High- Volume Copiers
February 1, 2008
- While a color copier is the sexy product that salespeople will want you to buy, the black-and-white copier is still the mainstay of most offices and far less expensive to operate.
- Take monthly duty cycles with a grain of salt. Use them for comparison purposes, but don’t expect to get the full page count month in and month out.
- All prices given are list prices (suggested retail price); the reality is that you should be able to buy these products for 25% or more off, if you negotiate.
- While there used to be big gaps in quality and reliability between vendors, those gaps have narrowed. Determine your requirements and get bids from several vendors.
- 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.
- 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.
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In most cases, it is less expensive to buy the added functions (printing, scanning, and/or faxing) in a prepackaged configuration, rather than to add these functions at a later time.
- While not all buyers need advanced accounting and security features, most vendors are now offering increasingly sophisticated solutions in these areas. That might be the differentiator between two similar products.
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Duplex (two-sided) output is a major plus in terms of saving on paper costs, but you’ll have to instruct users on how to use it and keep after them to use that feature.
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Faxing is an expensive option on most copier-multifunctionals, even though it costs vendors relatively little to add it on. It might be more cost effective to buy a standalone fax or printer multifunctional if you need it.
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Faxing might be a nice extra, but scanning to email is becoming a far more convenient and efficient solution for document distribution.
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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.
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