HP is winning the battle but Brother may win the war

I read this article earlier this week that HP had developed a high speed photo printer that could print a 4x6 in 14 seconds. While this is sweet I remembered an earlier article that brother had developed an prototype inkjet printer that could print 170 ppm.

The only real difference, aside from speed, is that the Brother printer has a resolution of 600x600 dpi while the hp can go up to 4800x1200 dpi. But before you dismiss the Brother printer because of that keep one thing in mind - Most people don't print photos. And most of those that print photos don't print that many (I personally have used maybe a dozen sheets of photo paper, if that, in my printer in the last year). If I was truly a die hard photo printer I would have two printers anyway (and the non photo printer would be the Brother). And if you are not a diehard then 600x600 can print up a very good photo (check out the brother article and look at the sample).

The only thing I could think of that Borther could do to make the printer better is to have two sets of print heads, one above the paper and one below. That way the printer would automatically duplex (giving you an effective speed of 340 ppm). The only flaw I can see in that is the paper - too much ink on the paper at once could cause it to wrinkle and warp. But if they could get arould that it would be sweet.

:)