We have come a long, long way in office printing – standard laser printers are whipping out 20 or 24 pages a minute, colour is downright cheap and we can even produce photo quality on the desk. But we can’t get away from that first, wonderful piece of office gadgetry – the photocopier.
It may be the dull, unglamorous end of business technology but document copying is still one of those essential daily tasks that every office needs, from replacement invoices to meeting agendas, notes, press cuttings or price lists or a thousand and one other items. It is a facility we mostly take for granted – but would rapidly miss and moan about if it were taken away.
What’s available?
So if a small office is looking for a new or replacement copier, what sorts of choices are available these days? The answer, alas, is a bewildering, confusing and enormous range of equipment options with prices running from a modest couple of hundred euro to four figure sums for a single machine that will sound more like an annual IT budget to many Smart Company readers.
Broadly, the copying options in the market today are:
• Traditional mono photocopiers
• Colour copiers, all now digital
• Digital copier/printers
• Multi-function devices in various combinations
This is a really wide range of options and the differentiation between ‘copying’ and ‘printing’ is becoming thoroughly blurred because of course the output is always going to be printed, using one of today’s printer technologies. So the differentiators are how you get the image into the machine and what the particular unit is optimised for. Occasional copying would once have been the preserve of the entry level desktop photocopier, but now even home users can simply use a cheap scanner and whatever printer they happen to have. Scanner software usually has a quick ‘Copy / No. Copies’ option and combined with a laser printer that gives an easy-to-use and quite efficient solution for many individuals and small offices with a light requirement for copying.
Horses for courses
But when we talk about copiers what we usually mean is something like the traditional photocopier or what the US market calls a ‘walk-up machine’ – you take your original to the thing, place it face down on the glass and press a couple of buttons. For an office with more than a very few people, or a business where not everyone uses a PC, this is the start point for convenience and practicality. The next and immediate question is ‘What kind of copying volume do you have or anticipate?’ This is actually not an easy question to answer – unless you already have a copier with a counter that you are replacing or supplementing. You will have to try to work it out as best you can, however, erring on the side of generosity. The experts suggest you add 15-20% to your base usage figure to allow for growth – and what you missed in your first count.
Whatever device you choose will be designed for a certain usage level, from casual short-run copying to thousands or even tens of thousands monthly. Speed is a consideration also if your business uses copying anyway seriously. A 24 page per minute printer seems fast to most users, who seldom have jobs with more than a few dozen pages or copies of the same document. But if you need to make a lot of copies, that can begin to seem frustratingly slow. Traditional photocopiers were at 90ppm-plus a decade ago. Copying of multi-page documents with any frequency suggests that an automatic document feeder will repay the additional investment. They are available for most devices designed for more than occasional copying.
Consider multiple devices
Similarly, you need to consider a number of devices if your copying requirements are heavy, even occasionally, because there is the danger of wasting time for other print users who just want that short document now for the meeting or the post. The key point to beware of is that if your usage exceeds the rated page volume by much you run the risk of chronic mechanical troubles. All technicians will tell you that the commonest cause of repeat problems is devices being asked to perform tasks or volumes for which they were not designed. So under-specification is a really false economy.
What to copy?
What sorts of originals do you copy? That is also a potentially important factor. For example if you often have originals over A4 size you need a copier with a larger scanning area (Some are slightly larger than A4, say old foolscap, or A3) to avoid messy part-scanning and sellotaped copies. In such cases you might also be glad of a size reduction feature. Volume of copying and the nature of the originals are the basic factors determining what kind of copier will best fit your needs, assuming you want a general purpose mono machine. If you have a need for longer runs, both copy speed (minimum 15ppm) and size of paper trays (250-sheet minimum, better 500) come into the equation and it is worth enquiring about higher capacity toner cartridges. For many small firms, a convenience copying facility is essential but most of the time just a single copy is required. In that case you should take a particularly hard look at Time to First Copy. This varies quite a bit and not always by size, rated print speed or the cost of the device. What may seem fast enough at first can quickly become frustrating.
Dedicated copier
Few smaller firms will have the need for a dedicated colour copier. But if you do the decision will have to consider quality of output as well as copy volume, which is likely in turn to depend on the originals involved and the purpose of the copies. If you simply need occasional colour copies, a multi-function device or just scanner/PC/printer will do the job at least as well and your copying budget can be spent on a speedy mono machine. If you really do need a colour copier, colour laser machines from leading brands are now available from about EUR*1,000 upwards.
Base it on your budget
Any and all advice has to be filtered through the budget available. Yet it is worth remembering always that workaround solutions that waste people’s time can quickly cost more than almost any proper solution. If you are really tight on cash or your copying needs are very occasional, scanner/PC/printer works fine but is a bit time-consuming. Scanners start under EUR*100 and you presumably have the other elements. Small all-in-one machines based on inkjet printing are now less than a couple of hundred Euro from reputable makes like Hewlett Packard and Epson. They are pretty slow and relatively expensive per copy, but the quality of the copies is excellent.
Jack of all trades
But there is really no doubt that the stars of the present market for most smaller businesses are the many variations on the mono copier/printer theme. They are often referred to as ‘multi function devices’ (MFDs) and the mono ones sometimes incorporate fax. Although flatbed scanning is nice for faxing, if your business is not a regular fax user this is not the route to go. You are paying quite a proportion of the costs for an occasional function. The copy function on these machines, our only real concern here, can be as fully featured as any dedicated copier. Price levels are realistic also, i.e. well under EUR*1,000. Some of the smarter functions really do matter in certain types of job and in fact can save money over the longer term. Reducing to two pages per sheet, for example, is often useful both to save paper and for neatness while printing on both sides of the paper (duplex) serves similar purposes. Enlarging the original can add clarity to the copy. For longer documents an automatic feeder tray can save people hanging around feeding sheets one by one.
Still essentially scanner/printers, these MFDs now come in a wide variety of sizes and functions but with front panel buttons or touch screen controls for quick and easy copying. At the lower end are neat desktop units based on inkjets. These are of course colour machines, so in fact with high resolution scanning and quality paper (premium inkjet or photo) they can produce some of the best colour copies of any machines. Speed, however, is limited and the cost per copy puts them out of sight for routine copying.
Other MFDs are based on mono laser printing for higher speeds and fax is the most common additional function. Some exploit their digital capabilities as intelligent copy devices with, for example, the capability of storing multiple documents and pages for printing at any time. Other fax/copiers although digital are not designed to interface with PCs at all and may have limited quality scanners, i.e. limited to fax quality (300dpi) mono. Generally MFDs are designed to target a particular lead function, so some emphasize copying with sophisticated front panel controls while others place the emphasis on comprehensive fax facilities. Top end digital colour printers allow for some degree of image adjustment (light/dark, colour values, etc.).
The important thing is that these machines all function as standalone copiers but they can also sit on the network and double as workgroup printers. In fact from a performance point of view it is probably more accurate to describe these devices as network printers with a copying facility. They represent a dual purpose investment, a bonus that many firms will welcome. This new breed of MFDs has already become the most popular solution to the copying task in SMEs – and in individual offices – in recent years. All of the major printer and traditional photocopier manufacturers now have a range of models on offer in this category. Best of all, competition and volume are driving prices down all the time.
There are no real negatives, except perhaps that with print/copy/scan/fax all in one device you could lose all function simultaneously if you have consolidated on a single machine.
Traditional photocopiers
Like all other forms of reproduction, copying has effectively gone digital. The major traditional photocopier brands like 1959 pioneer Xerox are spending all of their R&D dollars in that direction. But analogue photocopiers are still around and a proven, mature technology that is robust, cheaper than digital machines and excellent at their one function. The cost per copy is also very competitive. So if you have a regular medium to high volume need for mono copies, especially multiple short runs, a photocopier is a thoroughly practical solution and worth considering. It may also be a good option where PCs and desks are not the norm but copying is needed, such as warehouse and factory floors, good inwards areas, site buildings, etc. But remember that there are downsides: this is a well-proven but dying technology, so there is no upgrade path for analogue copiers. They are also noisier than their digital counterparts, with more moving parts, and for quality reproduction of photographs and fine lines they do not compete with today’s digital technology.
The traditional monthly lease payment option is still very much available. The vendor looks after all maintenance, including labour and parts, with periodic maintenance visits and on-call service technicians. Inclusive contracts can include toner etc. so that the customer basically pays per copy at an agreed rate. But read the small print carefully, because there will be a minimum monthly copy volume and a period of years involved. You should also make sure you have the right to purchase your own paper supplies at the best price you can get.
Anyone for used goods?
There is a quietly thriving trade in secondhand and ‘refurbished’/’manufactured’ photocopiers. Some do come with guarantees, as indeed they must when sold by companies, others are one-off private bargains. With no disrespect to the sellers, our advice is to avoid these and ignore the apparent cost savings. The machines may function fine for a year – or a day – but the nominal saving will seldom be more than a couple of hundred Euros and the risk of being stranded without support, repair or spare parts is too great for a business, however small.
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