least, paper is king.
Indeed, during a press conference Monday by a host of imaging companies who are betting that paper will be with us for a while, one tech executive said that he believes paper will become the dominant display format for "mobile professionals" -- the millions of on-the-go businesspeople who carry their data around in cell phones and Palms, who find themselves needing to print documents at the most inconvenient locations.
The new service that will allow devices like cell phones and PDAs to print pretty documents is called PrintMe, an ambitious project that aims to "give people everywhere the freedom to access and print their e-mail messages, Internet content and other documents at any time, anywhere, from any mobile device, to any printer."
The service is chiefly the brainchild of Electronics For Imaging (or EFI), a printer-component company based here. But PrintMe is also being backed by Adobe, Xerox, Yahoo and other tech firms.
Most computer users don't give much thought to printing until it doesn't work. Printing is one of those digital-era actions that's supposed to be foolproof -- with one click, the thing you see on your screen should appear on paper, without too many questions about drivers and file formats and the like.
And for most office workers, printing is often just that simple. But Guy Gecht, EFI's CEO, said that for people who spend their lives in airports and hotels and diners, printing is fraught with frustrations. They have to find business centers compatible with their equipment, and then worry about the cables and cords and software they need to get the document from a laptop to a printer.
Worse still is the situation of the poor fellow who carries around all his important information on a small device like a BlackBerry messaging client, a cell phone or a PDA. Getting that data to paper when you're away from your desk is near impossible.
PrintMe is essentially a worldwide network of servers connected to a worldwide network of printers that will become, EFI says, as ubiquitous as ATM machines one day. In the company's vision, PrintMe printers will be everywhere -- new printers will be PrintMe-enabled, and old printers can be easily retrofitted for PrintMe using a special add-on device.
Already, Sir Speedy, the retail copy and print company, has announced that its stores will feature PrintMe printers, and STSN -- which provides Internet services to hotels and conference centers -- said it will use the technology as well. But that's just the start, said Ofer Tenenbaum, EFI's general manager in charge of PrintMe.
"If you'd asked 10 years ago how many computers will be connected to the Internet, most people would have not said that all of them would," he said. "The same thing will happen with printing."
To print at one of these PrintMe printers from a laptop or wireless device, a user needs only to send a document to his "PrintMe account" through the Internet -- and then stop by a printer, punch in a security code, and collect the document. PDAs that aren't connected to the Internet can beam their documents to PrintMe printers using their infrared ports, Tenenbaum said.
In collaboration with Troy, which makes printers that produce secure documents like bank checks, EFI will also introduce a "checks on demand" service that will let people send money to each other using the PrintMe network.
Chris Wu, an executive from Yahoo, said that "for a limited time" his company is offering free PrintMe printing of Yahoo maps and e-mail. The Yahoo service is available immediately, Wu said.
But the various companies here declined to say how much the PrintMe service will cost after that limited time. Gecht said the pricing structure was a complicated one, involving retail locations and tech firms all taking a cut from the cost of a printout; he didn't say whether there would be a per-print charge or a monthly charge.
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