Best Digital Printer today

[Despotes]

I almost couldn't stop laughing when my Xerox rep can in and started telling me how they were "justifying" iGen installs with a volume of only 40,000/month!!!!!!

Xerox tried to sell me on an igen3 when they 1st came out. At the time I was averaging 168k per month. I went with two kmc6500s. I'm am now running 350k to 450k monthy at end of lease and am ready to upgrade. What to buy...what to buy?

[julianpoggenpoel]

Steve, lots of info to get your head around here. First of all I'm a qualified Nexpress operator, I spent some time in Germany training on the Nexpress and it was always siad that its direct competitor was the iGen3. I've spoken to lots of companies in London and seen lots of outputs off the iGen and one thing stands out.... your quality on these type machines depends largely on the competance of your operator. I'm prity sure that Xerox trains your operators as part of the deal, right?????? Yes the machine plays a huge role in that but its down to the operator and the way the machine is maintained and set up. We currently have 2 Xerox 700 and on a whole they are ok. Fairly consistant solids and many of the consumables can be changed by the operator so downtime is minimized. Having said that I still don't think its a "proper" production machine but if you are considering having it as a back then that would be ideal..... however, I don't think the quality can compare to the iGen just remember that the xerox 700 does not use any fuser oil so colours are flatter and not as "vibrant" as the iGen. The Canon 7000 in Europe is now being sold by Nexpress dealers. They are marketing it as the baby nexpress. When I saw the machine in a demo the reg was appauling to say the least but then again it could just be that that machine was hammered all day without any sort of maintanance. I still think it would be worth the look if the figures made sense. But by the sounds of things you are clearly leaning towards the iGen and I don't blame you, its a blinding bit of kit!! I would just beware that using the Xerox 700 as a backup would not compare in quality but then again some of your clients might not want that "glossy" look coming from the iGen so now maybe theres a chance that you can gain new clients who would prefer the "flatter" look as far as colours goes. Either way, yours is a good situation to be in... good luck mate!!!

[Tbiller]

All I can say is that our X 700 is a disaster. We are constantly having techs in to address misfeed issues, quality issies (and no, I don't mean slight inconsistency) RIP issues. Disaster. Maybe the bigger Xeroxes are better, but I hope we can find something that is because it is true, you can't run a business this way. Luckily digital is only part of what we do.

[iambuzzman!]

Having primarily serviced the Canon 6000/7000 the past 3 years, I can agree whole heartedly with all of its users about the downtime. It is not service friendly and it is definatley not environment friendly. This machine requires a constant environment, and I do mean REQUIRES. I saw machines in warehouses with no air conditioning or heat and humidity levels far away from what Canon says the machines require. This led to problems daily due to the weather changing, sometimes twice in the same day.

If you are in a metropolitan area such as Chicago you will get the better service due to the specialization. Since the machine is not user friendly in replacing of what most vendors call user replaceable modules such as webs, you will go into fault code failure that cannot be fixed without service man intervention.

Your operator MUST be willing to spend extraordinary amount of time tweaking constantly for everything from registration to color matching to paper curl to you name it.

And you have to have planned backup when it does go down. Too many print shops with only 1 color, yet multiple b/w.

[yanger]

All I can say is that our X 700 is a disaster. We are constantly having techs in to address misfeed issues, quality issies (and no, I don't mean slight inconsistency) RIP issues. Disaster. Maybe the bigger Xeroxes are better, but I hope we can find something that is because it is true, you can't run a business this way. Luckily digital is only part of what we do.

We've had our X700DCP for a year now, and it's been pretty good. A few issues [skewing 13x19s 100# stocks, finisher tray stacking issues, density/heating] but all in all, I think it all depends on the technician who looks at your machine.

Do note, if you run alot of 12x18s and 11x17s there are roller mark issues you will have to deal with. the 7000/8000AP have heat fuser roller technology which leaves grooves when you run 11x17s [11" grooves], thus when you run 12x18s that need print towards the edge, you'll need to either place a service call to get the fuser replaced. Bonus on the X700 - the fuser is customer replaceable. So for us, we carry 3 different fusers [11x17, 12x18, 13x19] and registration is awesome on the 700s.

We're working on getting a Xerox Color 1000 replacing our 4 year old 8000AP - Love the things you can do with it.. the only frightening thing is the transition from Creo to Fiery - which I think we will be able to manage...

[MsArtDirector]

While I can't speak for the Canon 7000/6000; I can speak for the Canon 5051 Image Runner. It's been nothing but trouble, and doesn't play well with Adobe products (in my case CS3 and Acrobat PDFs -- and yes, we do have Fiery software). If you do go with Canon, check to make sure the lease doesn't forbid you from cancellation for "any reason whatsoever, " including if the equipment breaks down... like ours does. I'm stuck with 2 more years of revolving door techs, and, frankly; it's a daily battle to get things to print out correctly.

[simpleprint]

If you are in the market looking for a new Digital Press/Machine/Printer, what is the #1 factor that will make you decide for one particular vendor?

□ Monthly Lease Payment
□ Click Charges
□ Technology and Features
□ Local Technical Service and Support
□ Financing Terms and Conditions
□ Business Development Support
□ Vendor Reputation and Experience
□ Upgradeability
□ All of the above equally
□ Other

Please, bear in mind that some of these issues are so "life or death" it’d be unwise to choose one above the other. For example, Click Charges vs. Support.

Another thing to consider, you might get more useful data by turning the poll on its head, which do you value LEAST? When we do that, Business Development Support would be at the top of my "reverse list"! See what I mean?
We once had horrible experiences with our Xerox DocoColor 250s...a debacle that brutally taught us the importance of Local service and support.

Who cares what it CAN do, if it CAN'T do it when clients need it?

Regards,
simpleprint