The venue for the meeting was the premises of O'Neil Data Systems, the Los Angeles, California-based digital specialist. O'Neil carries out more than 40m impressions per month and was one of the first to install a T300.

From the technical perspective, I have to admit to being totally blown away by what I saw. The developments that HP showed me were far in advance of anything I had expected.

The two samples that most impressed me were a picture of butterflies, printed on heavyweight HP glossy media, and a picture of a girl surrounded by flowers printed on lightweight non-glossy media.

Compared with output from the forthcoming Kodak Prosper press platform (of which I have been fortunate enough to get a preview), the T300 performed well. Without being able to see the same subject printed on the two presses it is difficult to do an exact comparison, but I would say it was at least as good as the Kodak press and totally acceptable for commercial quality print.

What really amazed me was the colour output on lightweight paper. This was stunning, with crisp, sharp imaging, smooth skin tones, very clean text reversals and minimal show-through. The T300's full potential for lightweight applications was demonstrated with a book printed as a test.

This was a typical educational publication - full colour on lightweight paper - and was shown alongside an offset-produced version. The results were remarkable, the inkjet-printed book was better quality with sharper image detail in the shadow areas. And that's output from a real production environment, not just HP's showroom.

HP has also claimed the press is very reliable; in the month in question only four printheads needed replacing, far fewer than the manufacturer had predicted.

Commercial development
HP also provided some details of how the press is performing in the market. The first installations are now running in production at a number of customers. The first European installation, at CPI in France, produced its first 2,000-run book in mid November. A further order has been taken in Italy by Rotolitho Lombardi for the production of colour books. This installation is particularly interesting as Rotolitho is the parent company of RotoMail, one the largest Kodak Versamark customers in the world.

Another major announcement for the future of the HP inkjet web press operation was with Pitney Bowes and its launch of the IntelliJet Printing System. Pitney Bowes is increasingly HP's partner of choice for many markets, particularly the transactional markets. The IntelliJet system is a T300 linked up with the Pitney Bowes Production Intelligence software and finishing equipment.

This represents a tremendous agreement for HP as Pitney Bowes is one of the leading suppliers into these markets, but has never offered a full printing system before. This will be a real boost for HP's technology in entering the transactional market space.

The T300 is one of the reasons why I am so bullish about HP's high-speed inkjet printing operations. HP is capitalising on proven inkjet technology that it has already been selling in high volumes in other sectors. The output quality can be shown with the systems HP provides for the photo processing market, where thousands of print systems are installed using the same printheads as those used in the T300.

The printhead versatility is also shown by the use of the same printheads in the wide-format display market on the HP Designjet 25500 and 65500 printers using HP's new Latex inks.

Unlike some other suppliers, HP is bringing proven technology that is already in mass manufacture into the high-speed and high-quality graphic arts and transactional markets. I fully expect to see a massive ramp-up of installations of these inkjet web presses into a wide range of companies starting in 2010.

Andrew Tribute is a journalist and consultant in digital pre-press and pre-media marketing technology. Visit: www.attributes.co.uk