Lexmark X658de Series

Here we are, a printer company that has the choice and knowledge between 9 different printer manufacturers for our printing needs (AMT, HP, Lexmark, Ricoh, Xerox, Okidata, Printronix, Tally, and Kyocera)…  Needless to say, we have many options.  So, when we were choosing what we were going to use internally, what did we choose, and why?  You will see we are not “married” to any particular manufacturer.  Like you, we have daily business needs and the label on the outside of the box does not matter as much as the function of the box.  So, here is a quick overview of what we use and why.

Color Printing:

In our office, you will find 2 color printers that get used.  The Xerox Phaser 7760 gets used primarily because we get a good deal on a demo unit and can sell the device after 6 months for $1,500 off the list price and essentially not pay for toner.  It does an awesome job on color, so we like it…  plus it is fast.  Most customers do not enjoy the same benefit, so I would not personally recommend emulation of us unless you need really high quality color prints and color matching is crucial to you.

For the heavy fill flyers, we use the Xerox Phaser 8860. This printer is far cheaper than any other printer in the color laser class.  Granted, it is not technically a laser printer (it is solid ink), but it’s quality is equal to or superior to a laser printer and you could use the same device and pay $.03 per color page or if you have heavy coverage, you can pay $.06 or so and have unlimited ink on a page…  We do too many of these to use a HP or other Xerox product.  We’d spend $500 to $1,000 per month more if we used anything else and get lesser quality.

Black and White Copier:

We use the Lexmark X658dfe multifunction device.  Why? At $4,000 it prints, copies, scans, faxes, collates, staples and is by far the easiest multi-function device on the market to use.  We did not want to spend an hour training 15 different users.  We plugged in the device and people started using it.  Plus, it is a blazing fast 55 pages per minute.  It does not do tabloid, which we are OK with.  Different people will differ on this point, but we don’t need tabloid (11 X 17) capability.  We are OK with Letter and Legal sizes.

Are there other great options?  Of Course there are.  The tricky part is each business has to evaluate their own needs and assess the costs and benefits of different manufacturers for their office.  Or, better yet, if you are in the Denver, Colorado Springs, Fort Collins area and have a copier or color printer need, I’d be happy to schedule an on-site visit so we can go over all of the options and make sure you are running as efficiently as possible.

Xerox WorkCentre 7328

Selling Xerox products is interesting because Xerox does stuff from a Marketing perspective which is too obvious for most consumers to appreciate.  In fact, most tend to get annoyed by they way they structure their offerings, but I am writing to let you know about a few of them.  I am not going to defend Xerox or to condemn Xerox.  You see, the way I look at this market, I ASSUME there will always be “tricks” to know.  I am glad about this because it keeps me employed.  If everything were super simple, I would not have a lot of value and you probably would not be looking at a blog like this to help you sift through all of the information.

What I would like to do is addeess some of the pricing structures as it relates to the Xerox product line specifically.

First, what the difference between the Xerox Phaser 8560MFP and the Xerox Phaser 8860MFP?  Can I be honest here?  I assume so since it’s my blog…  the difference between the 8560 and the 8860 is simply a diffence in the size of ink blocks and pricing for those blocks and the price of the units themselves.  The 8560 is about $2,000 and the wax winds up costing about $.11 at 20% coverage.  If you don’t know what coverage really means, you should watch the video link on the side of this page!!  The 8860 is about $4,000 and costs $.035 per page.  Basically there is a $2,000 difference and a $.075 per color page price difference.  At 26,000+ pages total (or just under 750 per month for 3 years)… you’d be better off buying an 8860.  If you are printing 300 pages a month, buy a 8560 as it won’t make up the differential in costs.

The Xerox WorkCentre 7335 and the Xerox Phaser 7760 has the same thing happening.  Again, the engine is the same, but the operational costs are a lot different.  If you were to pay about $10,000 for the Xerox 7335 or $5,500 for the 7760, again it would seem that it would take forever to make up the difference…  We are looking at about a cost of $.09 for the WorkCentre 7335 or $.14 for the Phaser 7760 (same coverage rules apply)… So the cross over where the 7335 makes more sense is 90,000 pages or 2,500 a month for 3 years. 

There are more examples with Xerox and if you have questions, give me a call and we can go over your situation in detail.

Xerox Phaser 8860

The Xerox Phaser 8860 is basically the same from an unboxing standpoint as the 8560MFP.  It is extremely easy.  Start to finish is somewhere around 40 minutes (15 of which is just waiting for the device to warm up). The advantage of the Phaser 8860 compared to any copier in the marketplace right now is the cost to create a color page.  The Phaser 8860 boasts that it can print color for the price of Black and White…  that’s a little misleading, but it does do color for under $.04 per page which is remarkable.

The Xerox 8860 does do a great job with color quality and is worth looking at if you do high coverage.  Another nice thing is that with the right reseller (like denvercopier.com) you can pay a fixed cost per color page and put as much color as you want on the page.  Realtors and Marketing groups really benefit by looking at the Xerox 8860 printer for high volume or high coverage.  Low volume users (less than 1,000 color prints per month) should consider the Phaser 8560 due to its lower acquisition cost.

For High Volume 5 Stars out of 5.

For more pricing information call Jesse @ 720.280.8426 or visit:

http://www.laserprintercenter.com/LaserPrinters/Xerox_Phaser_8860_MFP_1151.htm