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Say what? 'I don't need a printer'

Natalie Weinstein Former Senior Editor / News
I spent a decade as a reporter and editor before joining the CNET News staff as a copy editor in 2000, right before the dot-com bust.
Expertise Copy editing. Curating, editing and reading newsletters of all stripes. Playing any word-related game, specifically Scrabble, Wordle and Boggle. Credentials
  • I've been a journalist for more than three decades. I was a finalist in the 2021 Digiday Media Award for Best Newsletter.
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Natalie Weinstein

OK, not everyone needs a printer. But it takes some chutzpah to say that to your dad--when your dad is the senior vice president in charge of Hewlett-Packard's printing division.

Nonetheless, the college-age daughter of HP's Vyomesh Joshi recently said just that: "I don't need a printer." According to a New York Times story on HP's latest printer strategy, Joshi was using his daughter as example of her generation, which lives for the Internet and finds it annoying and/or unnecessary to print out anything.

"The intent of this is not to scare you, though I am scared," Joshi told his employees at a quarterly "coffee talk" earlier this year.

Following his intuition, Joshi is pushing a plan to get printers to do a significantly better job of printing Web pages. Right now, such printouts can look junky and downright foul. Joshi's goal is to make printing Web pages a nonevent--thus keeping people printing, and keeping HP's revenue column smiling.