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Colour printers: making an impact

by Robert Munro

Laser printing may produce the fastest, best quality print for office documents, but a revival in inkjet technology targeted at business users may just be shifting the balance. 

If Alistair Darling is to be believed, and presumably as chancellor he speaks with a degree of authority, the country is facing the worst economic conditions for 60 years.

A grim assessment but it is an ill-wind that blows nobody good and with businesses tightening their belts in anticipation of recession, vendors are cutting their margins to attract customers.

In the printer market, for instance, deals are available that make it a great time to revamp your fleet with the latest technology. 

Current trends

Research by industry analysts Gartner reveals a significant slowdown in growth in the printer market. The combined printer, copier and multifunctional product (MFP) market in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) totalled 23.8m shipped units in the first half of 2008, an increase of just 2.2 per cent.

"The results for the first half of 2008 showed single-digit growth across the print markets in EMEA, with second quarter results showing signs of an economic slowdown, which could continue into the rest of the year," said Gartner analyst Tosh Prabhakar.

The results for the first half of 2008 showed single-digit growth across the print markets in EMEA

Gartner said economic uncertainty had led to caution among consumers and businesses. Sales of consumer and office print devices were down 6 per cent year-on-year in the first half of 2008.

Purchase price is a key component in any future buying decision and the latest InfoTrends' research shows that the cost of the device, the cost of the supplies and the cost of service continue to be the top three factors influencing future buying decisions.

Facing tighter budgets and looking for value for money when upgrading kit, at the top of the list for most customers today is increased productivity, which does not always mean a faster printer. Often, increased productivity relates more to the need for a product with the right set of features and paper handling capabilities to meet customer needs.

InfoTrends is predicting a growth in demand for inkjet printers as business buyers look for more affordable ways to produce office colour. It points out that "office customers are looking to integrate more colour into their documents. They understand the value of colour - particularly for those documents that touch their own customers. At the same time, however, most of them feel that colour printing is too expensive. Considering current customer needs and the benefits of inkjet technology, it makes sense to consider an ink-based page printer for the office. An ink-based page printer could address many of the barriers that are prohibiting growth in office colour pages today." 

Choosing a printer

Broadly speaking, you should ask the following questions before drawing up a shortlist:

• Do you need mono or colour?
• Will you be printing only, or do you need to scan, copy and fax too? If the latter is the case, consider a multifunction device or MFD.
• What is your monthly duty cycle likely to be, a few hundred pages or over 100,000?
• Do you need a workgroup machine and, if so, is it going to be wired or wireless?
• What is the maximum paper size you need to print onto?
• Do you need extra features such as automatic duplex (double-sided) printing or additional paper trays?
• What is your budget?

Information surge

Most manufacturers provide potential customers with copious assistance when it comes to choosing one of their machines and browsing their websites is an instructive process.

For example, HP's ‘Help me choose a printer guide' is a good place to get an overview of what is available with multiple choice questions guiding you through the available options.

As another example, Xerox also has many tools for resellers to use to help and demonstrate to customers the benefits of its solid ink technology.

The Xerox Self-Assessment Value Estimator (SAVE) service is a free online procurement tool that calculates the most cost-effective plan for users to finance equipment. SAVE is an extension to PagePack, cost-per-page contracts for small- to mid-sized businesses, which include consumables, supplies and servicing. The tool helps customers decide whether a cost-per-page contract or a ‘pay as you go' plan for solid ink is more economical. SAVE removes the complexity and uncertainty out of the decision-making process, enabling users and partners to negotiate this business process more efficiently, according to Xerox. 

Inkjet or laser?

An inkjet's simpler technology makes for a cheaper product that can put more ink onto a page with its squirting nozzles but the mechanism lacks speed and efficiency, and requires more upkeep over time.

Laser printers use three primary components to transfer images to paper: toner, which is essentially powdered ink, a drum, and a laser.

When you press the print button, the laser takes your document and draws the corresponding pattern into the rolling drum, leaving a negative charge in its wake. The printer then applies positively charged toner particles to the drum. Opposites attract and the toner clings to the negatively-charged pattern engraved in the drum. A wire then applies a negative charge to the paper as it rolls under the drum, thereby allowing it to peel off the toner-infused pattern. Finally, the paper passes under a fuser, which melts the toner and fuses the particles into the fibres for an enduring image.

Overall, this more complex technology means that laser printers cost more, but the more efficient printing process creates sharper images at high speed with less toner.

As a rule of thumb, inkjets are good for low volume, mono and colour printing while lasers are ideal for high volume mono printing of documents that are mostly text-based.

Inkjet printers are generally much cheaper than colour lasers but because of the time needed for their ink to dry, they are unable to match lasers when it comes to speed.

For print quality, and let's face it, that is what most business users are looking for, lasers are still the best performers and combine this with economy of scale in terms of savings made if you are printing regularly, they still have the edge in the average office. 

Affordability

Until recently, colour laser printers were too expensive for individuals or small businesses, but the sub-£500 market has boomed in the last year or so and there is a raft of affordable machines available as alternatives to the tardy inkjet and viable options for printing flyers, spreadsheets and brochures.

Of course, inkjets are considered inferior to laser for printed matter but recent advances in ink technology are closing the gap in this respect.

Epson, for example, has introduced the Stylus Office range to challenge the supremacy of the laser for business printing. Epson UK product manager Paolo Marenghi said: "Epson is introducing a new range of inkjet printers intended to meet the needs of office users. In the past, office printing has been fulfilled by laser printing technologies but with this latest generation of power and cost-efficient Epson inkjet printers, many office environments will want to re-think their in-house printing set-up."

At the same time, Epson has announced the launch of the new AcuLaser C9200N Series, a range of high speed, full colour A3 printers that add quality, versatility and value to its business laser printer range. Providing superb quality prints at high speeds across a range of media, these printers will appeal to a range of businesses looking for affordable, high performance printing.

Epson UK business manager Mark Karsey commented: "The new AL-C9200N brings extraordinary quality and value to full colour A4 and A3 printing. This product has been designed with the office environment and the growing demand for graphics in mind. Encompassing Epson photographic printing technology, its ease of use and quick and simple set up make the printer an effective business tool for office users and creative professionals alike."

HP has launched several imaging and printing solutions to enable small businesses to enjoy the benefits of high-performance colour without worrying about the cost of printing black text, while also saving on time, money and energy usage. The new printers include the HP Color LaserJet CP2020 Printer series with speeds of 21 pages per minute in colour and mono, which help customers save more than 50 per cent versus a quick printer while enabling on-par pricing to a monochrome HP LaserJet device.

"Small business customers made it clear to us that they wanted specific features in their printing solutions, including energy-efficient, affordable colour devices to help with in-house marketing collateral," said HP LaserJet and Enterprise Systems, Imaging and Printing, vice president, Rebekah O'Flaherty. "This introduction delivers on that and builds on HP's monochrome LaserJet heritage of reliability, value and ease of use to help round out HP's portfolio of colour LaserJet devices." 

Gel and solid ink

A relatively new development in the printing world is the advent of gel-based or solid inks which offer the best of both worlds in terms of speed, print quality and graphics capabilities. Solid ink produces the same high print quality on any media it can feed; various weights of media (up to 220gsm), including bulky card and recycled paper, can easily be processed. The technology does not use a fuser and so ink is effectively pressed onto the paper, meaning the material itself makes almost no difference to the quality. In Xerox solid ink devices, the ink sticks can be topped up at any time and by anyone. To make it simple, the sticks are shaped to only fit in the correct slot. With any other technology, the user waits until the ink supply runs out and then changes it, meaning a loss in productivity time. Using solid ink, devices can be topped up continually so they never run out. Solid ink has a full colour, first page out time of around five seconds - faster than any other technology making it one of the most productive products. Meanwhile, Ricoh's GelSprinter technology employs special high-viscosity, gel-based inks which dry more quickly, eliminating the smudging and bleeding prevalent with more conventional approaches. Indeed, it enables Ricoh to claim speeds of up to 29 pages per minute for the Aficio GX7000, and the ability to produce quality results at inkjet prices. 

Related reports

Colour Printers Data
Mono Printers Report
Mono Printers Data 
 

Contact file

Brother
www.brother.co.uk

Canon
www.canon.co.uk

Epson
www.epson.co.uk

HP
www.hp.com/uk

Konica Minolta
www.konicaminolta.co.uk

Kyocera
www.kyoera.co.uk

Nashuatec
www.nashuatec.co.uk

OKI
www.oki.co.uk

Olivetti
www.olivetti.co.uk

Rex Rotary
www.rexrotary.co.uk

Ricoh
www.ricoh.co.uk

Samsung
www.samsung.com/uk/business/index.html

TallyGenicom
www.tallygenicom.co.uk

Xerox
http://www.xerox.com/index/engb.html