HP ePrint really works: eMails and attachments printed from the cloud (video)

We don't blame you if you missed this the first time round, but HP's ePrint service is probably best seen in action anyway. Fortunately, our brethren over at Engadget Chinese had the opportunity to play with these new web-connected printers recently. The idea is that each ePrint printer gets a unique email address, meaning you can send in a document from any email-enabled device to get it printed, thus eliminating the hassle of finding a computer and drivers or installing an app on certain smartphones and tablets. So how does one go about setting up this bad boy? According to our sister site, you must first register your printer on HP's ePrintCenter website to obtain a randomly-generated email address (don't worry, you can always get a new one if necessary), and then you're good to go, literally. Read on to find out if ePrint's as straightforward as it sounds.

Once registered, any email sent to the printer will first be screened by HP's ePrintCenter for viruses and spam (white and black lists supported) before the email body and supported attachments (PDFs, JPEGs, and Microsoft Office documents; no more than 5MB in total) are printed. As you'd expect, all of this scanning and downloading over the web does incur additional delay -- in Engadget Chinese's hands-on video below, it took about 30 seconds before the email started printing (this already excludes the ten seconds taken up by a previous document), and then the attached image (258KB) followed about a minute later. Of course, this one test alone isn't enough to judge ePrint's performance, but it sure seems to work.