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Cat With Mouse
Computer, Internet not necessary to receive e-mail, photos
May 31, 2007
Dan Davis take Presto for a whirl.
In an age in which more and more people are online -- connected virtually all the time -- it's easy to forget those who can't -- or won't -- hop on what we once called the information superhighway. (What a '90s term.)
As accessible as we like to believe the Internet is, the Web can be a scary place. Let's face it, accessible and user-friendly are so not the same thing.
And then there's the equipment that's needed to get online. Kids and young adults have grown up with computers. (I used to do computer tech support and parents were forever putting their children on the phone.)
It's true that computers seem to be everywhere these days, but what about our parents and grandparents, the millions of Baby Boomers (between 72 million and 79 million of them), the folks who typed letters on (gasp) a typewriter? Computers and the software that run them can be intimidating!
Is it any wonder that as many as one-third of Americans (depending on what study you look at) are not online?
And those who are online might not be that good at it.
According to a Pew Internet & American Life report that came out earlier this month, nearly half of adults (49 percent) are not that into the tech thing, using technology lightly if at all. Then there's the 15 percent of U.S. adults who don't have cell phones or the Internet.
Say it isn't so!
But it is.
Should those not-so-tech-savvy people be left completely out of the digital loop?
If you're Joe Beninato, the founder of Presto, the answer is absolutely not. That's why he and his team -- no strangers to developing consumer products -- came up with a way to print e-mail and photos without a computer or an Internet connection.
Yup, you read that right. No computer. No Internet connection.
Why?
"Silicon Valley is mostly focusing on building cooler, faster, more whiz-bang features," Beninato said. "We wanted to focus on a real need for real people."
The question, "How do you send photos to somebody the same day without using a computer?" was a personal one for Beninato, one that gave birth to Presto.
"It's a new category of devices," Beninato said. "It's text and e-mail."
Presto, which was about four years in the making, is a service that works with the HP A10 Printing Mailbox, a specially designed inkjet printer.
"We had to come up with a fundamentally different way to get people connected," Beninato said.
The service converts the e-mail, including photo attachments, into selectable layouts that then print out. There's no keyboard. There's no monitor. There's no software to confuse the recipients. And there's no need to go online. The Printing Mailbox does all the techy lifting.
There are two cords for the HP unit, a power cord and phone line. Plug them in and you're pretty much ready to go. You don't even have to turn it on. Hence the name Presto.
Could it be that easy?
I put it to the test, and the answer is a resounding "yes." In fact, the trickiest part was finding a spot for the typewriter-size printer on my admittedly cluttered desk. Sleek and nice looking, the printer isn't huge, but with dimensions of 15x6.5x18.4, it's not small, either.
The Web site promises that setting up the service takes "less than five minutes." It's right.
Beninato said the Presto is mostly purchased as a gift from the tech-savvy to the tech-challenged. The giver can set up the account online or he or she can call the toll-free customer care number and do it over the phone.
A child of the digital age, I naturally went the online route. Very easy. I called the support desk, too, just to see how it would work. It was just as simple. I'll come back to the Customer Care line in a minute.
The first step after creating an account is setting up the e-mail address, username@presto.com. By the way, you can set up several addresses for one unit, one for Grandma, one for Grandpa ... you get the idea.
You send e-mail to a presto.com address just as you would any other e-mail address. It supports a variety of photo formats and HTML e-mail (like azfamily.com's newsletters) now, and support for PDF files is on the way.
I can see that you're just dying to ask a question.
"What about spam? I don't want my grandmother's Printing Mailbox to be spitting out a bunch of stupid messages advertising drugs and porn!"
The good folks at Presto thought of that, which brings me to step two -- set up the Presto Friends list. The system will only accept messages from the e-mail addresses specified on that list. Period. That means no spam.
You can add to your friends list online (for the account administrator) or with a Customer Care rep on the phone. The Printing Mailbox also prints out a sheet of cards that you can give to people so that they can add themselves to your list. There's both a code on the card and a security check online to prevent spam.
People on the friends list receive an e-mail explaining what Presto is and inviting them to start sending e-mail to the presto.com address.
Everything about Presto has been carefully thought through, including font sizes for aging eyes. You have the option of medium (12 point), large (14 point) and larger (16 point).
You can also choose how e-mails are printed with Presto Styles. There are lots of options and senders can even specify a style different from the default by typing the name of the style in the subject line of their e-mails.
There are a variety of styles for everyday use, as well as calendars and special-occasion styles, and more templates are on the way, Beninato said.
The Printing Mailbox can dial into the service over a regular phone line (nothing special is required, but digital isn't supported) to pick up e-mail as many as five times a day between 6 a.m. and 11 p.m., although according to Beninato, most people don't check in that often. They're used to the schedule of the U.S. Postal Service.
"Mail delivery to [our users] is a once-a day-occurrence, Monday through Saturday," Beninato said. Presto gives them a way to receive messages more often if they want to.
While Presto is a one-way, receive-only service, Beninato said most users don't look at it that way.
"They call back to talk about the photos," he said. "They prefer paper and they prefer their telephone. Those are things that are comfortable to them."
Which brings me back to the why behind Presto.
"Digital photography worked for some people, but not for all," said Beninato, who was an early investor in Ofoto, an online photography and photo-sharing service that was later bought by Kodak and is now Kodak EasyShare Gallery.
"The reality is that the photo-sharing services are designed for an Internet-capable, proficient person," he said. "If you're not, then they don't work."
And that's where Presto comes in.
"A lot of the things we've decided to do are slightly contrarian, but it's based on responses from people who are interested in our product," Beninato explained.
One of the features I asked about, being an on-demand kind of gal, was a "Connect Now" button. Beninato and his team considered it, even nicknaming it the "Make Me Sad" button. The concern was that people would keep connecting, but not have messages. The functionality, however, is there. Just hold down the Stop button on the Printing Mailbox, and tap the Volume Up button twice.
While we're talking about buttons, now is a good time to mention that the Printing Mailbox only has three. Volume Down. Volume Up. Stop. And they're all pretty self-explanatory.
Also, the printer as most people think of it was redesigned from the ground up to make paper loading and cartridge installation a snap, even for those who aren't used to it.
And there's no cryptic light blinking to decipher when it comes time for refills. If the Printing Mailbox is out of paper, that's what the indicator says. If it's out of ink, that's clear, too.
Let's talk cost. It's not a huge investment for what you get. The printer is normally $150, but it's on sale now for $100. And the service itself is $10 per month or $100 per year.
Not only does that cover unlimited incoming e-mail, but as part of that subscription, you get another service. It's called the Presto Newsstand, and it's exactly what it sounds like. You can subscribe to receive daily sudoku or crossword puzzles, recipes and various lifestyle articles. News, sports and other categories are in the works.
"We wanted to be very careful that we didn't put stuff that was considered spam into the system," Beninato explained when I asked about things like coupons and localized ads. "We're going to be adding more content. We're going to listen to customers and add the things that they want."
Newsstand subscriptions are set up per e-mail address, not per Printing Mailbox. So, Grandma and Grandpa can get their own things according to their own interests, and they can subscribe to as much or as little content as they want.
The only other cost is paper -- the Printing Mailbox takes the plain 8.5x11 stuff -- and ink. You can get a small cartridge (HP95) for about $25. The HP97, which is twice as big, runs about $35.
The Printing Mailbox comes with an HP95 in the box. Depending on what you're printing, that should be good for between 200 and 300 pages.
The system monitors both paper and ink levels online, and an automatic ink-refill subscription is in the works.
The print quality is what you'd expect from an inkjet. Good, but not photo-print good. Not super speedy, about 45 seconds to a minute per page, but certainly faster than Uncle Sam.
You can use glossy photo paper for better-quality prints, but that can get expensive quickly, especially if you're taking advantage of the Newsstand.
It also isn't the quietest printer. The Printing Mailbox makes all the normal clicks and whirs you'd expect from an inkjet. It's a minor thing, but I wouldn't recommend setting it up in a bedroom.
While the printouts aren't drop-dead gorgeous, they're good enough to take out and show friends.
That's how many new customers are finding out about Presto -- word of mouth.
"People take these things and they go show them to their friends," Beninato said. "It's a paper version of viral. They go and share with their friends."
Quietly launched in November, Presto now boasts "thousands" of users, although Beninato wouldn't give me any exact numbers.
"People are loving it, and they're telling their friends about it," he said.
A quick glance through the customer comments on Amazon.com, and he seems to be right.
The Presto is very user friendly, right down to the location of its Customer Care centers. They're all in the U.S. and Canada, so the most pronounced accent coming over the line will be a Southern twang.
It's cheaper to outsource overseas, but the Presto team knows accents can be tough to decipher.
"We consciously set it up like that," Beninato said.
The reps on the other end of the line are very patient and the calls are constantly monitored.
For more information...
"We have a very fundamental philosophy -- the golden rule. Treat people how you want to be treated."
Presto plans to expand its offerings on the content front in the coming months. That means new additions to the Newsstand, new styles, personalized calendars and perhaps even daily appointment reminders.
If you want to have a back-and-forth, IM-style conversation, Presto isn't for you.
If, however, you want to keep friends and loved ones who aren't online in the loop, it might be just what you've been looking for.
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