Xerox Canada resellers have been given more weapons to fire in the hot office printer market wars.
This week the company announced a new Phaser 5500 black and white laser printer, which it says makes impressions that are 25 per cent cheaper per page than competing products from HP and Lexmark.
“”I think one thing customers and resellers will be excited about is that it has a long-life about is it has a long-life consumables strategy,”” said Ted Schnarr, the company’s area director for reseller sales for central and Western Canada.
“”It has a 30,000-page toner cartridge, and separate from the toner is a 60,000-page-yield drum. By separating the two components we’re able to very aggressively attack the cost per page.””
The 5500 turns out 50 pages a minute, replacing a model that went up to 45 ppm. It ranges in price from a $3,579 standalone version to network models that run up to $10,000.
It comes standard with a 500 Mhz PowerPC processor and 128 MB of RAM.
The competing models Xerox claims have higher costs per page are the HP 9050 and the Lexmark W820.
The 5500 is also the company’s first monochrome printer to use its EA chemically grown toner, which was developed in Canada.
Also introduced this week by Xerox were three other printers: In the Phaser line, the model 3150 desktop black and white laser printer, with an estimated retail price of $499; The WorkCentre PE120, a monochrome desktop multifunction device for small workgroups which come in three versions; and the FaxCentre F116, which is for users who need a device to handle faxes.
“”One of the neat features of the F116 is that you can plug a USB memory key into it and scan to it, or it can print a scanned image from the key,”” said Schnarr.
The F116, which is capable of colour scanning and scan to e-mail, comes in a $1,449 standard model or a $2,149 dual-line version.
All four machines will be sold through Xerox distributors, resellers and authorized agents. Schnarr estimates there are about 300 resellers in its Peak program, who are eligable for preferential pricing.