Section 2: Evaluating Color Laser Printers
Overview
The benefits of color are widely accepted: Color increases document impact
and retention of document information by readers.
Evaluating color printers is
less intuitive: There are many factors to weigh, but some are more important to your
organization than others. Based on years of experience and research into the real-world
needs of color printer users, Xerox has identified some key issues for you to consider.
Workgroup printers are typically shared
by as many as 25 people on a day-to-day
basis; even more people are likely to use
it on a sporadic basis. To support larger
groups of employees, performance is an
important characteristic — but it’s essen-
tial to dig deeper than just page-per-min-
ute numbers. Further, larger workgroups
often comprise employees who work off of
different platforms and operating systems
— such as Microsoft Windows
®
, Apple
Mac
®
OS or Linux
®
— so driver support for
multiple platforms is another important
factor. Finally, deployment, management
and day-to-day ease of use are important
considerations for larger organizations,
where IT resources are often spread thin.
Regardless of the applications or environ
-
ment, the following areas continue to be
very important factors when customers
make color printer purchasing decisions:
Printing Performance and
Print Quality
More than just pages per minute, the over-
all printing performance of a color printer
will indicate whether it can support the
workload of your busy employees.
Evaluate Installation
The color printer you choose needs to be
quick and easy to install, whether you have
IT staff on hand to assist or not.
Evaluate Ease of Use
For your employees, the printer needs to
be simple and intuitive to use on a day-
to-day basis: Supplies should be easy to
replace and issues easy to resolve.
Evaluate Management
Examine the tools available for IT admin-
istrators in larger organizations to manage
printer settings, user access, printer status
and more.
Your challenge is to evaluate the color
printers available on the market today
and choose the one that most completely
meets your company’s needs in each of
these areas. This section of the Evaluator
Guide will examine each of these areas,
suggest ways you can evaluate a printer
against that requirement, and explain how
the Phaser 6360 color laserprinter exceeds
the expectations of color printer users on
all counts.
Xerox Phaser 6360 Evaluator Guide 5
