Leave it to HP to produce an event even more boisterous than most US presidential inaugurations. HP’s Imaging and Printing Group, commonly shortened to IPG, held their first ever “Big Bang” event locally following the regional success of said event. Befitting the title of the occasion, a total of 19 different imaging machines were present to wow and titillate the assembled guests, one of which is the very first wireless HP printer in the Philippines. “Big Bang” indeed.

Not expecting much from a printer launch, we were nonetheless pleasantly surprised.

In an amazing series of creative numbers, HP managed to depict the colorful interplay of the different images we see and encounter daily. Of particular note was an interpretative dance performed against a canvas of darkness and creatively-positioned black-lighting, creating what looked like snapshots of action against a backdrop of flashing lights – a description that befittingly applies to the images we encounter, capture and share.

As long as a sub-compact car, the HP Designjet Z6100 large format printer cut an imposing profile on-stage, and was only one of many attractions during the event.
 

Capturing the image is fine and all, but HP aims to bring the image to life.

HP consumables, including its Vivera inks for Inkjet printers, ColorSphere toners for Laserjet, and HP Everyday Papers had their time in the spotlight, and quite literally too – a wonderful number with models unfurling “wings” in Vivera colors and holding the Vivera letters, one for each model. On the other end of the scale, we had a magical performance showing one of the largest printers we’ve seen to date: the HP Designjet Z6100 large format printer – a monster of a device as long as a Cherry QQ, and probably containing more liquid content in its ink tanks than a Cherry’s gas tank.

Like classy cheerleaders, Vivera Inks had its own contingent of dancers, each carrying one letter.

A “black theatre” in which only the moving reflections of light were immediately apparent, served its purpose of concentrating the viewers’ eyes on what’s important: the end result of all of the printer specifications, technologies, consumables, and cost is the output, and all the aspects on display during this “Big Bang” night served to emphasize this most. The dance performance depicting the ultimate convenience of wireless printing showed how documents need not to be tied down to the computer, necessitating an extra step to transfer the file to the printer; with wireless, the consumer gets to the output all that much faster.

Papers flying from source to output (top), interpretative dance depicting setting free creativity (bottom).

The HP Photosmart Premium Fax All-in-One Printer is named such because it is the first wireless printer and not just another printer destined to fill in the ranks of the huge HP printer line-up and requiring an alpha-numeric label to differentiate it from its brothers. This particular HP Photosmart stands on its features alone, at least for now, as there will definitely come a time when there are more wireless printers in local stores.

While we found the printer's bluetoothpresence easily enough, the Photosmart All-in-One was at that moment besieged by print requests - we'll get our chance when our demo unit arrives at our offices.

In the meantime, HP was glad to demonstrate the wireless capabilities of their demo unit by encouraging the assembled press to send print requests to the Photosmart through Bluetooth, which was as easy as finding the Photosmart device through a handset’s Bluetooth interface and sending in a pic to be printed – easy that is, if there weren’t many dozens of journalists trying to do the same thing. We’re really looking forward to getting our test unit from the kind folks at HP, once HP’s only wireless printer is in our hands, we’ll be finding out how magical the whole process can be, with this product from HP’s first local IPG Big Bang event. Following are some more photos for your perusal. Watch out for further reviews of HP products in this space!

Tethered by wires, these models show how "tied-down" you can be with wired printing.

The Vivera butterflies, before they unfurled.

Ms. Gizelle Villacorta, Marketing Development Manager for Inkjet explains the features of the Photosmart.

HP IPG executives, including Mr. Giovanni Sabio, Market Development for Supplies; Ms. Jenny Sotto-Siquioco, Country General Manager for IPG, and Ms. Gizelle Villacorta.

Some examples of the Big Bang participants include this HP 910, previously covered here.

This HP Officejet Pro L7590 collected its own share of interest.

The HP Officejet Pro K8600 has available 13 x 19 wide format printing and is perfect for the marketing-focused.

The HP Officejet J3508 All-in-One includes fax capability in a small footprint.

HP's Color Laserjet CP1518n uses the ColorSphere toners and has basic networking capability.