While I wouldn't go nearly as far as the Wall Street Journal in calling Xerox's new ColorQube printer "revolutionary," I will say it's nice to see the company dredge an old technology out of the dustbin to give it another go.

The idea: Replace the liquid ink or particle-based toner in printer cartridges with a third option: solid blocks of colored wax. That wax is heated and melted during the printing process, then sprayed onto the paper as it is fed through the machine.

Xerox has tried this before, beginning in 2004, when it launched the Phaser 8400, a $999 printer using the solid-ink technology. Not much bigger than a black-and-white laser printer at the time, the printer was met with respectable reviews but was dinged for iffy black-and-white text printing. The printer never really caught on in a major way, but various model Phasers are still available today and the technology has rumbled along accordingly.

Now Xerox is doubling down with the ColorQube, which tinkers with the wax formula and ups the price of the printer to a cool $20,000. (The price difference is partly explained by the fact that this is a much faster (85 pages per minute max), larger-capacity printer designed for use by dozens of people at a time in a network setting; the Phaser is more of a personal or small workgroup printer.)

The real sell: You'll save a ton of money vs. traditional color laser prints; by Xerox's math, ColorQube prints are 68% cheaper than laser. There are also minor environmental benefits, as the wax sticks are completely consumed during the printing process; there's no plastic case that has to be discarded or recycled when it runs out of toner. (On the other hand, solid ink printers often use more power because of the heat needed to melt the wax.)

Will cheaper per-page prices convince enterprises to uproot their laser- and ink-based environments in favor of these upscale crayons? For Xerox, which has seen overall office printing start to decline, it certainly hopes so... as long as the printer they're getting rid of isn't another Xerox model.