Xerox Printers - Ultimate Expierience

Xerox Corp. is trying to snag new small-business customers for its color printers with a focus on a particular hue — the green of money. The region’s fourth-largest employer on Monday unveiled two new color printers for small and mid-sized businesses that it said make full-color printing no more expensive than black-and-white.The Xerox Phaser 8860 and 8860MFP both use ink sticks — walnut-sized, waxy blocks resembling lumps of melted crayon — to provide the color.

New developments in ink stick technology have driven down the per-page cost of color printing substantially, said Jim Rise, vice president and general manager of Xerox’s solid ink products business unit. “When we survey our own customers … or we look at third-party market research, consistently we see that the cost of color printing is the No. 1 barrier to adoption for everyday use in the office,” Rise said.

The Phasers were designed and engineered in Xerox’s Webster and Henrietta facilities. They are being produced by Singapore-based Flextronics Ltd., which took over much of Xerox’s manufacturing in 2001. Xerox produces solid ink at its Wilsonville, Ore., plant. “We improved these inks right down to the molecular level,” Rise said. “It’s a brand-new ink formulation.”

The company also invented a new manufacturing process that lets it put more ink in each stick, he said. The two new Phasers are the first to use the new solid ink. The 8860, with a base price of $2,499, is available now, while the 8860MFP, at $3,999, will be available in November. They are aimed at businesses that print 1,000 to 10,000 pages a month. In announcing the new machines, Xerox took a shot at Hewlett-Packard Co., which dominates the color printer business. According to Xerox, the ink sticks to do 14,000 pages would cost $432, while the toner cartridges to do roughly the same amount of color printing on an HP 4700dn would cost $941. The 4700dn machine costs $1,499.

"Hewlett-Packard was largely dismissive of Xerox’s announcement."

Tom Codd, director of marketing for HP’s LaserJet business, said that while the company has looked at solid ink technology, “there are so many drawbacks in the office to it, we chose not to pursue it.” “It does very nice glossy images, but the challenge with the technology is the image is not very durable on the page and it requires a tremendous amount of power to keep that wax in a liquid state,” Codd said.

Along with cost, Xerox also was trumpeting the supposed environmental friendliness of its solid ink technology, saying it generates one-tenth the waste that laser printers do. Xerox introduced its solid ink technology in 1991. With Monday’s announcement, it now has four solid ink printers on the market.