After a decade of dawdling, inkjets pick up speed

cy

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HP's new Officejet Pro L7000 series of all-in-one inkjets offers street prices starting around $300 and speeds of 35 pages per minute in monochrome and an impressive 34 ppm in colour. Printing costs are claimed to be 1.5 cents per page in monochrome and six cents in colour. That makes them not merely faster than comparable laser printers, but 25% cheaper to run as well.

Kodak, meanwhile, has just surprised the printer industry with a range of inkjets that undermine the traditional business model. Its EasyShare 5000 series of all-in-one machines starts around $150 and can print 32 ppm in monochrome and 24 ppm in colour.

The real advantage of the Kodak machines is not even their speed, but the cheapness of their sophisticated six-colour ink system. Black cartridges go for a bargain $10 and the five-ink colour cartridge (cyan, magenta, yellow, a second black, and a clear protective coating) for an extraordinary $15, less than half the normal price.

http://www.economist.com/daily/columns/techview/displaystory.cfm?story_id=8946898


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I wonder if the nozzles clog faster as well? :crackup:

I got really sick of clogging inkjets and purchased an HP Colour Laser a few months ago. It's network ready as well so I plugged it into the router and any PC in the house can print to it!

But... that is one fast inkjet! I wonder if the ink gets to dry before the next page comes out.
 
I don't think anyone will be able to produce an inkjet that can compete with laser printers across the board, except for detailed photos and color graphics.

A laser can run full-speed at its highest quality and resolution settings. Plus they're more reliable, easier to service, and the ink is solid black, glossy, and waterproof.

Inkjets usually are running in economy draft mode at ther top end. My old Lexmark Z65 inkjet was rated at something like 20ppm but everything looked like a fax at that speed.
 
I checked out the new Kodac's hoping they would be a good alternative but they ended up behaving like they were 5 year old inkjets. The one I played with spit out prints wet to the touch from the gobs of ink they used. Also after 5 minutes of plugging in my usb drive it only found 14 pics (there were 32 on the card) whereas on the HP next to it it instantly found all the pictures. I was severely underwhelmed by them.
 
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