TORONTO (djc) – Broadcasting simultaneously to 10 cities around the world including Toronto, Düsseldorf and London, Xerox Corp. today announced the launch of small-office printers featuring faster speeds, improved print quality and competitive pricing.
An estimated total of 3,000 guests including customers, analysts and members of the media, witnessed Xerox’s annual launch event in New York. Xerox, coming off a highly profitable quarter, looks poised to make bold moves into the small- and medium-sized office with its new line of printers.
Phaser Series:
The new Phaser 8400 is the first office colour printer using Xerox’s solid ink technology platform, capable of hammering out incredibly vibrant prints at 24 pages per minute (ppm), on almost any type of paper stock. It is now available in Canada for $1,399.
Solid ink technology uses compact, uniquely shaped and numbered ink sticks that are extremely simple to load. Solid ink sticks are consumed entirely, resulting in about one-tenth the waste of an equivalent inkjet printer. At the New York gala, Xerox demonstrated how the waste from an equivalent Hewlett-Packard unit would fill several large garbage bags while the detritus from Xerox’s offering could fit into a little red garden cart.
Xerox introduced the technology in 1991, although at the time the quality was far lower and the price more than five times higher; the Phaser 8400 uses 2400 FinePoint technology, affording an image quality similar to 2,400 dpi.
The unit is also 25 per cent lighter and smaller than its incarnations, makes its first printout in six seconds, automatically starts up based on usage patterns and includes a tiny, removable configuration card to facilitate networking, upgrades and tech support.
Xerox simultaneously rolled out two other office printers, the 36-ppm Phaser 4500 black-and-white laser printer and the 35-ppm Phaser 7750 colour laser printer, priced at $1,389 and $7,949 respectively. The 7750 is designed for graphic arts and office professionals
who need high-quality colour output for day-to-day printing and pre-press proofing.
DocuTech Series:
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Doug Lord, president and CEO of Xerox Canada, explains the new technologies to the audience. – Photo: djc Features |
The heavy-duty DocuTech 100 and DocuTech 120 black-and-white copier/printers are designed for the mid-production market segment and can print stunningly high-quality prints at 100 and 120 ppm respectively. Canadian prices start at $99,000.
With a cleaner design for the paper path and dual scan heads, the new DocuTechs are faster and less likely to cause jams. Xerox also included a CD/DVD writer, lowered noise levels and improved pollutant filtering efficiency.
Xerox invested $400 million (US) into developing this new technology and came up with 300 new patents to cover their innovations. Much of the new DocuTech technology, such as its improved donor roll and “touchless” photoreceptor belt, came out of the Mississauga-based Xerox Research Centre of Canada, now celebrating its 30th anniversary.
“Xerox Canada is one of the jewels in the crown of Xerox Corp.,” said Doug Lord, president and CEO of Xerox Canada. “We have a privileged market share in Canada, that’s as strong as anywhere in the world.”
Lord remarked that Xerox, unlike many of its competitors, puts just as much stock into engineering and design as it does distribution and sales, which will give the company an advantage in the years to come.
