Explosive growth ahead for coated ink jet paper?

While ink jet printers have found a niche for use with personal computers at home, the broad potential for office applications, wide format graphic arts, commercial pre-press proofing, and commercial web fed printing has remained relatively untapped.

Until recently, shortcomings in hardware, software, inks, and paper all stood in the way of major gains for ink jet printing in desktop and commercial markets. For the most part, desktop ink jet publishing equipment has been slow and unreliable, and color images have not been vivid and crisp. Moreover, the cost of consumables, such as coated paper and ink cartridges, has been considered high.

But today, ink jet …