Epson announces its Artisan 800 printer, with a contextual touch-interface

New printers are usually not exciting, but the contextual touch-interface of the Epson Artisan 800 has caught our attention. The touch panel is a 7.8″ surface that has fixed-function elements that can be turned on and off, depending on the context, to simplify the choices available to the user. In the middle of the 7.8″ panel, there is a 3.5″ LCD touch display that is fully programmable, making it contextual too. Usually, similar interfaces are usually found on much more expensive enterprise printers, but we like the idea of seeing programmable interfaces in consumer/small business printers as well. If you don’t want to pay for the touch-interface, there’s the Artisan 700.

Highlights

• WiFi
• Automatic Document Feed (ADF)
• 7.8″ Touch Panel
• 3.5″ LCD display
• 38 pages per minute in black and white (ppm)
• 4×6″ photo in 10 seconds