Colour Copiers: What You Need To Know

Colour copiers are the new must-have electronic accessory for any office environment, right? Wrong. We see many businesses spend the bucks on colour and then wish they had gone black and white. That being said, we see many businesses head down the colour path and never look back, it is exactly what they need. Here are some truths about the colour copier and how it will fit into your office landscape.

 

Buy What You Need

Colour copiers are the sexy product that salespeople will want you to buy, but black-and-white copiers are still the mainstay of most offices and far less expensive to operate. Don’t buy more colour than you need.

 

Be Real About Your Use

Take monthly duty cycles with a grain of salt. Use them for comparison purposes only, but don’t expect to get the full page count month in and month out.

 

What is the Cost Per Page

Cost per page is determined by negotiation with your dealer. That cost may be far more important than the sticker price. Make sure you hammer down guarantees before you sign on the dotted line.

 

Don’t Forget About Service

Service is another area that has to be negotiated before you sign a contract. Make sure you have an agreement on how fast the vendor will respond on site to a copier problem.

 

Monitoring Use

Advanced accounting and permission features are very critical with colour, as you’ll want to control unnecessary use of expensive color printing.

 

Prices

In comparing machine prices, be careful to find out whether printing or scanning functions are included in the base quote. What looks like a bargain may be quite expensive when all the goodies (scanning, PostScript, networking) are added on.

 

Speed

Salespeople will boast that their machines are more productive than same-speed machines from other vendors. Our testing has shown that current machines operate at between 85 and 100% of rated speed. The performance gaps are just not a big issue.