New York, NY – We first posted about Memjet printers a few months back when we picked up a story from a WSJ blog and then interviewed VP of Marketing Kim Beswick shortly thereafter. At the time, there were some developments on the horizon that she was not able to address, but now according to PC Magazine’s M. David Stone, Memjet printers are beginning to show up.
Here’s a quick rundown for those that may have missed Memjet over the past few years. The technology was announced back in 2007 with promises of faster printers than anyone had ever seen (60ppm to be exact) available by 2008. These ultra-fast printers were going to retail between $200 and $300. In the WSJ blog entry, Charles LeCompte of Lyra Research was quoted as saying “They’ve missed a bunch of deadlines.”
The skepticism surrounding these machines was beginning to look somewhat justified with no Memjet printers appearing in either 2008 or 2009. Now in 2010, however, Memjet has released four printers one after the other recently. Before you go dumping your old printers and running to the store to buy a Memjet printer, note that these printers are not home office printers, but instead are label printers from RENA Systems, Addressing and Mailing Solutions, Impression Technology Europe, and OWN-X Industrial.
This first group of label printers will serve as a testing ground for Memjet from which they can appraise how their technology (with 2,600+ patents and growing) will function. As Stone reports, once enough feedback is gotten from the label printers, then the next phase of Memjet technology to hit the market will be office printers. No dates have been predicted or announced at this time, but his contact at Memjet intimated that the next phase of “home and office printers and wide format printers aren't all that far behind.”
