HP prepares to dominate the world of printing at its Asia Pacific press launch, with a map of South-East Asia and "New Holland" (Australia).

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Ancient Chinese troops prepare for war ... HP's event was inspired by Sun Tzu's Art of War, with references scattered throughout the venue at Asia Hotel, Beijing.

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Kelly Tan, HP's Asia Pacific vice president for enterprise and speciality printing, imaging and printing group, led the charge and officially opened the event.

Tan claimed that, going forward, HP's Imaging and Printing Group (IPG) is aggressively focused on the enterprise market and that it is "the number one position in the enterprise space if we include the single-function printer and multi-function [laser] printer categories".

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Following on from Tan, and also dressed in military regalia inspired by Chinese history, Gary Cutler, vice president and general manager for Edgeline technologies with its imaging and printing group, took to the stage and presented a new technology, dubbed Edgeline.

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Edgeline uses a page-wide stationary print-head, decreasing wear and tear by removing contact with the paper. A hydrophilic bonding agent is "fused" to the paper before the ink is applied, resulting in near-immediate touch-dry printing.

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He might be beating his own drum, but Cutler is very confident about his new product. "We array these print heads in ways that we move paper underneath and the print head stays stationary ... [which] gives us speed, accuracy, and quality in a very, very simple package," Cutler told reporters at the product launch in Beijing.

Credit: Hewlett-Packard

The Edgeline products are considered to be HP's biggest printer launch since the company introduced its LaserJet line in 1984, Cutler said.

Cutler suggested an average customer for the HP CM8060 Color MFP (multi-function printer), shown above, might print 20,000 pages per month over a four-year contract with 60 percent mono and 40 percent colour printing.

Credit: Hewlett-Packard

An HP spokesperson demonstrates the difference between General Office (left) and Professional (right) A4 colour pages.

With Edgeline, HP has adopted a per-page usage-based pricing model. Pricing is dependant on the quality of the output, with Professional being the most expensive followed by General Office. Colour Accent (pages with a small amount of colour, for example highlighted text) will be charged at the cheaper mono price.

Specific pricing per page was not given at the event.

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HP's two Edgeline printers, the CM8060 and CM8050 MFP's, feature a colour LCD display with full-motion video that guides users through troubleshooting when there is a problem. In addition, LEDs on the printer -- referred to as "digital breadcrumbs" by HP -- lead the way to where a problem is.

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Edgeline uses a drum to move paper while a stationary print head squirts ink onto the paper.

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In addition to Edgeline, HP also showed off two new Designjet large-format printers -- The T1100 and T610. The Designjet printers are targeted at professionals working in technical fields such as design, GIS (geographical information systems), resources, architecture, engineering and manufacturing, as well as general office poster printing.

The Designjet T1100 is priced at US$4,500 and a postscript version (T1100ps) will be close to US$7,000. Pricing on its sibling, the Designjet T610 is yet to be confirmed. The printers will be available from 24 May.

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The Designjet T1100 is up to three times faster than the previous 800 and 1000 series, HP claimed, can print a poster-sized A1 page (594mm x 841mm) in 35 seconds and comes equipped with a 40GB hard drive..

Both Designjets use six HP Vivera ink cartridges (CMYK, matte black and grey) to produce detailed text, lines and photographics. HP claimed line accuracy to 0.1mm and a minimum line width of 0.0423mm.

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Also appearing, the new 9250c Digital Sender is a high-speed, networked document scanner. The device includes a flatbed scanner and is available now, priced at US$3,899. Local pricing is yet to be confirmed.

The Digital Sender can scan up to 33 colour pages per minute (ppm) and 55ppm in mono -- an improvement over the previous model's (9200c) 47ppm limit.

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Also launched at the event, the HP Color LaserJet CM4730 MFP features up to 31 page-per-minute (ppm) copying and printing in black-and-white and colour, first page out in under 10 seconds and a 40GB hard drive.

Available now, it is priced at AU$8,460 (ex. GST).

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Beijing is in overdrive, gearing up for the 2008 Olympics, with references to the Games found all over the city.

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Countdown timers for the Olympics are scattered around Beijing. This one is front and centre outside the National Museum of China, on the eastern side of Tiananmen Square.

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Beijing is not just Olympics crazy. Cricket fans could also keep up to date with the ICC Cricket World Cup 2007.

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