May 23, 2005

The Printing Wars - Which One To Choose? Xerox? HP? Dell/Lexmark?...

In April I wrote about Xerox's latest multi-function color laser printer. It is a beauty of a machine.

This month Hewlett-Packard released a new set of printers geared toward the SMB market as well. These printers range in price and are different offerings than that of Xerox's most recent offerings, but either way, when buying a printer and looking at two similar types of printers it's really hard to know which one is for you. Xerox's David Bates, Director of Product Marketing gives some insight.

He explains that with quality of all printers being pretty good, to not only focus on a printer's price but to consider things such as how many people will be using this printer. How friendly is it in a multi-user environment? A printer for one person is going to be used differently than a printer for many people.

He also said to consider what KIND of printing you'll be doing. Will you be doing many different kinds of printing or just plain, simple printing all the time.

If you find yourself often going to an outside print shop to print, consider if you can buy a printer that can help you bring some of that printing into your office.

A few metrics that are good to think about include:

- First page out. Although this aspect of printing is often overlooked it's very important for everyday use as you, or a group of 20 of you, don't want to be waiting and waiting for prints all day. In some ways, the first page out is more important than pages per minute.

David also recommends that you find out what is the total number of times you'll need to visit the printer per 100,000 prints. How many times must you change ink, load paper, make repairs and etc.

Like many other technology products that are quickly becoming commodities, David said that if all you want to do is print and you don't care about anything else, Xerox might not be the lowest cost alternative. If yo

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