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Entire Contents © 2006 Prog
ressiv
e Business Pub
lications
.
Copying of Pages Prohibited.To Order: 800 247 2185 or www.betterbuys.com
ImageQuick card. ImageQuick is on-demand software
that allo
ws y
ou to store forms or critical documents on an
Internet server and lets users drag-and-drop to print the
most up-to-date version. ImageQuick can handle a num-
ber of document formats, including PDF, HTML, GIF,
PCL, PostScript, TIFF, and others. The software allows
you to always print the latest documents, either from
within your company or from outside. All end users need
is a browser and access to a Lexmark printer.
Consumables costs r
un at a moderate 8.7¢ per page in
color and a reasonable 1.7¢ in black-and-white.
Lexmark has a growing reputation for quality and great
features, and we’re pretty enthusiastic about the C920
family. The price points are also especially attractive, and
these models are worthy competitors to machines from
OKI, Ricoh, and Xerox. The OKI Printing Solutions
9600 has very similar features. We particularly like some
of
the special f
ea
tur
es on the Lexmark models, such as
the automatic conversion of PDF files and the added
paper capacity. These printers get our Editor’s Choice
Award.
Chart entries — pages 98–99
OKI
Mount Laurel, NJ
856 235 2600
www.okidata.com
Vendor Profile
Oki Data America, selling under the OKI Printing
Solutions name, is a Japanese-based company that makes
faxes, printers, and small-office multifunctional
machines. Oki Data manufactures both monochrome
and color models and is now in its third generation of
laser-class color printers.
OKI uses a different imaging technology than most of
the mor
e tr
aditional laser manuf
actur
ers in this market —
it’s called LED, or light-emitting diode. However,
because the technology is somewhat similar to laser, we
consider it laser
-class f
or the pur
poses of this guide. In
the past few years, several of the other key printer ven-
dors have introduced models using LED technology,
making it a little less e
xotic than it once was.
OKI’s innovative approach also extended to the way in
which its color printers lay down the four colors that are
used to mak
e up a full-color page. OKI was one of the
first to use the single-pass printing method, in which
ther
e ar
e se
parate black and color drums operating at the
same time
. That technique has now become almost uni-
versal. Some of the less expensive, slower printers in this
guide use four-pass technology, in which a single drum
lays down each of the four colors on the paper with a sep-
arate rotation.
The benefit of single-pass technology, also known as
tandem technology, is that it allows color printers to pro-
duce color pa
g
es m
uc
h f
aster than four-pass machines. It
used to be that there was a speed downside to producing
black-and-white pages on a single-pass engine — the
black pages were produced at the same speed as color
ones, which was often slower than competing mono-
c
hr
ome mac
hines
.
OKI’
s higher-end single-pass printers,
ho
w
ever, manage to produce color pages at 36ppm,
which is very fast for color, and black-and-white pages at
40ppm, which stacks up extremely well against the
speeds of typical monochrome printers.
OKI Printing Solutions sells its machines through
v
alue-ad
ded r
eseller
s and the mass discount mar
ket as
Better Buys for Business
Lexmark C920
Consumables costs at-a-glance
Price
Yield
Full-color cost per page
Black-and-white cost per page
Black print cartridge $220.00 15,000 $ 0.015 $ 0.015
Cyan print cartridge $302.00 14,000 $ 0.022 N/A
Magenta print cartridge $302.00 14,000 $ 0.022 N/A
Yellow print cartridge $302.00 14,000 $ 0.022 N/A
Developer/black $54.00 28,000 $ 0.002 $ 0.002
Developer/color $181.00 28,000 $ 0.006 N/A
TOTAL PER-PAGE COSTS
$ 0.0878 $ 0.0166
8.78 1.66
The Printer Multifunctional Guide
Small-office multifunctionals and multifunctional
office printers that print up to 50ppm. These also
cop
y
, scan, and f
ax, and include both ink jet and
laser machines that oper
ate in
black-and-white and color.
www
www
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