Xerox refreshes, cuts prices on printers and copiers

Xerox let loose a flood of new printing and production products on Tuesday, overhauling with two dozen new wares close to a third of its office equipment line. The company, ever eager to remind buyers that its offerings go beyond copiers, also spotlighted its new contract with Newark, N.J.'s city government, which is using Xerox's hardware and software as the foundation of an extensive new document-management strategy.

Looking to entice more office users to adopt color printing, Xerox trimmed the price of the entry-level model of its solid ink printer line to $900 with the new Phaser 8500 model, which prints up to 24 pages per minute. The faster Phaser 8550, priced at $1,300, prints 30 pages per minute. Two other new Phaser laser printers are aimed at workgroups with high-volume printing demands: the 6300, which costs $1,300 and prints 26 color pages per minute, and the 6350, which prints 36 color pages per minute and costs $1,800. As an example of how Xerox is lowering prices while improving its hardware, Office Group Marketing Vice President Ron Stewart said the new 6300 and 6350 devices replace an eighteen-month-old printer that cost $1,800 and printed 24 pages per minute.

Xerox's product launch also included two new "light" color multifunction systems aimed at industries like advertising and design firms, which need color printing devices but don't require heavy-duty ones. The DocuColor 240, which has a US$40,500 list price, prints at 40 color pages per minute (55 in black-and-white), while the DocuColor 250, priced at $46,500 higher, prints 50 color pages per minute (65 black-and-white). The machines use a 32-beam laser to create images with 5.7 million pixels per square inch.

Other new devices in Xerox's portfolio include an assortment of CopyCentre digital copiers and WorkCentre multifunction machines that combine copying, printing and scanning functionality. Xerox also added an array of new software applications to its lineup, such as Xerox Page Accountant for limiting employee copying privileges.

Xerox has been building on its office-device business to expand into the broader services market, offering software and business process consulting to help customers develop electronic document management and workflow strategies. Newark's city government recently signed on and is standardizing all of the printing/copying/scanning/faxing equipment in its 41 offices around Xerox, according to IT Project Manager Sherronda Carroll. It's also using Xerox's DocuShare software as the basis of Newark Document Express (NDEX), a system that is under development and intended to link the city's agencies together on one electronic document-exchange system and reduce the mountains of paper the agencies now deal with. "Paperwork is always getting lost," Carroll said.

One of the first processes Carroll's office is working to automate is the completion of the personnel development forms required every time one of the city's 5,000 employees is hired, transferred, promoted or terminated. Carroll estimates that the city handles 300 such forms each month -- 2,000 in the summer when it hires local youths as a seasonal workforce -- and each requires multiple signatures from several different offices. Between each signature, the form must return to the personnel office to be checked before it is sent on to the next stage. With NDEX, the review process will be automated, and the forms can move electronically through the approval system, Carroll said.