The technology of non-impact printing and plain paper facsimile are not far apart, and Hewlett-Packard Co is applying its skills in the former to offer its first stand-alone facsimile machine, the HP FAX-300 plain-paper device. At $2,100, the HP FAX-300 is designed to make plain-paper output affordable, and follows on from the HP LaserJet Fax accessory, announced in April, which makes it possible to receive and produce plain-paper fax documents on LaserJet printers. It holds 100 sheets of paper and uses inkjet technology to produce documents with 300 dots per inch print quality, provided there is a compatible 300dpi device on the other end and is also fully compatible with most standard 200dpi facsimile machines. It provides 16 grayscale levels so that every page is readable, regardless of dark or light contrasts and has a top modem speed of 9,600bps, transmitting one page every 12 seconds. Documents are stored in memory automatically when the HP FAX-300 is receiving multiple transmissions or when the paper tray is empty. Users also can use numbered password codes to send and receive confidential documents, which are stored in memory until the proper password is entered. The HP FAX-300 has 512Kb of resident memory, enough for 28 pages of documents – although there are pages and pages: dense pages like those of Computergram don’t count but it can be upgraded with an additional 512Kb, 1Mb or 2Mb to store 30, 60 or 120 more pages, respectively. A remote-diagnostics function enables users to solve most transmission problems by phone. It’s out now in the US.
