Inkjet printing has a low-end image that HP is trying to shake off.

The Edgeline printing technology the company introduced last (southern) spring in a commercial 6x4in photo printer has now been used in a new multifunction printer aimed at enterprise customers.

The HP CM8060 multifunction printer sports some neat technology.

Rated at up to 60 pages per minute, the CM8060 uses fixed Edgeline printheads with a total of over 50,000 nozzles to cover the entire width of an A4 page at once. The heads remain stationary while the paper is carried under them on a rotating drum.

One set of nozzles is used to squirt a bonding agent onto the paper wherever an ink drop is going to be placed. This agent makes the pigment in the ink bind to the cellulose fibres, so the pages emerge smudge-resistant and highlighter-proof. The agent also allows the inks to be formulated with less water, so there's less curling and wrinkling too.

HP's Gary Cutler introducing the new Edgeline MFP range at a Beijing media event.

Apart from the technology, the interesting thing is that you can't buy a CM8060. It's only available as a Managed Printing Service (MPS), which means HP looks at your printing requirements and then installs and looks after an appropriate set of hardware.

The CM8060 is likely to be used for a workgroup of approximately 50 people producing around 20,000 pages per month with 60 percent in mono and 40 percent in colour).

HP's pretty tight-lipped about the cost, but claims the CM8060 is 30 percent cheaper than the industry average for colour printing.

Instead of paying for the printers, consumables and so on, you're billed a fixed charge plus a per-click fee. Exactly how much you pay depends (among other things) on how well you negotiate, but the Korea Exchange Bank reckons moving to MPS is going to slash around 20 percent from its total printing costs.

Why the fixed charge? I think the idea is to discourage customers from overestimating their print volume in the hope of getting a cheaper page rate.

If 60ppm isn't fast enough for you, HP says the technology could easily be scaled up to 140ppm - and astoundingly, the reliability will increase along with the performance.