With the introduction of this new scanner into the market the company now features a full line of scanners that cover the needs of any office.

Tom Schoenleber, future products manager, scanning solutions peripherals group,at Hewlett-Packard Far East, said: 'We are moving into a total new category of low cost ScanJet 4p colour scanners.' The ScanJet 4p scanner extends the capabilities of the user's desktop computer by allowing the easy capture of images and text.

Users can store and retrieve documents and images with little effort by using the bundled Visioneer PaperPort 3.0 paper management software.

This product costs $4,950 at list price. It is targeted at entry level customers.

HP now has 53 per cent of the scanner market share in Hong Kong.

'The introduction of colour products into the market has had a two-year gap, as this is the time it takes for R&D and the expansion of the technology,' Mr Schoenleber said.

Networking and the introduction of better software has caused the expansion of this scanning technology.

'The trend of network scanning in Hong Kong is quite new, but it is a technology that has tremendous growth potential,' he said.

As the technology of scanners has improved people can now scan pictures, text, and documents for e-mail and faxes.

The ScanJet 4p, the first true network scanner in the industry, according to Hewlett-Packard, targets customers such as office professionals who are able to understand the value of the product and its use over a network.

Some of the software that comes bundled with the machine is HP Picture Scan with AccuPage - software developed by HP to increase the quality of scanned images and text.

Mr Schoenleber said HP was at the tip of the ice-berg where we will see scanning technology integrated into the computer world.

There will still be paper documents as people will have the need to manage, communicate and use those documents in an effective way. Scanning will become a common office task like printing.