Apart from building their own printers, HP's technology is also used in a wide range of niche market products such as the Pitney Bowes' new Print+ Messenger Color Inkjet System that is built specially for printing customized marketing messages on envelopes during high-speed mail insertion.

Pitney Bowes says this new technology will help mailers improve their efficiency by eliminating preprinted envelopes, the Print+ Messenger allowing them to print on the fly company logos, mailing and return addresses, and postal barcodes when the envelope travels along the inseter.

The systems uses a fast drying ink that does not require a dryer and can operate at speeds up to 20,000 mailpieces per hour, so this doesn't have that much in common with your ordinary, everyday printer.

“We talk a lot about innovation at Pitney Bowes, and the Print+ Messenger Color Inkjet System is further evidence that we back up this talk with action that directly benefits our customers,” said Ramesh Ratan, president of Pitney Bowes Document Messaging Technologies.

“By bringing our proprietary intelligent variable transport and integrity tracking and software together with HP’s world-renowned printing expertise, we have created something unique in the marketplace.

That’s exciting,” if you are a marketeer that is.

So, would to many of us find a use for this thing?

I highly doubt it, but if you are searching for a high-volume envelop printing system then you will be happy to know that Pitney Bowes is already accepting orders from U.S. customers for the Print+ Messenger Color Inkjet System, although customers outside the United States still have to wait some time until this will arrive to them.