This HP printer doesn't need a PC to print stuff from the Web

— -- Home PCs and printers have gone together ever since there were such things. So it is something of a revelation that the new HP Photosmart Premium TouchSmart Web All-in-One printer that I've been testing doesn't have to be tethered to a computer.

As the world's first Web-connected home printer, it can print directly off the Internet via applications or widgets that appear on its large lift-up touch panel. The $400 multipurpose contraption — it also faxes, copies and scans — is available next week.

HP is pitching convenience. Instead of using a PC to poke around the Web for stuff to print, you'll tap on the widgets, from HP and partners, to print coloring pages and crafts for kids, recipes, newsletters and pictures.

In HP's handy Quick Forms app, you can turn plain paper into graph paper, music sheets, fax cover sheets and more. In another called Tabbloid, you can print daily blogs from a gaggle of sources, covering business, celebrities, politics and other subjects.

You can't just print anything off any website, at least not without connecting the HP to a computer as with a regular printer. There's no browser on the touch panel on the front of the printer, though HP hasn't ruled out adding one.

Instead, you tap those colorful widgets representing the current stable of apps, letting you print such things as movie tickets from Fandango, maps and calendars from Google, discounts from Coupons.com and photos from Snapfish.com. Full disclosure: USA TODAY, which is making certain daily articles available for printing, is another partner.

There are just over a dozen print apps in HP's newly launched App Studio, with many more expected. To fetch them, you tap the Get More icon on the touch-screen.

Ultimately, you'll be able to have as many as 50 apps on the printer at one time. HP has or will be rolling out apps from CNet, Disney, DreamWorks, Nickelodeon, 60 Minutes, Flickr and others.

The apps are free, of course, because the more printing you do, the more paper and ink cartridges HP can sell.

Here's a closer look:

•The basics. The machine uses five ink cartridges. There are separate trays for 8½-by-11 paper and for 4-by-6 photo paper. The printer can handle two-sided copying, handy for saving paper. It prints up to 33 black pages per minute or 32 pages in color, though it's sometimes slow to start printing. Included are slots for the popular memory card types on which you're likely to store photos. The machine also has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, or you can connect through an ethernet cable.

The print quality on photos and prints was good but not exceptional. A few characters of text in newsletters came out slightly crooked.

Quibble: The touch panel was a tad sensitive, so I inadvertently opened an app when I was trying to drag another widget. The Snapfish app sometimes froze.

•Wanting more. HP says the printer is capable of displaying video — movie trailers, for instance. The feature wasn't implemented on my test unit. You'll have to wait until the end of the month, HP says, to print out Fandango movie tickets. Nor can you yet get or print driving directions through a Google Maps app.

And though you can display a print preview on the printer's LCD, there's no zoom function within an app that would let you get close enough to read certain content before choosing to print.

I'd like to see more apps, too — printing boarding passes would seem to be a no-brainer. I also wish you could subscribe to and schedule print jobs so that your chosen newsletters, for example, would automatically print each morning. HP says such functionality is expected next summer.

Though you're not required to use this latest Photosmart with a computer, I still expect most people will want to.

The printer isn't cheap, either, so HP may have a tough sell. Most of us are conditioned to finding stuff on the Internet through a PC and printing as needed. Adding a browser might make the splurge more palatable.

It'll take awhile, but as prices fall, I suspect Web printers will become the norm. Lexmark recently hit the market with its own Web-connected all-in-ones, targeted at small businesses. HP's start is promising. The last chapter is yet to be printed.

E-mail: ebaig@usatoday.com