Inkjet and laser are kind of the Lennon-McCartney of printers. If Len Lauer has its way a new band member called Memjet will soon shake up the printing business. The one-time Sprint and Qualcomm executive is CEO of Memjet, the San Diego company behind the potentially "disruptive" technology. "Yesterday it was inkjet and laser," Lauer told me. "We want people to see [Memjet] as a new category of printing."

Memjet's spiel: printers that are blazing fast and economical. The company says that Memjet-powered printers can spit out high resolution (1600x800 dpi) color prints at 60 pages per minute, compared to rival office laser printers that can do 60 pages per minute but not in color, and inkjet office printers that can do color but at half the speeds.

Lauer says most consumers are pretty satisfied with speeds of their ink jet printers, so Memjet is mostly targeting big and small offices, and other commercial customers. And Memjet plans to sell printers through other brand name manufacturers -- the classic "Intel Inside" kind of approach.

At the Consumer Electronics Show, Memjet announced that Lenovo will be the first to come out with an office printer based on the technology. It'll launch first in China for about $600. But U.S. printers based on the technology are also expected out in 2011.

Memjet isn't claiming prints that are superior to existing laser or high quality inkjet, but just as good. The print quality on the samples I saw -- documents, photographs, color labels and packaging -- were top grade. But while you can certainly print pictures of decent quality, Memjet says the office printer that I saw demonstrated is not a photo printer.

In addition to faster speeds, Memjet says its inks are more affordable, about a nickel per page, versus 12 to 25 cents for laser toner.

The key to the technology is a page wide print head with more than 70,000 ink nozzles, 17 times traditional printheads. The printers can deliver more than 700 million drops of ink per second on a page. Memjet claims more than 3000 global patents.

In a Las Vegas hotel suite, Memjet showcased its technology across several different kinds of printers, including photofinishers and printers for professional packaged labels, complete with color.

Memjet hasn't revealed partners beyond Lenovo. But when I asked Lauer if a big name in the business such as Hewlett-Packard was more likely to be seen as a potential rival or a potential partner, he chose the latter.