CES 2007: HP bigs up new DLNA technology
You know when your computer goes arse over tit and you do a clean install, then can’t find half of your driver CDs, and are forced to spend several hours trawling company support sites looking for the right driver software? That could soon be a thing of the past (for printers anyway). A new technology called DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) is a future alternative, possibly a replacement, to Universal Plug and Play, aka UPnP.
Where as UPnP lets you attach devices to any machine, but then requires you to install the appropriate drivers, DLNA will make everything work as soon as it is attached, without any further intervention from yourself. Although this currently happens on a smaller scale with things like USB thumbdrives, the demonstration showed the technology working by simply plugging a printer into a network connection. A Bluetooth USB dongle was attached to the DLNA demo machine and that meant we were able to print photos straight off with to a newly attached printer without a moment spent configuring software.
