HP has done this and is generating quite a bit of business for there 4370. Oki plans to introduce a system similar to the HP sometime in the spring or summer of 2006.
Here's the skinny: Do all of these businesses need 11x17?
These are just a few on the top of "my" list. Have you every printed out a meter read from the Ricohs and looked the at the volume of the "DLT" Doubleletter or 11x17? In alot of my accounts the 11x17 volume is none or maybe 5% of the entire volume.
What's the key to a better unit than the 4370 or the OKI. Develop a color MFP with multiple paper trays, fax, LAN fax, Scan2Email, Scan2Folder, Scan2FTP, Network Printing and all of the other cool things. However add this one key feature!, add a Document Feeder that will scan 11x17, this allows the customer to reduce the 11x17's if needed and the ability to scan the 11x17 and then tell them to print on a smaller paper size.
In the last few months, I could have placed 3 or 4 of these systems. However, all we had was the 3224 and the cost of the system did not meet the buyers budget. Ricoh should be able to develop a system that will retail for $6K with a speed of 28-30 ppm per minute in color or Black. The kicker would be the ability to have the additional sophisticated finishing options that HP & OKI will not have. These would be fully feature staple finsihers, dedicated fax trays, additional paper banks (HP & OKI will have these), and maybe LCT's that accept a max size of legal paper.
Printer companies are starting to make inroads in the MFP market place and it will not be long before buyers fiqure out that they do not need 11x17 and opt for the savings from the other manufacturers, however developing a system that will scan the larger documents maybe just what the doctor ordered.
Ricoh also need to combine the unit with a reliable MFP document feeder, not the crap that you see on the IS100 and IS200 systems.
While they are doing this the can add some faetures to the Document Feeder, which would include "anti skew", "blank paper detection" and "two sided scanning is a single pass". These systems should been TWAIN compliant to allow us to connect with ecopy.
Our indusrty will continue to evolve and I think the idea of mandatory 11x17 on systems that are over 16PPM is losing clicks for Ricoh.
Hopefully someone will read this and pass it along to the marketing guru's at Ricoh. Then tell em that you heard about it at P4P Hotel
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