Mobiles fail to communicate

After spending some time on the dole, I landed my first office job and saw my first fax machine. This was back in the 1980s when shoulders were overpadded and fax machines were the size of small cars. Thermal fax paper had a shelf life of about seven days before yellowing set in, forcing it to lead a vampire-like existence in which contact with sunlight meant instant death. The overdue arrival of plain paper fax machines was the final stake in the heart of thermal paper.

Yet like a contrived Hammer Horror sequel, the son of the bride of fax paper is back with a vengeance. Ticket machines, retail tills and so on mostly use a new generation of thermal paper that can survive exposure to light and is much more resistant to heat and chemical self-destruction.

As Pentax Technologies points out, it's also the only sensible solution for portable printers - the company's thermal PocketJet II series uses no moving parts, requires no refills, and the relative simplicity of the printhead allows it to take up barely any space at all.

What's the catch? Well, it isn't the cost. Thermal paper is a bit pricey at around £30 per ream - compared with £2.99 for plain paper - but remember there are no other consumables to buy, so you don't have to fork out for an ink cartridge every other week. No, the problem is that a PocketJet can only print on Pentax paper. So as well as a laptop and portable printer, mobile staff have to carry around a supply of Pentax's special thermal stock, perhaps keeping a spare pack in the boot of their car and praying that it won't be too hot that day.

Herein lies the problem with many desirable new gadgets: they are too limited when it comes to working with other vendors' products. Staying with the personal printing example, consider Canon's latest compact photo printers, the CP-220 and the entirely battery-powered CP-330. You can print via cable or wirelessly from your digital camera, beautifully demonstrating the Canon global philosophy of Kyosei, "living and working together for the common good". Except that it won't work with my digital camera, or any other camera which does not licence Canon's proprietary PictBridge technology.

Now consider Epson's Bluetooth-enabled printers. Thanks to a freely downloadable Symbian-based application, camera-phone users can now print their pictures wirelessly. This is a great idea, except that it only works with four handsets, all from Nokia. Epson plans to extend support to other handsets in future, but still only to Nokia devices. Needless to say, sod's law dictates that I have a Sony Ericsson.

Assuming you're not one of the fabled "network Nazis" who strictly dictate which devices are allowed in your firm, I suspect your users do not all use Nokia mobile phones, Canon digital cameras and the right kind of thermal paper.

For all your boardroom pleading and inter-departmental memos, the actual installed base of mobile and wireless kit at your organisation is probably what American politicians might describe as "multi-faceted" or "cross-textural", otherwise known by the European technical term "shambolic".

While I appreciate the need for vendors to preserve some commercial advantage, surely products with better interoperability could clean up in the market?