Epson Introducing a new all in one

Epson has announced the launch of its Stylus CX3700 all-in-one printer which allows users to print, scan and copy photos directly, and promises to provide excellent print quality at an affordable price.

The Stylus CX3700 uses Epson's new Durabrite Ultra Ink - optimised for low-cost printing, to provide users with BorderFree printouts up to A4 size. The CX3700 includes Epson's intelligent Inkdividual cartridge system, which allows users to replace only that ink which has been used-up. The built-in Black Ink Save Mode facilitates intelligent mixing of colours, whenever black ink runs low thereby ensuring colour consistency and continued printing.

The combination of Epson's new Ultra Glossy Photo Paper and the ability of the Stylus CX3700 to print at 5760 optimised dpi, ensures photo quality prints.

Epson's Stylus CX3700 features a simple control panel allowing fast operation of the printer in stand-alone mode; 600dpi CIS scanner which cuts down warm-up time substantially; Epson's Creativity Suite designed to automate tedious printing tasks; Epson Easy Photo Print offering users a three-stage interface for choosing, positioning and printing images; scan to email/fax function; Colour Restore function to re-vitalize old photos; and Epson's Micro Piezo print head technology which lets ink droplet sizes to be varied down to a minimum of 4 picolitre thus optimizing performance.

S M Ram Prasad, business manager - consumer products, Epson India, said, "In today s busy lifestyle, cost-effectiveness and durability are the key to consumers who require a long-lasting solution that meets their needs. The Epson Stylus CX3700 provides the best-value printing and copying option for home and SOHO users, so that they can now achieve long-lasting quality printouts easily and cost-effectively."

Epson Stylus CX3700 is available at all Epson authorized dealers at an MRP of Rs 6,220.

Cisco= SIP+IP

Cisco Systems has announced plans to adopt a key Internet Protocol telephony standard, which will allow for the addition of new network service features and will let companies like Microsoft integrate their communications products with Cisco gear.

Cisco Systems said it will add support for SIP (session initiation protocol), to its IP PBX software.

SIP helps establish contact between IP phones, and enables addition of special features such as presence awareness, video or mobility capabilities, onto a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) network. SIP also allows companies using VoIP to considerably lower the cost of deploying such a network.

The latest version of Cisco's product - CallManager 5.0, will include SIP capabilities for Cisco IP phones, multimedia communications software, and presence-awareness software.

So far Cisco has been the only major supplier not to support SIP in its IP PBX software. Barry O'Sullivan, vice president - IP communications, Cisco, said that the company move is in line with the fact that IP telephony is no longer restricted to toll bypass, and that people need to be able to communicate and collaborate through the means that best suits them.

Although CallManager 5.0 is geared to work with any SIP-based phone, Cisco intends to support a softphone or PC-based phone client for Research In Motion's BlackBerry handheld and Nokia's new dual-mode phones.

In another announcement, Cisco said, it plans to bring together the worlds of voice, data, video and mobile communications in the form of a new architecture dubbed the Cisco Unified Communications system.

A key part of this architecture - the Cisco Unified Personal Communicator would combine different communications media. Unlike its pre-decessors, the new Communicator will be made available in two versions; one based on Microsoft Communicator, and the other based on Linux.

Cisco announced it is working with Microsoft Corp to integrate Microsoft's Office Communicator 2005 and Office Live Communications, with Cisco's Unified Communications System.

In effect, users will be able to launch a VoIP conversation directly from their Microsoft Outlook client. The interoperable package is expected to ship in August 2006.

Samsungs New 8 GB Phone

Samsung has announced plans to launch its SGH-i310, a 8GB Windows Mobile-based cell phone, in the second half of 2006.

Samsung's fourth model to incorporate a hard-disk drive, the SGH-i310 is a candy-bar form factor handset which looks similar to the i300 HDD phone launched by Samsung last year. Like the i300, the i310 also includes a music player, dual speakers, an amplifier and a Bluetooth stereo link. The music player supports MP3, AAC, AAC+, WMA, WAV and Ogg music file formats.

With dimensions of 112 x 48 x 20 mm and weighing around 120 gms, the SGH-i310 features a 2 megapixels digital camera, Bluetooth printing and video output connector. The phone is compatible with GSM, GPRS and EDGE technologies, and runs the Windows Mobile 5.0 for smartphone operating systems.

Samsung's 1.5GB HDD phone, SPH-V5400 launched in September 2004 was the first-ever to have an embedded hard-disk drive. The SPH-V7900 and SGH-i300, each incorporating a 3GB hard-disk drive soon followed suit.

The latest phone will reportedly be unveiled later this week at the Cebit Show beginning Thursday at Hanover, and is expected to hit European markets in the second half of 2006. The pricing has not yet been announced.

Oracle Starting New search Engine

Oracle has staked out ground in the rapidly changing enterprise search industry with the introduction of Oracle Secure Enterprise Search 10g, a standalone engine that can search databases, file systems, enterprise content management systems, portals, e-mail systems and enterprise applications for internal corporate use.

Oracle enters as the corporate search market is realigning and expanding. Two of the major providers of corporate search technology have merged, with Autonomy's acquisition of Verity last year. Then there is Google's entrance into the space. IBM has also thrown its hat into the ring with the introduction of its own standalone engine, OmniFind.