Hewlett-Packard Co has launched a personal-sized HP PaintWriter colour graphics printer for use with the Apple Computer Inc Macintosh, and also launched colour-matching drivers for Windows 3.0 and Macintosh environments and enhanced inks for its colour printers, all for deilvery on March 1 in the US. The new Macintosh printer lists for $1,400, the same as the HP PaintJet printer, and from March 1 to May 31, the company is offering a $200 rebate on the HP PaintWriter and HP PaintJet printers in the US and Canada, and is cutting the price of the HP PaintWriter XL Mac colour printer for shared and high-volume use by 13.3% to $2,600. The new colour-matching drivers deliver automatic colour matching between the monitor and printed output on the PaintJets and PaintWriters, and Hewlett points out that screen-to-printer colour matching presents a real challenge to monitor and printer vendors because colours seen on a monitor are created with red, green and blue light, while colours created on a printer are derived from ink pigments of cyan, magenta, yellow and black. The drivers incorporate key characteristics of widely-used brands of monitors and colour look-up tables for screen-to-printer colours. The Windows 3.0 driver for the PaintJet and PaintJet XL printers will include six Intellifont scalable typefaces. The new drivers will be included with new printer purchases at no charge, and existing users can have them for $20. The improved, brighter inks should be freely available in the US by April, but will not arrive in Europe until June.
