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ow the new revolution in printing technology has arrived. I'm talking on the Memjet technology developed by SilverBrook Research, based in Australia.

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 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.

She said they were ideal for home users, particularly those who frequently made prints of their digital photos.

Silverbrook Research began developing Memjet in 1994 but was only ready to commercialise it in 2006.

Memjet has been criticised for taking too long to reach the market but Beswick insisted printers would be on sale this year and deals with manufacturers had been signed.

"On a traditional inkjet head the head scans back and forth to create the page, but with Memjet the print head is fixed in the printer and the paper just runs underneath it, so you essentially avoid the scanning back and forth, which improves the performance dramatically," she said.