Stephen Withers
Monday, 16 April 2007 21:31
IT Industry -
Market
Page 1 of 3
Hewlett-Packard has announced a new family of multifunction printers using some smart technology, but you can't buy one.
The CM8050 and CM8060 MFPs use the company's
Edgeline printheads to cover the width of an A4 page without moving.
There's more intellectual property in Edgeline than 99 percent of
technology companies have in their entire IP portfolio, said Gary
Cutler, vice president and general manager of Edgeline
technologies, imaging and printing group, Hewlett-Packard Asia/Pacific
and Japan.
Copying continues to drop relative to printing - perhaps due in part to
the HP-championed shift from 'print and distribute' to 'distribute and
print' over the last decade. Edgeline provides "the lowest cost colour
printing with no trade-off in quality," said Cutler.
"It's not just a technology, it's also an architecture" that HP will use for 10 to 15 years, said Cutler.
The combination of fixed printheads and the revolving drum (which he
called "an outstanding piece of technology") gives speed, accuracy,
quality and simplicity.
The CM8000 series "will set the standard for performance, reliability and cost," said Cutler.
Other companies have expressed interest in the technology, and while
manufacturing a similar printhead would be relatively easy (HP uses
techniques from semiconductor manufacturing), replicating the drum
would be a bigger challenge for a competitor.
What about reliability?
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