Tips on Buying Your First Color Copier

By all means, do not buy first generation of a newly introduced model. I sold the new Savin C2408 and C3210 ... 50 bulletins later (maybe a slight exaggeration) and they still ... enough said. If they worked right, they would be excellent machines! Just the right combination of features to introduce color to the small and mid-sized office. Ricoh had the right idea with these, the engineers on the other hand ...

First of Six Tips to the customer:

Tip #1: Buy a system that can handle 2 to 3 times the volume you'll think you'll do. Odds are, your color volume will grow and grow!

Tip #2 When printing photo's make sure you know the print speed in the 1200 dpi mode!

Tip #3 If you can get a duplex option, get it right away. Nothing is finer than a two sided proposal or quote in color!

Tip #4 Understand your consumable yeilds and the average color coverage that the manufacturer quotes.

Tip #5 Max the RAM memory and Hard Drive.

Tip #6 Go back to Number #1.

The IMPORTANT Question....

What are you going to be using this color copier for???

Business Color, Graphics Color, What kind of paper do you need to use? Do you use coated paper? You need to know the difference between 2 bit and 8 bit color and what it means to you...

My Guess is that a MAJORITY of the salespeople on the street don't have the slightest clue about a number of color selling points and how to answer the tricky questions...(When I was new, I had a customer pull out a loop and look at the 3800C quality, needless to say, I looked like a real dummy), The Ricoh sales people who really don't have a new graphic arts system to sell (other then the 6513 which is becoming more antiquated by the day) won't know which end is up when selling color...As far as a number of them are concerned the 2232/2238 are the high end systems.

I can say that the most important thing for a consumer to do when buying a color system is to make sure they are educated on color technology and terminology and get a sales person "Docusultant" that is a color specialist in his or her respective office involved in the deal. If the dealer they are dealing with does not have someone that specializes in color than you probably do not want to do business with them.

Lastly....Talk to your copier technician the next time he or she is in working on your machine. They usually will be pretty strait with you on what to look for...A tech who will have to fix the problems and listen to you complain will usually be the first one to say "NO WAY...You can't do this with that machine no matter what the salesperson is telling you!!"

I hope that helps a little

Graham

I would tell anyone looking to purchase a color system to first consider what they want to accomplish with this device. Printing mainly? Copying at all? Will the device be for business type applications? ( Graphs, color highlights, small photos) Or are the using desktop publishing applications for more sophisticated brochures on special paper stocks.

The more questions they ask of the sales rep, or more importantly, the more answers they have for a sales rep, the better they will be able to get the right tool for the right job.

Calibration is another biggie when I am speaking with my color customers. They need to have the ability to calibrate manually as well as the automatic that usually comes with the machine. I find many companies start printing their own brochures, and before they do a large run, they want to make sure the colors are correct! another thing is they do not want a machine that has moire patterns when printing a page with a solid image.

I find that a TRUE PostScript driver is important to the consistency of getting all the images to print the way they were designed in the PC.

And lastly, because I do not want to get too long winded, they need to know that paper does make a difference in their image. A rep can get in a lot of trouble on copy quality if the user does not understand that (example) a yellowed page that is a more porous paper will not have the same fill or color quality as a higher quality, smooth, bright-white page.