Xerox 8560 manual Evaluating Workgroup Colour Printers, Section, Evaluate Printing Performance

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Evaluating Workgroup Colour Printers

While the benefits of colour are easy to see, evaluating colour printers for purchase and deployment into your business can be more challenging. Based on years of experience and research into the real-world needs of colour printer users, Xerox has identified some key issues for you to consider as you conduct your colour printer evaluations.

Workgroup printers are typically shared by as many as 25 people on a day-to-day basis; even more people are likely to use it on a sporadic basis. Further, larger workgroups often comprise employees who work off of different platforms and operating systems — such as Microsoft Windows®, Apple Mac® OS or Linux® — so driver support for multiple platforms is another important factor. Further, many small- and medium-size businesses interested in adopting colour printers lack full-time IT staff — so the machines they ultimately deploy must be strong performers with broad interoperability that are simultaneously easy to install, manage and use.

Currently, the single most common use of colour printing technology is print media creation for your company’s customers and partners. Such media includes marketing and sales collaterals, reports, proposals, user guides and the like. As workgroup colour printer utilisation grows more pervasive, traditional black and white documents will be transposed for colour prints, which will improve end user retention and understanding of their content.

Regardless of application or environment, the following areas remain very important factors when customers contemplate purchasing a colour printer.

Evaluate Printing Performance

More than just pages per minute, the overall printing performance of a colour printer indicates whether it can support the workload of your busy employees.

Evaluate Print Quality

Think about the intended audience for the documents this printer will ultimately produce. Is the print quality good enough to enhance your internal documents and dazzle your customers?

Evaluate Installation

The colour printer you choose must be quick and easy to install, whether you have IT staff on hand to assist or not.

Evaluate Ease of Use

Your employees need a printer that’s simple and intuitive to use on a daily basis: Supplies must be easy to replace and issues must be easy to resolve.

Evaluate Management

Examine the tools available for IT administrators in larger organisations to manage printer settings, user access, printer status and more.

Your challenge is to evaluate the colour printers available on the market today and choose the one that most completely meets your company’s needs in each of these areas. This section of the Evaluator Guide will examine each of these areas, suggest ways you can evaluate a prospective product candidate against that requirement, and explain how the Phaser 8560 solid ink colour printer exceeds the expectations of colour printer users on all counts.

PHASER 8560 EVALUATOR GUIDE

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