By Joseph F. Kovar
5:50 PM EST Fri. Mar. 19, 1999
From the March 19, 1999 issue of CRN

Hewlett-Packard (NYSE:HPQ) Co. recently unveiled a product intended for small and midsize businesses with limited equipment. The JetDirect Auto Switch is designed to allow sharing of printers and scanners.

The device comes in two- and four-port models, allowing multiple peripherals to be connected to a PC or multiple PCs to be connected to one parallel-port peripheral. This is HP's first product to allow the sharing of non-networked peripherals, said company executives.

While JetDirect is packaged for the retail market, it also is suitable for resellers serving SOHO customers with printers, said Kevin Burbank, product strategist for HP, based here. "In the home and small businesses . . . they all need printers. There are margin opportunities for anyone selling HP printers," he said.

Stephen Allen, president of Integrated Technology Systems Inc., a New York-based reseller, said his company tested the JetDirect for every possible configuration, and he likes it.

"It's a good addition to HP's line, something they never had before," Allen said. "We have a lot of small- and medium-business customers with three or four nodes that want to share peripherals."

Allen said he connected a ZIP drive, an HP DeskJet printer and an HP scanner to a PC and swapped the peripherals. The JetDirect switched between the various peripherals, except for the ZIP drive, which Windows expects to be connected at all times, he said.

Peripherals can be switched manually or automatically, and the JetDirect has an LED to show which peripheral is in use, said Allen. The software used for auto switching allows customers to assign their devices' names, which are easier to remember than model numbers, he said.

The JetDirect is expected to be available through HP's distributors around April 1. Its suggested list price is $89.