Want to get photo enthusiasts worked up into lather – try mentioning the Australian printing technology called Memjet. This technology, which uses page wide 70,400 nozzle printheads using picoliter (one trillionth of a liter – you can’t see it with the naked eye) that promises three things: 1)Unbelievably fast printing of color images – true 30 pages per minute of full color images with 60 pages per minute for mixed color plus B+W; 2)equally impressive 1600DPI or better resolution; 3)yet lower cost for the printer ($200-300) and per page (2cents) than current inkjets with smudge free prints. Memjet expects to deliver components in early 2008 for printer to appear in late 2008 early 2009.
Now here is the reaction on the Web to this technology:
Texyt – skeptical but impressed by the patents and 3rd party corroboration
Imaging Resources – awe struck and … perhaps jabbering
PCMagazine – also skeptical, but gets the performance story right on
Impact Lab – says they are coming and very impressive
Allbusiness – also expects Memjet technology to happen
As you can see there is still a good deal of suspicion, but as more samples of the real thing get viewed in action, that skepticism seems to be breaking down. This technology, called “a fraud” by Kodak CEO A. Perez, has caused HP to speed up its rival technology- Edgeline which also uses page wide printheads. PCMagazine is saying Edgeline looks solid too. So expect in the next 6-8 months for printing technology to take a significant boost in performance.