I just got back from ICFF, where I saw some amazing things.  But one of the products I found myself thinking the most about wasn't at ICFF, it was this wall mountable printer at the Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial designed by Ransmeier & Floyd.  I have to admit, I've totally come to accept the predictable form and large footprint of most printers, but this concept design has totally changed how I think about printers.  In the days of flat screens, and wireless laptops, there's just no reason why printers shouldn't follow suit.  That said, one of the big printer manufactures should totally make this thing!  I'll buy two!  Also, the way it displays the printouts like a picture in a frame, it could be a great way to share photos with friends and family if you could remotely print directly to the printer.  My only minor critiques of the product are that it looks a little tricky to get your prints out of that little slot.  Seems like if the front were a door, or if it didn't have those side edges it would be much easier to extract the pages.  Also, while the concept for the product is that it prints wirelessly, they didn't really address how it's powered.  Personally, I don't really like the idea of a battery powered printer, but I'm not wild about having a power cord hanging off the printer when mounted to the wall either.  But if forced to choose I think I'd prefer the latter.

Ransmeier & Floyd at Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial
Ransmeier & Floyd

You'd think with hybrid cars and hybrid hard drives, some intrepid company would combine the two dominant printing technologies, laser and inkjet, to make a hybrid printer. The laser would print just black and the inkjet would print color, and the two could even be used on the same page. After all for printing text, the speed and sharpness of a laser printer is best; while for printing color, the price and size of inkjet printers can't be beat. Also, inkjet printers are extremely small and simple, so modifying an existing laser printer into a hybrid inkjet-laser printer shouldn't make it that much larger or more complex than one of those ubiquitous scanner, printer fax machine monsters.

This one is pretty self explanatory, they should really make printers with USB hubs built-in. Computer users the world over would rejoice from the modest reduction of cables, the liberation of an outlet currently used by a powered USB hub, and the elimination of a trivial external computer accessory.

Recently many companies have started making compact, user friendly photo printers which make it easy to print photos from a digital camera, or memory card. However, printing photos is only one part of the transition to digital photograph. Many families still have shoeboxes full of old photos, which if they haven’t taken themselves may have been handed down by grandparents or relatives. So the next need among consumers will be digitizing existing photographs, preferably as quickly and easily as they are used to printing the pictures shot yesterday on a digital camera.