OnePlus India – Tech Raman

Epson WorkForce WF-100 Review : Portable and Wireless On the Go Printer

Lakshmi Rajan — Mon, 03 Apr 2017 09:45:57 +0000

Epson WorkForce WF-100 | The Specs Printer Type: InkJet Dimensions: 12.2″ x 9.1″ x 8.5″ (30.99 cm x 23.11 cm x 21.59 cm) Weight: 1.59 Kg Charging : Micro-USB and an AC port. Power: AC (100-220v) , USB 5V USB 2.0 Charging time: 2.5 hours via AC ; USB connection with 1.5A take 2.5 hours and 0.5A takes 10 hours. Battery life: 100 B&W pages / 50 color pages. Cartridges: 1 Black and 1 CMYK Print time: When using AC adapter B&W @ 6.7 ISP ppm and Color @ 3.8 ISO ppm. When using battery power, B&W @ 3.5 ISO ppm and Color @ 2.0 ISO ppm. Printing size range: 8.5″ x 14″ to No. 10 envelope plain paper

What is Epson WorkForce WF – 100 Printer? For Whom Is It?

Every gadgets tends to get smaller these days, more easier to carry around. Plus, go wireless is the mantra. While almost every printer manufacturer can say ‘honey I have shrunk a printer’ in my portfolio, Epson has take a step ahead by not only shrinking the WorkForce WF-100 for portability but also has gone wireless with it. Yes, the Epson WorkForce WF -100 has a built-in battery plus it supports WiFi and WiFi direct for wireless printing. If you are someone constantly on the go and have some real good need to print very often, the Epson WorkForce WF-100 might be for you. You can throw it in your bag, take it along with you and push the documents wirelessly from your Smartphone, laptop in style and not scramble for cables or power sockets!

Epson WorkForce WF – 100 | Design

Imagine an Encyclopedia hardcover book, split it vertically into two halves, and you get a fair idea of how the Epson WorkForce WF-100 dimension might be. Very lighter for a printer and easy to carry around like a book. At 1.59 kg, no one could crib about its weight. The printer is all black in affair with a textured black matte finish to it. There is the Epson branding on the top and a steel plate to lift the top lid at the front. What I really liked about the portable design is that the front and the top can be stepped back to transform into a paper feed tray. The pages feed out directly and churns out from the front. No extra attachments nor any clumsy holders. Pretty neat integration. When you uncover the top lid that folds up into a paper tray, the top surface of the printer features a 1.8-inch color LCD display which is not often seen in this portable segment. It makes use of a four way rocker switch for navigating the menus and a OK button. Apart from these there is a power button and a cancel button which is indicated with a red circle containing a triangle that can cancel the print in progress or queued. That’s all the buttons you get in the entire printer.

Epson WorkForce WF – 100 | Battery

As I mentioned earlier, the WF-100 can work with the traditional power cable or from a built-in rechargeable lithium-ion battery. The battery can be charged either by AC power which is the quickest way to juice up the battery or from a computer over a USB cable when the printer is turned off or in sleep mode. It takes almost 2.5 hours to fully charge.

Epson WorkForce WF – 100 | Connectivity

The WorkForce WF-100 offers plethora of connectivity options. You can connect to a computer via USB , or latch to local area network via 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi. Not enough? you can make a direct peer-to-peer connection to a computer or mobile device via Wi-Fi Direct. The Epson iPrint App is a nice little utility to push your documents or photos to print from Android or iOS devices. Also you can do remote print via Epson Email Print and Epson Remote Print via email.

Epson WorkForce WF – 100 | Performance

Setting up the WF-100 via USB method is a traditional and straight forward but what interests more is the WiFi connectivity atleast for me and probably for you too. You have the LED display, you can scan the WiFi connections and then you should be just keying in the password of the network to pair it. Yes, it is as simple as that and the D-Pad was good at navigating the menus. The frustration comes in when you need to feed the password. Scrolling through A-Z a-z 1-0 !-= options with those up and down buttons can test your patience especially if you have a good combination of alpha-numeric and special characters as passphrases for security. Yes, it does remember the the SSID and Password of the WiFi as long as you don’t switch the WiFi modes (to WiFi direct) and then you might have to go through the gruel of scrolling all over again. The WF-100 has an auto-sleep function when it is left idle but hit the print and the printer wakes up to work. The print quality is decent. The text, resumes, articles on the web all comes out well on print but I should say this is not primarily a photo print oriented printer, though it can deliver some decent images. The WF-100 makes use of two ink cartridges, one for black ink, and the other combining cyan, magenta, and yellow. The black cartridge has a rated yield of 250 pages; the color cartridge, 200. You might also have to invest on a maintenance kit that stores ink that gets flushed from the system during print head cleaning. When the maintenance box needs a replacement, you get an alert. And the Epson iPrint App comes very handy to know the health of the printer along with the maintenance timeline. Again, the print speed varies when running on AC and battery. Epson claims a speed of 7ppm in mono and 4ppm in colour and 4ppm and 2ppm respectively when powered by batteries. In our practical tests, it dropped a little from the claimed speed, the WF100 is a tad slow but then you get the ease of portability and wireless connectivity on the go. What I really liked though is the power to take print right from the Smartphone and that too easily. Most of us shoot pics on our Smartphones these days and just pushing the photos from the phone to printer without any hassles is an added advantage.

Epson WorkForce WF – 100 | Verdict

The mobile printer market has heated up but still Epson WF-100 still holds the edge with its compact format and light weight. If portability and convenience of wireless connectivity is what you would look at, then the Epson Workforce WF-100 is something you can look at. There are mobile printers that even thrown in scan option and touch displays but it depends on what your primary use case of a printer is to figure out what really works for you.]]>

Is OnePlus losing the plot with its "Invite Circus'' ?

Lakshmi Rajan — Sat, 28 Nov 2015 09:32:13 +0000

We live in an interesting time, spoiled for choices over mobiles. It is also a competitive times for the OEMs, barring Apple, almost all are under pressure to keep the margins low, get the price right and hope for the volumes. And it is also confusing times for the consumers, no longer they can walk in to a store and find all the devices under one roof. Many devices are now e-commerce exclusive, then there is flash sales model and you need to keep a tab on the calendar and clock and be ready with fastest fingers and pray for a little bit of luck. Amidst this, OnePlus has its invite model to purchase their phones. When OnePlus launched their OnePlus One back in 2014, they were in an advantageous period. Back then, their One was truly a ‘flagship killer’, a remarkable device that democratized the flagship for masses. OnePlus One was available at a starting price of $299 (unlocked and without contract) for the 16GB model, while the 64GB variant was available at $349. For that price they offered a device with a 5.5-inch display with fullHD resolution, powered by Snapdragon 801, 3GB RAM, flashed Cyanogen OS and came equipped with a great set of camera specs. It challenged all the flagship devices with premium tags and soon became a name every tech writers talked about and many wanted to own. They also introduced an invite-only model which also helped the company to create a buzz and also handle its inventory and production in control. They were a new entrant and everyone loved them. Fans rooted for this David pitted against the likes of Apple, Samsung and HTC People scrambled for invites, those who had the invites were the new celebrities and all the long lost friends and relatives pinged them for invites. The model worked for OnePlus, the demand ballooned, the waiting period queued up but still it was a ”flagship killer’ worth the wait. It was a novel marketing strategy and it worked for the lean company, few whimpers aside, the tide was with the company. Come 2015. Paradigm shift in the industry. More Chinese players became mainstream, they are no more outlaws. Rest of the world warmly accepted them, each one brought in capable devices, even if not flagship killers, they offered best value for the money spend on them. Smartphones become more affordable and yesterdays big names struggled before the minnion’s blitzkriegs in terms of pricing and new-age marketing strategies. Suddenly, there are more Davids for the people to root for. By now, OnePlus is no more the only ‘wonder kid’ in the mobile industry. Xiaomi made itself famous by popularizing and sensationalizing ‘flash sale model’ and more brands lapped it up. While all other new-age brands fired with all guns blazing with armada of models, OnePlus meticulously stuck with one model for a long time, since their One was still relevant even after many months. Then, they came up with OnePlus Two. By now, they have to divorce Cyanogen and came up with a new breather of OS, Oxygen. What did not change was their sales model based on invite. While many expected OnePlus would have learnt from their One outing and made amends in their second offering, having experimented with the invite-only model for quiet a long period. Carl Pei, co-founder had to apologize to fans “we have messed up again” pretty soon. The tall promises of making invites 30-50x easier, did not happen. By now, there were more visible disgruntle. People are no more willing to be patient, they had more choices to look at. Few weeks back, I was talking to a group of friends (none of them are tech writers, btw), our discussion veered to mobiles and when OnePlus name popped up, it was dismissed as ”INVITE CIRCUS’. And most of them had purchased a Smartphone from an e-commerce site and half of them on a flash sale. Incidentally, some of them when failed to get a particular Smartphone in a flash sale, just opted for a near comparable model from a rival in another sale. People have a hunger for Smartphones and suddenly they have plenty of options to eat. And soon, there are more invites with people but less visible enthusiasm unlike when OnePlus One was launched. Many people seem to simply not bother about going after the invites, nor have the patience to wait for it. The invite circus has become cumbersome amidst the intense competition in the mobile industry. OnePlus has shied away from revealing numbers of devices sold but that doesn’t matter. Perception has changed with patience wearing out and options many. OnePlus has now launched the OnePlus X. When I scanned the OnePlus X launch news in their official forum, one of the earliest comment I read was ‘”What’s the point ! no ones going to get a invite for least 6 months‘ The circus continues. It doesn’t matter if the company hosts open sales occasionally, they might even be clearing their inventory but to scale up and to be taken more serious, it is time for OnePlus to rethink its invite-basis model and innovate, else it will find the tide difficult in future and consumers can be unforgiving.]]>