

BERG Little Printer available to pre-order - pmjoyce
http://uk-shop.bergcloud.com/

======
moe
Erm. $300 bucks for a thermal printer, seriously?

Those can be had for $50 on Amazon.

[http://www.amazon.com/High-speed-Receipt-Thermal-Printer-
Bla...](http://www.amazon.com/High-speed-Receipt-Thermal-Printer-
Black/dp/B005HH2YVY/)

~~~
bockris
Also <https://www.adafruit.com/products/597> if you want to have a more
generic case to build around.

~~~
moe
And if you want something that "just works" then you can't go wrong with:

[http://www.amazon.com/Brother-QL-570-Professional-Label-
Prin...](http://www.amazon.com/Brother-QL-570-Professional-Label-
Printer/dp/B000ZHEVZ8)

$90 bucks (3x cheaper than the BERG), automatically cuts the labels, very
fast, linux-support...

~~~
npsimons
Does it really support Linux, or just Linux/ia32? The last Brother printer I
had was binary only for Intel (when I dug into the drivers), which you might
not think important, until you try to put it on your NAS or other server made
of non-Intel (ARM, PPC, etc, etc).

------
mootothemax
Shame, this looks very fun, but for fun purchases, my "I'll buy that right
now!" price limit is usually around the 50 GBP mark. 200 GBP can buy me too
much stuff that is less "just for fun" and more genuinely useful, not to
mention saving towards still more expensive items.

That said, I don't doubt that there are some people that will a) find this
genuinely useful and b) can therefore justify the price.

Best of luck!

------
wazoox
It fails to reveal what problem it solves; it even fails to reveal what use it
could be. The marketing here is beyond terrible, and make it looks like a
useless, expensive gadget.

(Hint: As many, I have way too many gadgets and stuff around; I need another
gadget to be seriously useful to even consider the possibility of acquiring
it).

~~~
cosmotron
Sadly, I couldn't find a link on their site to a video outlining a few of its
uses, but one does exist!

<http://vimeo.com/32796535>

------
highace
Hold on... so we're going back to printing things out again, things that are
easily accessible on our phones or computers? Really? I don't quite understand
why anyone would want this apart from the gimmick factor.

~~~
mootothemax
_I don't quite understand why anyone would want this apart from the gimmick
factor_

I can buy tickets for the local tram/busses/trains on my phone. It's a great
service that works close to flawlessly. If I could print off tickets at home
though, and thus not rely on a network connection (to buy the tickets) and
battery life, I'd do so in a heartbeat.

I think there are plenty of uses for small things like this. Personally, it's
too expensive for me to use for small fun things like this, but I imagine
other people will have more useful ideas that'll make it worth the money.

~~~
unwind
But that kind of usage, which sounds pretty much exactly how you'd use a
desktop printer, is not at all what they seem to be selling. Their idea is
that you should use their cloudy goodness to define a bunch of subscriptions
to pre-curated "publications", which is what get printed on a schedule. So you
could probably get your daily Wired synopsis in the morning, on paper. Or
something.

~~~
mootothemax
_But that kind of usage, which sounds pretty much exactly how you'd use a
desktop printer, is not at all what they seem to be selling. Their idea is
that you should use their cloudy goodness to define a bunch of subscriptions
to pre-curated "publications"_

Yeah, it was more the small form factor that was working for me, rather than
the publications aspect. Basically, I guess that I'm 100% not their target
market :)

------
lazyatom
If you're interested in getting involved in tiny printers, but £200 is more
than you can afford, then you can always make your own:
<http://gofreerange.com/hello-printer>

~~~
osener
This page highlights a bunch of cool use cases for a gadget like this, quick
sudoku puzzles, weather, maps, a few twitter post etc. It would be nice to
have a daily sheet containing these printed out every morning for the bus,
especially if you don't own a smartphone.

------
vitovito
With this announcement, might be a good time to review my design analysis of
the BERG Little Printer. I compared it to a related, unreleased "alternative
printer" project I designed several years ago:

<http://vitor.io/little-printer-design-analysis>

------
bruceboughton
Why does this need its own wifi bridge? This is supposed to be a cool gadget,
yet it can't even use standard wifi?

------
bio4m
Its far too expensive for what it does. in the UK its £200 + shipping, while
you can buy a brand new 7" tablet (the Nexus 7) for £159 + shipping.

And i daresay you'll get much more use out of a tablet than a small printer.
This ones DOA.

unless the price drops to around £19.99 it will never see any traction. (Also
no mention is made of how much the replacement paper rolls will cost; since
its so dependent on consumables that's a glaring omission on their part)

------
one-man-bucket
The €210 price tag is a bit too steep for me. I would have bought one for €60.

~~~
agumonkey
Don't laugh, I read the shipping fees as the total price. I thought it was
adequate.

------
thedangler
I came here to complain about the price. Looks like I don't have to. I still
think it is a nifty idea. My GF wants one for printing off recipes but now
that we know the price, that isn't going to happen.

------
samarudge
Just ordered one. Completely useless, expensive but ridiculously cool. Who's
going to be the first to write a Hacker News publisher for it?

------
Tichy
Hm, it is nonsense, but I can imagine all sorts of random fun happening. One
idea: what if upon press of a button, I could get a printout of the next task
on my TODO list? (I know this is probably not what the BERG cloud does, just
thinking about little printers in general).

~~~
AkThhhpppt
It might be possible: it doesn't cost anything to publish to the Little
Printer, anyway. Publishing app specification dox here
[http://www.bergcloud.com/download/Little_Printer_Publication...](http://www.bergcloud.com/download/Little_Printer_Publications.pdf)

------
BjornW
I like the aesthetics of the hardware, but don't like the environmental impact
this will make.

In my personal opinion design should strive to solve problems or answer hard
to answer questions like 'how can I print without the environmental impact
printing has had for quite some time' instead of creating aesthetically
pleasing toys.

For this same reason I'm in dubio about 3D printing & fablabs in general.
Unless we find a way to re-use materials we're just creating more junk and
roadside litter.

Maybe BERG should rethink Little Printer and let it output eatable paper so we
can use the freshly printed news as part of our breakfast ;)

------
tommorris
BERG Little Printer with UK postage and packing: £205.50

16Gb iPhone 4S on Vodafone's cheapest contract (£26): £219.

Can someone explain why anyone would buy this thing?

~~~
scraplab
Because they're completely different things.

~~~
tommorris
Sure. But the use case of the Little Printer is to get a little daily digest
of interesting and useful things you can take with you. That already exists in
the form of smartphones.

~~~
scraplab
There's many reasons why I like Little Printer, but one of those is that it
upsets so many people who don't understand that the most functional way of
doing things is not necessarily the most enjoyable.

People that don't understand why paper has a role in people's lives, why we
reach for pens rather than tablet computers, and why while we love the
internet, not everyone wants it to use it while stabbing at a glass screen all
the time.

It's OK to not want one, but your anger at the product should be redirected
towards making the tools you prefer, rather than deriding people for theirs.

~~~
tommorris
Anger? Upset? I'm neither. I'm amused that the Hacker News crowd are so
disconnected from reality as to spend £200 on something like this. A friend of
mine on Twitter yesterday pointed out that £200 is enough to clothe her two
kids for a year.

I'll sit back, save my £200, giggle slightly that you call a novelty printer a
"tool" (for what, exactly?) and sigh that making such a pointless device gets
you the adulation of the crack-addled UX design community who seem more
interested in creating "delightful" user experiences than anything that
actually improves the world in a meaningful or tangible way.

~~~
scraplab
Sorry, you just seem very upset about it all.

I don't recognise "crack-addled UX design community" you think this belongs
to. Everyone I know working on Little Printer is intelligent, thoughtful and
very grounded in reality. They've spent a long time working on a product they
want to make, solving difficult problems, from logistics and manufacturing
through to RF and power electronics.

It's expensive, niche and unashamedly beautiful. That's OK. Not everyone has
to be curing cancer 16 hours a day. I'm glad that we live in a world where
people can make silly, enjoyable things too.

It's up to them to produce the product they want to make, and it's up the
market to decide whether it's viable. Everyone makes a different value
judgment, and that's fine.

------
AkThhhpppt
All of you talking about this as a printer appear to have missed the point
very slightly. This isn't a general purpose printer, its more like a
personalized newspaper producer.

Edit: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6nVVdwa3bs>

~~~
tjic
> All of you talking about this as a printer appear to have missed the point
> very slightly. This isn't a general purpose printer, its more like a
> personalized newspaper producer.

I think people are GETTING the point: "that stuff you prefer to view on a
screen? Now you can pay a lot of money to get it in a less useful form-factor:
paper!"

~~~
GFischer
Paper is nice, it's disposable, shareable, etc :) .

However, the sticking point is the "lot of money" part, as many have pointed
out, since tablets became mainstream it will have to compete with them.

------
temas
Their price point seems a bit crazy, my brother just started doing a project
in a similar vein. [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1953425088/mprinter-
an-a...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1953425088/mprinter-an-analog-
printer-for-a-digital-world)

~~~
arscan
Looks cool. Is your brothers project based on this:
<http://gofreerange.com/hello-printer> ?

------
danieldrehmer
It would be nice if one could place this in one's toilet and if the paper it
prints on was toilet paper

------
ryan_s
You know, my mom still prints 80% of her emails. Maybe she needs this.

~~~
beedogs
seriously? make her stop.

------
yitchelle
I don't understand what this printer is trying to solve, or prove, or to
showcase. I mean the webshop is nice, perhaps it is a showcase for their
webshop?

Give me a clue??

------
stcredzero
We're back to "ticker tape." (Except thermal printers have little Steampunk
aesthetic value.)

------
droob
Whimsy goes a long way. People own plenty of things with dubious utility.

