Not for sale: HP to lease Edgeline printers

Instead, customers wishing to get their hands on the device will have to negotiate a service contract based on cost per page, directly with HP or through its appointed channel partners, Commander, Data#3 and ImageTech.

HP did not disclose a pricing model for the contracts and said each would be determined by a customer’s specific needs.

Commander, Data#3 and ImageTech were each signed in April for 12 month contracts as the three exclusive partners to take the HP CM8060 and HP CM8050 models to market. The devices are being aimed at businesses with high-volume printing requirements.

According to, HP imaging and Printing Group commercial and enterprise manager, Luke Duggan, the three partners have already shipped “several hundred” of the devices across Australia and New Zealand.

“The initial contract is 12 months with a review in October, but we’re very pleased with how our selected partners are developing so far,” Duggan said. He added that HP would be open to new bids once the contracts had expired.

The Edgeline technology was publicly unveiled in its prototype form last October but has been kept under wraps since. The technology features two adjacent four-inch wide printheads that distribute a patented ink formula across the breadth of a page in one pass. Each printhead is made up of five smaller interlacing printheads which contain 10,000 nozzles each.

HP claims that this arrangement not only results in an average printing speed of 60 pages per minute (ppm) for black only images, 50 ppm for colour images and a costs saving of up to 25 percent.

But aside from faster printing and cost savings, HP is also hoping that the greener side of the technology will help sell units to companies and government agencies eager to jump on the green bandwagon.

Both the HP CM8060 and HP CM8050’s exteriors are constructed from recyclable plastic panels while the internal components are made from stainless steel to promote longevity.

Additionally, as the printers rely on chemical bonding rather than heating methods when printing images and texts to the paper, the printers use only two thirds of the power required to run comparable laser printers, Duggan said.

HP representatives also said that the Edgeline’s use of ink rather than Laser toner means the device is free from coronas that create ozone, fixing agents and the ultra-fine particles from Laser printers that have been said to cause health risks.