I found this article in the Sydney Morning Herald. If it's correct, it looks like we're about to enter the next generation of printing technology - and I can't wait!
Home printers capable of spitting out a colour page in a second are expected to be released around the world this year, made possible by technology developed by a research firm in Sydney.
The new Memjet technology was developed by Silverbrook Research, based in Balmain.
The research company has licensed the technology to Memjet Home and Office, which is working with printer manufacturers to integrate it into new printer models. A working prototype is on display at the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
Kim Beswick, Memjet's VP of marketing, said that, despite some delays, printers using Memjet technology would be on the US market later this year, before coming to Australia in early 2010.
"We've had inkjet and laser for 25 years and Memjet is essentially a new generation of printing," she said.
"It's a second per page and there's almost no warm-up time, and it prints that continuously - there's no difference in how fast the first page prints versus the fifth page."
Existing colour printers capable of printing a colour page every second are large enterprise models costing in excess of $10,000.
Beswick said Memjet allowed printer manufacturers to produce compact home models with similar speeds in the $US300-$US500 price range.
There's more information at the link.
If they can reduce the media costs (i.e. ink, or whatever this new technology uses) it'll be a Godsend. I'm fed up with having to pay through the nose for ink-jet cartridges, or laser printer toner cartridges, that never last as long as claimed, and end up costing vastly more than the printer itself.
I did a study of the HP 21 black ink cartridge used by my HP 3900-series printer. Each cartridge holds only 15 ml. (½ a fluid ounce) when refilling it, and HP fill it with LESS than that when they ship it. Even being generous, and assuming that HP sends me a cartridge with 15ml., the cost works out to about a dollar per milliliter, or about $30 per fluid ounce - $3,840 per US gallon! Compare that to Waterman fountain pen ink, which costs less than $4 per fluid ounce, or about $500 per US gallon! And that's only for black ink - color ink cartridges average out even more expensive. Talk about price gouging . . . sheesh!
I'll be looking for this new technology. Sounds like it might make all our lives a lot easier - and, hopefully, cheaper!
Peter
Inkjetstore.com. They have my cartridges for less than half of what the store charges.
ReplyDeletelaserjets are also now in the consumer price range, with low models under $300. I'm not really worried about print speed so much as economy, and toner is a much better deal than ink.