Cheapestonline Inkjet Printers Colorqube 8870 - Inkjet Printer - Color - Ink-jet - Color: Up To 40 Pages/min, B
List Price : $2,708.00
Get Your Best Price at : $2,388.00
Product Details
- Color: Y
- Brand: Xerox
- Model: 8870/DN
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 14.49" h x 15.98" w x 20.51" l, 73.00 pounds
- Memory: 512MB
- Networking: Gigabit Ethernet
- Native resolution: 2400 x 2400
- Display size: 2.25
Features
- Xerox Colorqube 8870 - Inkjet Printer - Color - Ink-jet - Color: Up To 40 Pages/min, B
Descriptions of Inkjet Printers Colorqube 8870 - Inkjet Printer - Color - Ink-jet - Color: Up To 40 Pages/min, B
Product Description
Xerox COLORQUBE 8870 - INKJET PRINTER - COLOR - INK-JET- COLOR: UP TO 40 PAGES/MIN, B
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Inkjet Printers Colorqube 8870 - Inkjet Printer - Color - Ink-jet - Color: Up To 40 Pages/min, B Customer Reviews
Customer Reviews
Most helpful customer reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
Good print quality & paper handling. Not so fast. Noisy. Not great for very heavy use.
By D. Frazier
I had an 8570 printer for about a month before upgrading to the 8870. I have now had three different 8870 printers which I've used for more than a year. The first two 8870 machines developed different problems after about six months of heavy use that could not be easily repaired. This is a review of both the 8570 and 8870 because they are nearly identical. I am going to add some comments about leasing the 8870 from Xerox and some tips on using these machines. (Update: After less than two years of using the 8870, frustrated by issues of reliability and maintenance, I have decided to purchase one of the Pro X line of inkjet printers from HP. These appear to be faster printers with potentially lower operating costs. More about this decision at the end of this review.)
This is a long review, so let me put some of my most important conclusions right up front: Only buy the 8570 if you do relatively little printing. Otherwise, if you do a lot of printing, the ink costs will probably be disturbingly high. For those who do a lot of printing, or even a moderate amount, the 8870 is going to be your more economical option in the long run. Consider leasing the 8870. Repairs and supplies are normally included in a lease. I have had two machines develop problems that could not be repaired and they were replaced as part of the lease agreement. Don't consider these machines if noise is a big concern. If you need a very fast printer, these machines are not going to work unless you are willing to print in the draft modes, which sacrifice print quality for speed. Consistent print quality may be the greatest strength of these machines. Paper handling is also excellent. These machines are great for text, line art, or photos. However, photo quality is noticeably reduced in the Black and White mode. These are color printers and they work best in the Color mode, especially when it comes to photos. This means if top-notch quality is important to you, you may have to pay for color ink even if you are only printing black and white photos. The machines are reliable up to a point. They do not withstand very heavy use -- like printing hundreds and hundreds or thousands of pages almost every day. Do not believe the maximum print figures quoted in Xerox sales literature. The environmental advantages of these machines are debatable, and probably overstated. Nonetheless, I recommend these printers to anyone who needs consistent print quality, the ability to print in color on a regular basis at a relatively low cost, and who needs only low to moderate print volumes at moderate speeds.
These machines are a mixed bag. Paper jams are rare. Print quality is usually excellent. They can be fast, but they also can be slow. These are the noisiest printers I have ever seen (or heard). They almost never have paper jams. One time the 8570 jammed after I yanked open the paper feed tray to try to stop the print job (use the red button to cancel the job). At the time the printer was printing random characters, also known as gobbledygook. Not sure why. Something weird with my computer maybe. It is environmentally friendly regarding toner cartridges, but it really should be left on all the time or you risk wasting a lot of ink. At least it has a low-power sleep mode (43 watts I believe).
It can be very fast at duplex printing (both sides). My tests show it can spit out black and white duplex sheets at up to 13 per minute in "standard" mode. That makes it almost twice as fast as some of the faster desktop laser printers on the market. In the "enhanced" mode, it seems to be able to print at about eight or nine double-sided sheets per minute.
However, my repeated experiments showed that in the Enhanced mode it will slow down to about four or five sheets per minute when printing large duplex documents (hundreds of pages). The Xerox support site explains that this is to prevent overheating.
The speed is directly related to the print mode. There are four print modes: Fast Color, Standard, Enhanced, and Photo. I have used Enhanced almost exclusively because it looks professional, but is not as slow as the Photo mode. The machine is genuinely fast in Fast Color mode, but this is really a draft mode, with washed out colors and blacks that look gray. Standard is better, but slower, and not quite the saturated professional look I want. Enhanced gives impressive print quality at a reasonable speed. However, the print speed slows down after a few hundred pages to prevent overheating.
The noise is a real issue. I tried putting it in my living room. My wife immediately complained. She said the living room sounded like a factory. I tried moving it downstairs to a closet at the foot of the stairs. We could still hear it upstairs and I had to move it into a downstairs bedroom. At least it only really makes a lot of noise while printing. In sleep mode it is quiet.
The ink for the 8570 seemed very expensive. (Ink for the 8870 comes in larger cubes and is definitely cheaper than for the 8570.) The starter ink for the 8570 (four cubes - one small cube of each color) enabled me to print about 1100 two-sided black and white sheets 8.5 x 11" before I was notified that the black ink was getting low. I had only done a dozen or so color test prints and the color ink was already running out. A lot of ink was wasted by the process of shutting down and moving the machine three or four times. A certain amount of ink is purged during the shut-down process. (The shut down process can take up to half an hour if the machine has been in use and you use the shut down procedure for moving the machine. Or shut down can take 30 seconds if you are just re-starting the machine to clear a glitch or install software.) Also, some of the color ink is used while printing black and white pages. The color ink is combined to create black. This problem is reduced or eliminated if you use the black and white print setting rather than the color print setting on your computer when getting set to print. (But don't use the black and white mode for photos that need to look their best.)
When using this black and white print setting, the black ink is used up more quickly on black and white jobs. By my reckoning, with the 8570 I was paying at least 3.5 cents per black and white print or about 7 cents per two-sided sheet, not counting the cost of the paper. For my calculations, I tried to estimate the amount of ink I wasted by turning the machine off and on, and did not count that toward my costs. I should also note that my black and white documents are dense with text and illustrations, and many of my print-outs were on legal-size paper. Nonetheless, my actual cost could be higher if my math or estimates are off. One thing I have not factored in is the cost of the maintenance kit. Also, if you print documents with a lot of color, your cost could easily be three or four times my estimated costs. The color ink cubes cost twice as much as the black and white cubes. I got sticker shock as I looked at buying more ink. However, a local Xerox leasing agent offered to lease me a similar machine (8870) with a low cost pay-per-print arrangement included, so I am trying leasing now. More about that later.
If you start running out of one color of ink (other than black), the machine will stop. It can maybe be coaxed to continue printing black and white by pushing buttons on the control panel. But if you have to turn off the machine and restart it while it is low one color of ink, it may be impossible to resume printing until you get the ink. The good news is that Xerox seems very fast about shipping the ink. The machine wants to print some color test pages every time it is started. But this can be turned off using the instructions on the test pages.
One thing I like about this printer is the quality of the printed pages. There is a slightly glossy appearance to the ink, giving a professional look that reminds me of off-set printing or a magazine. Standard mode provides acceptable text and line-art quality at fast speeds. If you look with magnification, you can see that Standard mode is not quite as crisp as Enhanced mode. But to the naked eye they are pretty darn close. The other thing I notice is that in Standard mode, the solid blocks of black in illustrations are not as deep and rich as you might prefer. To get the deeper black, you need to use the Enhanced mode. Undoubtedly, this uses more of the expensive ink.
As with other inkjet type printers, the pages come out flat. Laser printers will curl the paper. One of the benefits of a flat page is that it is much easier to jog the paper. This is great if you are printing a lot of big documents. These flat and somewhat slippery pages also go through our paper-folding machine more smoothly than do print-outs made with a laser printer.
Color prints are as fast as black and white prints and look good. The ink adheres well to plain paper, and is not prone to melting, even if pages are left in a sunny window. (Fading in sunlight might be a problem though based on other reviews I have read.) The ink is also water resistant. It might even be waterproof when used on a glossy paper. One problem I have noticed with color printing is that on some glossy papers or cardstocks, the image is easily marred by scratches. Rubbing a fingernail across the page can be enough to produce a visible scratch. The ink is not necessarily rubbed off by a fingernail, but the finish is changed so as to leave a scratch. Xerox may sell specialty photo papers that reduce or eliminate such problems. Another problem with printing on some glossy papers is ghosting, where part of a faint duplicate image appears on the page. I've found that this can sometimes be corrected by setting the paper type in the printer driver to the transparency mode. This does slow down the printing.
I have been printing with a USB cable from Windows XP. But the printer is really designed for use on a network with an Ethernet cable so that everyone in a small office can use it. It has several administrative features that don't work with a USB cable, though the basic functionality is there. I have a computer set up next to the printer and I like to be at the printer when it is printing to watch for problems so the fact that I have not set the printer up to print from remote computers is not a problem for me. Be sure to download and install the latest firmware. I have found Xerox to have above average technical support by phone, assuming you can get them on the phone.
So to summarize some of my early impressions:
PROS:
Fast duplex printing on shorter jobs, especially in Standard mode.
Consistent print quality with few paper handling problems. (This consistency of print quality seems to decline somewhat over time. See my additional notes below.)
Flat pages that are not curled.
Nice looking printouts in color or black and white.
No need for replacement drums or toner cartridges. (But the maintenance kit must be replaced periodically, and that can be expensive, unless you lease and such items are included.)
CONS:
Noisy.
Expensive ink. (Look into pay-per-print pricing programs or leasing programs that may be cheaper.)
Should be left on all the time.
Slows down dramatically on large print jobs of more than a few hundred pages. (Just when fast printing would seem most desirable!)
The maintenance kit is a large rubber roller in a plastic tray that must be removed and exchanged for a new one periodically. This is very easy to do. Just takes a few seconds. The roller is about the size of a rolling pin or a small toner cartridge for a desktop printer. I'm guessing that the standard maintenance kit has to be replaced after every 10,000 print-outs. Maybe its 20,000. There is also an extended capacity maintenance kit, but it costs more, and I have not used it. So instead of going through two to four toner cartridges a month, I am going through two maintenance kits a month (and a dozen or more ink cubes). And unlike toner cartridges which can be refilled or recycled locally, options are more limited for the old maintenance kit. If I want to recycle it, I can send it back to Xerox, at my own expense. Not sure if it is worth it because I'm not sure to what extent Xerox will actually recycle it. With its soft rubber roller dampened with cleaning solution, it does not seem very recyclable. (A Xerox rep speculated that the maintenance kit was cleaned as part of the recycling process, but I'm not sure I believe it.)
These machines are touted as being more environmentally friendly than laser printers, partly because they don't have toner cartridges and drum units that constantly need replacing. But they do have maintenance kits that need replacing as noted above. Also, they need to be left on all the time as explained above. One other consideration is the amount of energy used while printing. Laser printers heat a drum as part of the printing process. I have a laser printer that makes paper so hot that it is a little uncomfortable to hold a fresh stack of prints. But with the 8570 or 8870, prints are only slightly warm coming out of the printer. I think this is an indication that the printer needs much less heat and much less energy to operate. Last year my household energy bill went down 1/3 from the year before. During the last few months of the year we were relying on an 8570 or 8870 for most of our printing. I don't know how much energy we may have saved by using the 8570 or 8870 because we also made other changes at the house like adding insulation. But my guess is that if you do a lot of printing, you probably will save at least a little energy by using this type of solid-ink printer.
The 8870 seems to differ from the 8570 only in the size of the ink cubes that it accepts. They are bigger on the 8870, and priced differently, so that the cost-per-print should be much less than with the 8570, even if you are not leasing the machine. But I recommend leasing. It seems to be the cost-effective way to go with perhaps fewer hassles.
I am in love with the print quality and the flat print-outs. Paper handling is super reliable. We routinely feed paper through the machine that has been damaged in transit. Even paper with bent corners goes through the machine without a problem. We have also used oddly shaped paper, like 7 x 8.5-in. paper in the bypass tray with good results.
One problem that we have had is light stripes. These are light-colored vertical stripes about 1/4-inch wide that run the length of the paper. They are especially noticeable when they appear in an area of solid color, like solid black. These arise when one of the hundreds of ink jets becomes clogged. Such incidents were rare during the first couple of months of use, but seemed to become much more common over time. They eventually became a weekly or even daily occurrence when we were doing a lot of printing. When light stripes occur, you have to go through the cleaning procedure. This just takes a few minutes and a few sheets of paper. The process usually unclogs the ink jet, though sometimes you have to do it two or three times. The light-stripes problem is one of the real weaknesses of this technology, especially if you print a lot of graphics. I suspect that part of the problem is the dust generated by the paper as it goes through the machine. Avoid running rough or dusty papers through the machine. We use only recycled paper, and though it is smooth, it may generate a little more dust than non-recycled papers.
Further update, with leasing info:
I have now had the 8870 for seven or eight months. I am leasing it. Mostly the printer has been reliable with few hassles. We've been doing some color printing, and that looks good most of the time. However, two months ago the printer developed an image-quality problem that proved difficult to resolve. The problem we had involved white speckles on dark areas of certain graphic images. The problem is much worse in the black-and-white print mode. It mostly disappears in the color mode (even though the images are black and white). We are supposed to pay extra for the color mode, regardless of whether the image is color or black and white.
We had two different Xerox technicians come out to try to fix the problem. They made a total of four visits, without any success. One technician thought the problem might be inherent to the print technology. However, until recently, the printer did not have this speckling problem. No major parts were replaced, though at one point, one technician said he planned to replace the print head. As it turned out, a different technician showed up, and he did not have the print head! On three occasions, the technician was supposed to get back to me after researching the problem further, or getting parts, but he did not, and I had to call Xerox. Getting through to Xerox support was very difficult. I was on hold for 15 minutes yesterday, and then 15 minutes today, before finally getting through to someone. I will say the phone support people seem genuinely intelligent, even though we were not able to fix the problem over the phone.
It took two months to get this print-quality problem resolved. What finally happened was that I called Xerox and mentioned the Customer Satisfaction Guarantee found in my lease agreement. On hearing this, I was told that I would be sent a refurbished machine to replace my malfunctioning machine. I was told it would arrive in a week, though it actually was more like two. The refurbished machine turned out to be almost new, and worked great.
At one point during this crisis, a local Xerox sales rep called me. She said she had heard about my problem and wanted to know if I would like to upgrade to a bigger and better machine, at a higher monthly cost. She felt that a laser printer would deliver more consistent results, and that if I continued with an 8870 machine, I would encounter similar problems every few months. She felt the machine was not designed for the kind of print quantities I was doing each month. The irony is that Xerox says this machine has a maximum duty cycle of 120,000 prints a month. I had only done something like 70,000 prints total in seven months, averaging maybe 10,000 a month. The Xerox rep said that the stats provided by Xerox regarding their machines should not be believed because they are not accurate! I decided not to upgrade my machine. I was sold a certain machine at what seemed like a reasonable price. If the machine can't do what it is supposed to do, then that is not my problem. If I have to, I will ask Xerox for a replacement machine every six months, assuming that they will let me do that. The real problem seems to be that my local Xerox office seems ill-equipped to repair my machine. Perhaps that will change. I hope so.
After six months or so of heavy use, my replacement 8870 machine developed the same problem as the first one -- speckling or graininess in certain mid-tone areas of photos printed in the black and white mode. By this time, my local Xerox office had contracted with a third-party repair service. So a new technician came out. He had never worked on this model of machine so far as I could tell. He did not have the repair manual either, saying something about it being on his other computer. I had to help him download a copy of the repair manual from the Web because he had trouble downloading one directly from Xerox! He claimed to be a Xerox certified technician, but he did not have his certification number, claiming he had never been given one. He had trouble convincing Xerox technical support of his identity, though he made an effort that convinced me he might be who he said he was. Later he had to go to Home Depot to buy a certain type of screw driver needed to repair the machine... He was at the house for maybe 12 hours total trying to fix this problem. But no luck. At least he was able to put the machine back together. This time Xerox was not so quick to send me a replacement machine. Instead, they had me send their engineering team some sample prints showing the problem. After a few weeks, they concluded that I should use the Enhanced mode, which I had been doing all along!
While the engineers were trying to figure out the problem, I decided to just stop printing photos in the black and white mode. I started using color for the printing of photos whenever decent quality was required. This cost me more, but I figured at least I was getting something for my extra money -- namely color.
After another month or two of heavy use, the replacement printer died. It started printing very blurry images. When the technician came to repair it, he said that it appeared that the internal frame was warped. The machine has a plastic frame that acts like a skeleton on which all the other parts are attached. With a warped frame, the parts could not move properly. The technician did not say how or why it had warped, but I suspect heat was somehow to blame. The machine could not be fixed. Three weeks later, I received from Xerox a brand new 8870 printer.
After all the problems I have had with grainy photos in the black and white mode,
I was careful to do some testing of the new printer right away. I noticed that even when the printer is brand new, printing photos in the black and white mode results in slightly grainy photos. The results are noticeably better in the color mode. This problem apparently exists even when the machines are brand new, and it seems to get progressively worse over time.
Leasing has been something of a nightmare so far. We are supposed to call once a month to report our meter-reads - that is, how many print-outs we have made in color and in black and white, based on the meter in the machine. But this has been difficult because often the automated phone system has refused to believe our reports. The online system is similarly finicky, claiming our meter-reads were "out of historical range." For the first few months, none of our meter-read reports was accepted.
Finally, a Xerox rep called to get the meter read and said that, based on our usage, our billing for ink was going to be something astronomical, like $150,000! That was for fewer than 50,000 print-outs. Turned out that she had made a mistake and thought we had a different type of machine. Eventually, we got that sorted out, and our corrected ink bill finally arrived, showing more than $1700 in charges for the first six months of ink use - on top of the monthly leasing charges. So leasing has not been cheap. Though it may be much cheaper than buying a machine and buying ink if you do a lot of printing. And all the supplies and repairs and machine replacements have been free so far.
When the machine works, it works great, and I remain impressed with its potential for smooth paper handling and good print quality.
Update: After less than two years of using the 8870, I have become increasingly frustrated with issues of reliability and maintenance. I have had service technicians in my home on four days in recent weeks, and the tech will be back tomorrow hoping to fix a stubborn problem requiring more special-order parts. The slow pace of printing, especially on big jobs, is also a costly annoyance for me, partly because I am paying someone to keep an eye on the printer in case it starts screwing up. In light of all this, I have decided to purchase on of the new Pro X inkjet printers from HP. Look for my review of the HP Officejet Pro X551dw Wireless Inkjet Printer CV037A coming soon. The HP printer promises much faster printing speeds, potentally lower cost of operation, and better reliability, I hope. And it is a less expensive printer than the 8870. One concern is that the ink of the HP printer might soak through the paper more than with the 8870, making duplex printing problematic. The 8870 ink tends to stay on the surface of the paper, rather than soaking in. This should be interesting.
I have now tested the Officejet Pro. Initial reaction is it seems like a winner. Very fast! I can print about 22 double-sided pages in a minute at a quality level that seems professional to me. That's 10 more pages than I could print with the 8870 in the same amount of time using the less-professional-looking Standard mode. Print-outs are not shiny like with the 8870, but they are reasonably crisp, and on the slightly heavier recycled paper I am using, the ink does not bleed through to the other side, or soak the paper. (On thinner photocopy type papers, this could be an issue.) For color prints that need to look great, I will be sticking with the 8870 because the color detail and separation is dramatically better. The Officejet is also much quieter than the 8870.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
Can't recommend the Xerox 8870
By DesignerOne
I'm a long-time owner of Xerox Phaser solid ink printers, but the 8870DN we just purchased has some major problems.
We upgraded from the Xerox Phaser 8860 which, other than a bad print head, ran trouble-free for 4+ years. The new 8870, however, has had problems from the minute we took it out of the box:
1) Overheating and slowing to a crawl after just a few hundred pages.
The original speed of 40 pages/minute is wonderful, but the printer just doesn't keep up that speed when printing several copies of a document or a very long document. After a few minutes, our documents printed at around 1-2 pg/min. That's unacceptable in an office environment, and yet this printer has a duty cycle of 120,000 pages per month. At this SLOW-AS-A-TORTOSE speed, I don't think it's even possible to print 120,000 pages in a month!
2) Horrible, loud, "I'm-about-to-break" noises when it takes a sheet from the paper tray and delivers it to the printing path. Never have had a printer make such "breaking" noises before, not even our previous solid-ink Xerox Phasers. We're surprised our new 8870 has lasted this long without breaking, about 3 weeks and a couple thousand pages.
Since we're under our 30-day warranty, we're returning this to our vendor for a full refund. I don't think we'll risk getting a replacement 8870 and will instead either fix our aging 8860 or find another Xerox model to invest in.
Love Xerox solid ink printers for their print quality, fine detail, PostScript color accuracy, and economical print costs (yes, even with expensive ink cubes, we've found that Phasers are substantially cheaper to operate over the course of a year than traditional laser and inkjet printers).
But the 8870 has disapointed this long-time Xerox customer. Such a shame, Xerox!
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
A great machine that smells like melting crayons and feels like printing money
By A Cat in the Hat
Remember that cool project that you did as a kid? I am talking about melting your Crayons in a tall wax paper cup with a wick and giving it to your mom for mother's day kind of project. Well that is what this machine smells like when you run this machine and the office you take over doesnt happen to have windows you can open and the AC shuts off. I am the new guy in a father and son small business, and I love technology especially when you can save or make money and there is an environmental benefit. So I convinced myself and my dad that it was the right purchase to buy this machine straight out and not via a lease or a pseudo-lease (more on that later).
The first time I ran into this type of machine using solid ink technology was back when this was owned by Tektronix, and I was an intern back at a technology startup. The machine was just as loud back then as they are today, and probably the machine was bigger (or I was smaller) back then. I remembered being really impressed by the vividness of the printouts. One of my tasks back as an intern was to make sure the printer filled its quota of printing a certain amount of color, as once that quota was met it printed all you can print black for free. So I gave them Powerpoint files and Word documents that just had boxes of color. They met their monthly print requirements and got what was back then many thousands of dollars as a free printer. Structurally, it was a lease in all but name.
Other than the smell and the loud operation, the machine is absolutely amazing. The prints come out magazine quality and do not smear when you run a highlighter on them or smudge. Because the prints are essentially a layer of wax on top of paper, the colors are vibrant and have a certain pop that make normal inkjets and laser seem dull in comparison.
Now 10+ years later after my technology internship, I do printout a lot of color presentations for work. Think Powerpoint gone mad where entire pages are solid ink tiles kind of presentations. On the Xerox Colorqube, I turn on the "Vivid" color feature, of which recolors the print profile into something that resembles a little bit more like what I see on the screen. Otherwise, I find the dark blues a little too dark with the standard color profile. The normal color profile works better on flesh tones.
On printed images, you can actually scrape off bits of the wax with your fingernail. You can also scrape it off when you dig with your pen or something like a coin. It is normally not a problem unless you need to write on areas covered with solid ink. I work with a fashion client, and I recommended to him this same machine and he loves using it to print pictures and marketing materials. On pictures of people or clothing, you normally do not get areas covered with solid ink, so writing on them is not a problem. For me, some of the pages I print have over 75% of solid coverage, so you need a different strategy than simply writing on wax. I noticed that if you write on a stack of paper, you can actually see the imprint of the writing on the wax. The effect is more apparent when you tilt the page to the light. The "smell" of the machine melting the wax ink has substantially improved over the original Tektronix printer. Back then it was pretty bad even with the AC on. Now its bad if the AC stops and you cant open the window.
I just bought the machine less than a month ago and the unboxing was very simple. The machine comes with one set (4 cubes) of ink already in the machine and one set (4 cubes) in a box. I wanted to unbox the machine as soon as it came in, but my dad was rushed to finish printing out materials for a 5-o-clock deadline so he didnt want to do it. After 15 minutes of cajoling him, we spent 5 minutes to take the machine out of the box and walk it over to the printer table and another 5 installing the drivers. Driver installation and machine maintenance is amazingly simple, as the printer comes with a web server that you can just log into with your web browser. I performed a firmware update by "printing" an uploaded document which was really the firmware. The initial startup nearly ate a third of a cube of ink. You can tell by pulling out the waste tray and popping out the wax trays (think popping ice out of ice cube trays) into the trash. Whenever you turn on the machine from a cold start it is bye bye money. Once we had the machine up, we slammed out our printouts and finished on time.
Now I work in an industry where the product is sold, and the product is not sought out to be bought. Because you cannot touch the product, you only have reason and trust to guide the decision making process. Printouts of historical figures, facts, projections, and diagrams help guide my decision making as well as that of my clients. I feel that the printouts that come from this machine help me stay on top of industry changes as well as guide my clients in making the right plan. The printouts also look substantive and authoritative.
Speaking about money, there is a lot of sticker shock with this machine. Think 1 large pack of ink of each color ($450) + Extended maintenance kit ($120) + 3 years of additional warranty from Xerox (4 in total) ($467) and just the starting ancillaries is about $1,000. If you assume the capital cost of this machine is $3000 and depreciate it over 4 years (either you run it to the ground or you need to replace it as technology has moved on) and you are looking at about $63/month of "expenses" for just the machine and the maintenance. Of which, it is actually extremely affordable in this near zero interest rate environment.
There is a couple of ways to deal with the sticker shock, including traditional leasing from Xerox or via their distributors and non-traditional ways. One way is to do your own capital financing, including searching for 3rd party bank deals where capital equipment can be financed at 4.5% or 3.5% (and often up to 120% of equipment). I did this for my fashion client and financed the machine, the extended service contract, and enough supplies for a year at a very attractive payment. The savings alone in productivity and cost reductions paid for about 10k of other IT equipment.
One way to deal with the cost of the service contract is to sign up for Xerox's e-Concierge, of which is a very intelligent technology, allowing Xerox to optimize both your service for your machine and their own business processes. It basically allows them to monitor your machine, your printing style and consumption, and auto-ship you directly your supplies for your Xerox machine *and* other competitor's supplies. When your machine breaks, they automatically send somebody over. In exchange for giving them this inside look and the purchasing order flow, they give you free service to the Colorqube (and I am assuming all covered Xerox machines) for the life of the program (of which they can discontinue at any time). You can also save time in that they can diagnose your machine over the internet and you can spend less time in purchasing. Their direct prices for ink is not explicitly marked up, however you can sometimes find better 3rd party deals online for original ink.
Another way to deal with sticker shock is to use their traditional leasing program. They have an innovative tiered billing structure including tiers like "everyday color" and "expressive color" and charge you according to the print count. Usually these programs have minimum print requirements that have to be met.
Yet another way to deal with the sticker shock is to use a vague program that I call the pseudolease which only works if the printer is in a commercial location. This requires you to hit a certain amount of minimum ink usage every month and you have to fax in a report otherwise you get your credit card charged. Since the usage requirement is structured in a contract that is technically an agreement and not a lease, this is not a lease. There are some horror stories online where people's usage counts were incorrectly counted and their CCs got charged. If you dont want the machine or they do not think you are profitable enough you can return the machine. Horror stories include collections agencies, but I take this with a grain of salt considering that when you have so many clients there are bound to be ones with difficulty. I think the printer under this new spin on the old Tektronix "free printer" program is the 8570, and if I understand it correctly the color is priced significantly higher than that of the 8870 (and even the B&W is priced cheaper with the 8870).
Considering my print usage, it is easy to exceed $63 of the "depreciated capital machine expense" in a month, so it is cheaper for me to go all out and buy everything. Because I own it outright, nobody can tell me what to do. In my opinion, everybody should do their own IRR and NPV calculations. For my situation, the most "expensive" thing is to stay as is, using traditional inkjet and laser printing. Pseudoleasing is one step better. External leasing with usage restrictions/requirements (where somebody else owns the machine) is one step better than that. Owning outright with e-Conceirge is better. Best in my opinion is neutral between owning outright and 3rd-party capital leasing at ~4%.
Loading ink requires putting the cubes into the slots. The machine recognizes it and opens a little gate and the cube slides down towards entry point. I wouldnt necessarily load up all $450 of ink at once, as I would imagine the ink would get stuck in there. If you ever need to get the machine yanked, say for a service call or replacement, you could lose all the loaded ink.
In this case, I hope that the machine combined with the extended warranty lasts to its expectation, or at least 4 years. In my case, the printouts that I have used in client presentations have more than paid off the machine in less than 1 month of ownership. This machine is definitely YMMV.
All this prior discussion was a lot about money and the machine, but one area that cannot be overstated is the environmental benefit. Xerox has Youtube videos up on how the ink is green, the machine is greener (especially now they have cut down the warmup time and power usage), and the total lifecycle is very green especially with supplies. The printer driver also has built-in N-up so you can put 4+ readable pages on one physical piece of paper. That being said, one area not often stated is that the duplex speed is FAST and simplex is REALLY FAST. So you do not feel bad printing double sided, as simplex means that you have roughly double the number of pages to flip through. Instead of a final presentation being a 95 page booklet, I am making 50 page booklets which are faster to flip through and do not intimidate the client. These are seriously #firstworldconcerns.
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Customer Reviews
Most helpful customer reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.Good print quality & paper handling. Not so fast. Noisy. Not great for very heavy use.
By D. Frazier
I had an 8570 printer for about a month before upgrading to the 8870. I have now had three different 8870 printers which I've used for more than a year. The first two 8870 machines developed different problems after about six months of heavy use that could not be easily repaired. This is a review of both the 8570 and 8870 because they are nearly identical. I am going to add some comments about leasing the 8870 from Xerox and some tips on using these machines. (Update: After less than two years of using the 8870, frustrated by issues of reliability and maintenance, I have decided to purchase one of the Pro X line of inkjet printers from HP. These appear to be faster printers with potentially lower operating costs. More about this decision at the end of this review.)
This is a long review, so let me put some of my most important conclusions right up front: Only buy the 8570 if you do relatively little printing. Otherwise, if you do a lot of printing, the ink costs will probably be disturbingly high. For those who do a lot of printing, or even a moderate amount, the 8870 is going to be your more economical option in the long run. Consider leasing the 8870. Repairs and supplies are normally included in a lease. I have had two machines develop problems that could not be repaired and they were replaced as part of the lease agreement. Don't consider these machines if noise is a big concern. If you need a very fast printer, these machines are not going to work unless you are willing to print in the draft modes, which sacrifice print quality for speed. Consistent print quality may be the greatest strength of these machines. Paper handling is also excellent. These machines are great for text, line art, or photos. However, photo quality is noticeably reduced in the Black and White mode. These are color printers and they work best in the Color mode, especially when it comes to photos. This means if top-notch quality is important to you, you may have to pay for color ink even if you are only printing black and white photos. The machines are reliable up to a point. They do not withstand very heavy use -- like printing hundreds and hundreds or thousands of pages almost every day. Do not believe the maximum print figures quoted in Xerox sales literature. The environmental advantages of these machines are debatable, and probably overstated. Nonetheless, I recommend these printers to anyone who needs consistent print quality, the ability to print in color on a regular basis at a relatively low cost, and who needs only low to moderate print volumes at moderate speeds.
These machines are a mixed bag. Paper jams are rare. Print quality is usually excellent. They can be fast, but they also can be slow. These are the noisiest printers I have ever seen (or heard). They almost never have paper jams. One time the 8570 jammed after I yanked open the paper feed tray to try to stop the print job (use the red button to cancel the job). At the time the printer was printing random characters, also known as gobbledygook. Not sure why. Something weird with my computer maybe. It is environmentally friendly regarding toner cartridges, but it really should be left on all the time or you risk wasting a lot of ink. At least it has a low-power sleep mode (43 watts I believe).
It can be very fast at duplex printing (both sides). My tests show it can spit out black and white duplex sheets at up to 13 per minute in "standard" mode. That makes it almost twice as fast as some of the faster desktop laser printers on the market. In the "enhanced" mode, it seems to be able to print at about eight or nine double-sided sheets per minute.
However, my repeated experiments showed that in the Enhanced mode it will slow down to about four or five sheets per minute when printing large duplex documents (hundreds of pages). The Xerox support site explains that this is to prevent overheating.
The speed is directly related to the print mode. There are four print modes: Fast Color, Standard, Enhanced, and Photo. I have used Enhanced almost exclusively because it looks professional, but is not as slow as the Photo mode. The machine is genuinely fast in Fast Color mode, but this is really a draft mode, with washed out colors and blacks that look gray. Standard is better, but slower, and not quite the saturated professional look I want. Enhanced gives impressive print quality at a reasonable speed. However, the print speed slows down after a few hundred pages to prevent overheating.
The noise is a real issue. I tried putting it in my living room. My wife immediately complained. She said the living room sounded like a factory. I tried moving it downstairs to a closet at the foot of the stairs. We could still hear it upstairs and I had to move it into a downstairs bedroom. At least it only really makes a lot of noise while printing. In sleep mode it is quiet.
The ink for the 8570 seemed very expensive. (Ink for the 8870 comes in larger cubes and is definitely cheaper than for the 8570.) The starter ink for the 8570 (four cubes - one small cube of each color) enabled me to print about 1100 two-sided black and white sheets 8.5 x 11" before I was notified that the black ink was getting low. I had only done a dozen or so color test prints and the color ink was already running out. A lot of ink was wasted by the process of shutting down and moving the machine three or four times. A certain amount of ink is purged during the shut-down process. (The shut down process can take up to half an hour if the machine has been in use and you use the shut down procedure for moving the machine. Or shut down can take 30 seconds if you are just re-starting the machine to clear a glitch or install software.) Also, some of the color ink is used while printing black and white pages. The color ink is combined to create black. This problem is reduced or eliminated if you use the black and white print setting rather than the color print setting on your computer when getting set to print. (But don't use the black and white mode for photos that need to look their best.)
When using this black and white print setting, the black ink is used up more quickly on black and white jobs. By my reckoning, with the 8570 I was paying at least 3.5 cents per black and white print or about 7 cents per two-sided sheet, not counting the cost of the paper. For my calculations, I tried to estimate the amount of ink I wasted by turning the machine off and on, and did not count that toward my costs. I should also note that my black and white documents are dense with text and illustrations, and many of my print-outs were on legal-size paper. Nonetheless, my actual cost could be higher if my math or estimates are off. One thing I have not factored in is the cost of the maintenance kit. Also, if you print documents with a lot of color, your cost could easily be three or four times my estimated costs. The color ink cubes cost twice as much as the black and white cubes. I got sticker shock as I looked at buying more ink. However, a local Xerox leasing agent offered to lease me a similar machine (8870) with a low cost pay-per-print arrangement included, so I am trying leasing now. More about that later.
If you start running out of one color of ink (other than black), the machine will stop. It can maybe be coaxed to continue printing black and white by pushing buttons on the control panel. But if you have to turn off the machine and restart it while it is low one color of ink, it may be impossible to resume printing until you get the ink. The good news is that Xerox seems very fast about shipping the ink. The machine wants to print some color test pages every time it is started. But this can be turned off using the instructions on the test pages.
One thing I like about this printer is the quality of the printed pages. There is a slightly glossy appearance to the ink, giving a professional look that reminds me of off-set printing or a magazine. Standard mode provides acceptable text and line-art quality at fast speeds. If you look with magnification, you can see that Standard mode is not quite as crisp as Enhanced mode. But to the naked eye they are pretty darn close. The other thing I notice is that in Standard mode, the solid blocks of black in illustrations are not as deep and rich as you might prefer. To get the deeper black, you need to use the Enhanced mode. Undoubtedly, this uses more of the expensive ink.
As with other inkjet type printers, the pages come out flat. Laser printers will curl the paper. One of the benefits of a flat page is that it is much easier to jog the paper. This is great if you are printing a lot of big documents. These flat and somewhat slippery pages also go through our paper-folding machine more smoothly than do print-outs made with a laser printer.
Color prints are as fast as black and white prints and look good. The ink adheres well to plain paper, and is not prone to melting, even if pages are left in a sunny window. (Fading in sunlight might be a problem though based on other reviews I have read.) The ink is also water resistant. It might even be waterproof when used on a glossy paper. One problem I have noticed with color printing is that on some glossy papers or cardstocks, the image is easily marred by scratches. Rubbing a fingernail across the page can be enough to produce a visible scratch. The ink is not necessarily rubbed off by a fingernail, but the finish is changed so as to leave a scratch. Xerox may sell specialty photo papers that reduce or eliminate such problems. Another problem with printing on some glossy papers is ghosting, where part of a faint duplicate image appears on the page. I've found that this can sometimes be corrected by setting the paper type in the printer driver to the transparency mode. This does slow down the printing.
I have been printing with a USB cable from Windows XP. But the printer is really designed for use on a network with an Ethernet cable so that everyone in a small office can use it. It has several administrative features that don't work with a USB cable, though the basic functionality is there. I have a computer set up next to the printer and I like to be at the printer when it is printing to watch for problems so the fact that I have not set the printer up to print from remote computers is not a problem for me. Be sure to download and install the latest firmware. I have found Xerox to have above average technical support by phone, assuming you can get them on the phone.
So to summarize some of my early impressions:
PROS:
Fast duplex printing on shorter jobs, especially in Standard mode.
Consistent print quality with few paper handling problems. (This consistency of print quality seems to decline somewhat over time. See my additional notes below.)
Flat pages that are not curled.
Nice looking printouts in color or black and white.
No need for replacement drums or toner cartridges. (But the maintenance kit must be replaced periodically, and that can be expensive, unless you lease and such items are included.)
CONS:
Noisy.
Expensive ink. (Look into pay-per-print pricing programs or leasing programs that may be cheaper.)
Should be left on all the time.
Slows down dramatically on large print jobs of more than a few hundred pages. (Just when fast printing would seem most desirable!)
The maintenance kit is a large rubber roller in a plastic tray that must be removed and exchanged for a new one periodically. This is very easy to do. Just takes a few seconds. The roller is about the size of a rolling pin or a small toner cartridge for a desktop printer. I'm guessing that the standard maintenance kit has to be replaced after every 10,000 print-outs. Maybe its 20,000. There is also an extended capacity maintenance kit, but it costs more, and I have not used it. So instead of going through two to four toner cartridges a month, I am going through two maintenance kits a month (and a dozen or more ink cubes). And unlike toner cartridges which can be refilled or recycled locally, options are more limited for the old maintenance kit. If I want to recycle it, I can send it back to Xerox, at my own expense. Not sure if it is worth it because I'm not sure to what extent Xerox will actually recycle it. With its soft rubber roller dampened with cleaning solution, it does not seem very recyclable. (A Xerox rep speculated that the maintenance kit was cleaned as part of the recycling process, but I'm not sure I believe it.)
These machines are touted as being more environmentally friendly than laser printers, partly because they don't have toner cartridges and drum units that constantly need replacing. But they do have maintenance kits that need replacing as noted above. Also, they need to be left on all the time as explained above. One other consideration is the amount of energy used while printing. Laser printers heat a drum as part of the printing process. I have a laser printer that makes paper so hot that it is a little uncomfortable to hold a fresh stack of prints. But with the 8570 or 8870, prints are only slightly warm coming out of the printer. I think this is an indication that the printer needs much less heat and much less energy to operate. Last year my household energy bill went down 1/3 from the year before. During the last few months of the year we were relying on an 8570 or 8870 for most of our printing. I don't know how much energy we may have saved by using the 8570 or 8870 because we also made other changes at the house like adding insulation. But my guess is that if you do a lot of printing, you probably will save at least a little energy by using this type of solid-ink printer.
The 8870 seems to differ from the 8570 only in the size of the ink cubes that it accepts. They are bigger on the 8870, and priced differently, so that the cost-per-print should be much less than with the 8570, even if you are not leasing the machine. But I recommend leasing. It seems to be the cost-effective way to go with perhaps fewer hassles.
I am in love with the print quality and the flat print-outs. Paper handling is super reliable. We routinely feed paper through the machine that has been damaged in transit. Even paper with bent corners goes through the machine without a problem. We have also used oddly shaped paper, like 7 x 8.5-in. paper in the bypass tray with good results.
One problem that we have had is light stripes. These are light-colored vertical stripes about 1/4-inch wide that run the length of the paper. They are especially noticeable when they appear in an area of solid color, like solid black. These arise when one of the hundreds of ink jets becomes clogged. Such incidents were rare during the first couple of months of use, but seemed to become much more common over time. They eventually became a weekly or even daily occurrence when we were doing a lot of printing. When light stripes occur, you have to go through the cleaning procedure. This just takes a few minutes and a few sheets of paper. The process usually unclogs the ink jet, though sometimes you have to do it two or three times. The light-stripes problem is one of the real weaknesses of this technology, especially if you print a lot of graphics. I suspect that part of the problem is the dust generated by the paper as it goes through the machine. Avoid running rough or dusty papers through the machine. We use only recycled paper, and though it is smooth, it may generate a little more dust than non-recycled papers.
Further update, with leasing info:
I have now had the 8870 for seven or eight months. I am leasing it. Mostly the printer has been reliable with few hassles. We've been doing some color printing, and that looks good most of the time. However, two months ago the printer developed an image-quality problem that proved difficult to resolve. The problem we had involved white speckles on dark areas of certain graphic images. The problem is much worse in the black-and-white print mode. It mostly disappears in the color mode (even though the images are black and white). We are supposed to pay extra for the color mode, regardless of whether the image is color or black and white.
We had two different Xerox technicians come out to try to fix the problem. They made a total of four visits, without any success. One technician thought the problem might be inherent to the print technology. However, until recently, the printer did not have this speckling problem. No major parts were replaced, though at one point, one technician said he planned to replace the print head. As it turned out, a different technician showed up, and he did not have the print head! On three occasions, the technician was supposed to get back to me after researching the problem further, or getting parts, but he did not, and I had to call Xerox. Getting through to Xerox support was very difficult. I was on hold for 15 minutes yesterday, and then 15 minutes today, before finally getting through to someone. I will say the phone support people seem genuinely intelligent, even though we were not able to fix the problem over the phone.
It took two months to get this print-quality problem resolved. What finally happened was that I called Xerox and mentioned the Customer Satisfaction Guarantee found in my lease agreement. On hearing this, I was told that I would be sent a refurbished machine to replace my malfunctioning machine. I was told it would arrive in a week, though it actually was more like two. The refurbished machine turned out to be almost new, and worked great.
At one point during this crisis, a local Xerox sales rep called me. She said she had heard about my problem and wanted to know if I would like to upgrade to a bigger and better machine, at a higher monthly cost. She felt that a laser printer would deliver more consistent results, and that if I continued with an 8870 machine, I would encounter similar problems every few months. She felt the machine was not designed for the kind of print quantities I was doing each month. The irony is that Xerox says this machine has a maximum duty cycle of 120,000 prints a month. I had only done something like 70,000 prints total in seven months, averaging maybe 10,000 a month. The Xerox rep said that the stats provided by Xerox regarding their machines should not be believed because they are not accurate! I decided not to upgrade my machine. I was sold a certain machine at what seemed like a reasonable price. If the machine can't do what it is supposed to do, then that is not my problem. If I have to, I will ask Xerox for a replacement machine every six months, assuming that they will let me do that. The real problem seems to be that my local Xerox office seems ill-equipped to repair my machine. Perhaps that will change. I hope so.
After six months or so of heavy use, my replacement 8870 machine developed the same problem as the first one -- speckling or graininess in certain mid-tone areas of photos printed in the black and white mode. By this time, my local Xerox office had contracted with a third-party repair service. So a new technician came out. He had never worked on this model of machine so far as I could tell. He did not have the repair manual either, saying something about it being on his other computer. I had to help him download a copy of the repair manual from the Web because he had trouble downloading one directly from Xerox! He claimed to be a Xerox certified technician, but he did not have his certification number, claiming he had never been given one. He had trouble convincing Xerox technical support of his identity, though he made an effort that convinced me he might be who he said he was. Later he had to go to Home Depot to buy a certain type of screw driver needed to repair the machine... He was at the house for maybe 12 hours total trying to fix this problem. But no luck. At least he was able to put the machine back together. This time Xerox was not so quick to send me a replacement machine. Instead, they had me send their engineering team some sample prints showing the problem. After a few weeks, they concluded that I should use the Enhanced mode, which I had been doing all along!
While the engineers were trying to figure out the problem, I decided to just stop printing photos in the black and white mode. I started using color for the printing of photos whenever decent quality was required. This cost me more, but I figured at least I was getting something for my extra money -- namely color.
After another month or two of heavy use, the replacement printer died. It started printing very blurry images. When the technician came to repair it, he said that it appeared that the internal frame was warped. The machine has a plastic frame that acts like a skeleton on which all the other parts are attached. With a warped frame, the parts could not move properly. The technician did not say how or why it had warped, but I suspect heat was somehow to blame. The machine could not be fixed. Three weeks later, I received from Xerox a brand new 8870 printer.
After all the problems I have had with grainy photos in the black and white mode,
I was careful to do some testing of the new printer right away. I noticed that even when the printer is brand new, printing photos in the black and white mode results in slightly grainy photos. The results are noticeably better in the color mode. This problem apparently exists even when the machines are brand new, and it seems to get progressively worse over time.
Leasing has been something of a nightmare so far. We are supposed to call once a month to report our meter-reads - that is, how many print-outs we have made in color and in black and white, based on the meter in the machine. But this has been difficult because often the automated phone system has refused to believe our reports. The online system is similarly finicky, claiming our meter-reads were "out of historical range." For the first few months, none of our meter-read reports was accepted.
Finally, a Xerox rep called to get the meter read and said that, based on our usage, our billing for ink was going to be something astronomical, like $150,000! That was for fewer than 50,000 print-outs. Turned out that she had made a mistake and thought we had a different type of machine. Eventually, we got that sorted out, and our corrected ink bill finally arrived, showing more than $1700 in charges for the first six months of ink use - on top of the monthly leasing charges. So leasing has not been cheap. Though it may be much cheaper than buying a machine and buying ink if you do a lot of printing. And all the supplies and repairs and machine replacements have been free so far.
When the machine works, it works great, and I remain impressed with its potential for smooth paper handling and good print quality.
Update: After less than two years of using the 8870, I have become increasingly frustrated with issues of reliability and maintenance. I have had service technicians in my home on four days in recent weeks, and the tech will be back tomorrow hoping to fix a stubborn problem requiring more special-order parts. The slow pace of printing, especially on big jobs, is also a costly annoyance for me, partly because I am paying someone to keep an eye on the printer in case it starts screwing up. In light of all this, I have decided to purchase on of the new Pro X inkjet printers from HP. Look for my review of the HP Officejet Pro X551dw Wireless Inkjet Printer CV037A coming soon. The HP printer promises much faster printing speeds, potentally lower cost of operation, and better reliability, I hope. And it is a less expensive printer than the 8870. One concern is that the ink of the HP printer might soak through the paper more than with the 8870, making duplex printing problematic. The 8870 ink tends to stay on the surface of the paper, rather than soaking in. This should be interesting.
I have now tested the Officejet Pro. Initial reaction is it seems like a winner. Very fast! I can print about 22 double-sided pages in a minute at a quality level that seems professional to me. That's 10 more pages than I could print with the 8870 in the same amount of time using the less-professional-looking Standard mode. Print-outs are not shiny like with the 8870, but they are reasonably crisp, and on the slightly heavier recycled paper I am using, the ink does not bleed through to the other side, or soak the paper. (On thinner photocopy type papers, this could be an issue.) For color prints that need to look great, I will be sticking with the 8870 because the color detail and separation is dramatically better. The Officejet is also much quieter than the 8870.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.Can't recommend the Xerox 8870
By DesignerOne
I'm a long-time owner of Xerox Phaser solid ink printers, but the 8870DN we just purchased has some major problems.
We upgraded from the Xerox Phaser 8860 which, other than a bad print head, ran trouble-free for 4+ years. The new 8870, however, has had problems from the minute we took it out of the box:
1) Overheating and slowing to a crawl after just a few hundred pages.
The original speed of 40 pages/minute is wonderful, but the printer just doesn't keep up that speed when printing several copies of a document or a very long document. After a few minutes, our documents printed at around 1-2 pg/min. That's unacceptable in an office environment, and yet this printer has a duty cycle of 120,000 pages per month. At this SLOW-AS-A-TORTOSE speed, I don't think it's even possible to print 120,000 pages in a month!
2) Horrible, loud, "I'm-about-to-break" noises when it takes a sheet from the paper tray and delivers it to the printing path. Never have had a printer make such "breaking" noises before, not even our previous solid-ink Xerox Phasers. We're surprised our new 8870 has lasted this long without breaking, about 3 weeks and a couple thousand pages.
Since we're under our 30-day warranty, we're returning this to our vendor for a full refund. I don't think we'll risk getting a replacement 8870 and will instead either fix our aging 8860 or find another Xerox model to invest in.
Love Xerox solid ink printers for their print quality, fine detail, PostScript color accuracy, and economical print costs (yes, even with expensive ink cubes, we've found that Phasers are substantially cheaper to operate over the course of a year than traditional laser and inkjet printers).
But the 8870 has disapointed this long-time Xerox customer. Such a shame, Xerox!
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.A great machine that smells like melting crayons and feels like printing money
By A Cat in the Hat
Remember that cool project that you did as a kid? I am talking about melting your Crayons in a tall wax paper cup with a wick and giving it to your mom for mother's day kind of project. Well that is what this machine smells like when you run this machine and the office you take over doesnt happen to have windows you can open and the AC shuts off. I am the new guy in a father and son small business, and I love technology especially when you can save or make money and there is an environmental benefit. So I convinced myself and my dad that it was the right purchase to buy this machine straight out and not via a lease or a pseudo-lease (more on that later).
The first time I ran into this type of machine using solid ink technology was back when this was owned by Tektronix, and I was an intern back at a technology startup. The machine was just as loud back then as they are today, and probably the machine was bigger (or I was smaller) back then. I remembered being really impressed by the vividness of the printouts. One of my tasks back as an intern was to make sure the printer filled its quota of printing a certain amount of color, as once that quota was met it printed all you can print black for free. So I gave them Powerpoint files and Word documents that just had boxes of color. They met their monthly print requirements and got what was back then many thousands of dollars as a free printer. Structurally, it was a lease in all but name.
Other than the smell and the loud operation, the machine is absolutely amazing. The prints come out magazine quality and do not smear when you run a highlighter on them or smudge. Because the prints are essentially a layer of wax on top of paper, the colors are vibrant and have a certain pop that make normal inkjets and laser seem dull in comparison.
Now 10+ years later after my technology internship, I do printout a lot of color presentations for work. Think Powerpoint gone mad where entire pages are solid ink tiles kind of presentations. On the Xerox Colorqube, I turn on the "Vivid" color feature, of which recolors the print profile into something that resembles a little bit more like what I see on the screen. Otherwise, I find the dark blues a little too dark with the standard color profile. The normal color profile works better on flesh tones.
On printed images, you can actually scrape off bits of the wax with your fingernail. You can also scrape it off when you dig with your pen or something like a coin. It is normally not a problem unless you need to write on areas covered with solid ink. I work with a fashion client, and I recommended to him this same machine and he loves using it to print pictures and marketing materials. On pictures of people or clothing, you normally do not get areas covered with solid ink, so writing on them is not a problem. For me, some of the pages I print have over 75% of solid coverage, so you need a different strategy than simply writing on wax. I noticed that if you write on a stack of paper, you can actually see the imprint of the writing on the wax. The effect is more apparent when you tilt the page to the light. The "smell" of the machine melting the wax ink has substantially improved over the original Tektronix printer. Back then it was pretty bad even with the AC on. Now its bad if the AC stops and you cant open the window.
I just bought the machine less than a month ago and the unboxing was very simple. The machine comes with one set (4 cubes) of ink already in the machine and one set (4 cubes) in a box. I wanted to unbox the machine as soon as it came in, but my dad was rushed to finish printing out materials for a 5-o-clock deadline so he didnt want to do it. After 15 minutes of cajoling him, we spent 5 minutes to take the machine out of the box and walk it over to the printer table and another 5 installing the drivers. Driver installation and machine maintenance is amazingly simple, as the printer comes with a web server that you can just log into with your web browser. I performed a firmware update by "printing" an uploaded document which was really the firmware. The initial startup nearly ate a third of a cube of ink. You can tell by pulling out the waste tray and popping out the wax trays (think popping ice out of ice cube trays) into the trash. Whenever you turn on the machine from a cold start it is bye bye money. Once we had the machine up, we slammed out our printouts and finished on time.
Now I work in an industry where the product is sold, and the product is not sought out to be bought. Because you cannot touch the product, you only have reason and trust to guide the decision making process. Printouts of historical figures, facts, projections, and diagrams help guide my decision making as well as that of my clients. I feel that the printouts that come from this machine help me stay on top of industry changes as well as guide my clients in making the right plan. The printouts also look substantive and authoritative.
Speaking about money, there is a lot of sticker shock with this machine. Think 1 large pack of ink of each color ($450) + Extended maintenance kit ($120) + 3 years of additional warranty from Xerox (4 in total) ($467) and just the starting ancillaries is about $1,000. If you assume the capital cost of this machine is $3000 and depreciate it over 4 years (either you run it to the ground or you need to replace it as technology has moved on) and you are looking at about $63/month of "expenses" for just the machine and the maintenance. Of which, it is actually extremely affordable in this near zero interest rate environment.
There is a couple of ways to deal with the sticker shock, including traditional leasing from Xerox or via their distributors and non-traditional ways. One way is to do your own capital financing, including searching for 3rd party bank deals where capital equipment can be financed at 4.5% or 3.5% (and often up to 120% of equipment). I did this for my fashion client and financed the machine, the extended service contract, and enough supplies for a year at a very attractive payment. The savings alone in productivity and cost reductions paid for about 10k of other IT equipment.
One way to deal with the cost of the service contract is to sign up for Xerox's e-Concierge, of which is a very intelligent technology, allowing Xerox to optimize both your service for your machine and their own business processes. It basically allows them to monitor your machine, your printing style and consumption, and auto-ship you directly your supplies for your Xerox machine *and* other competitor's supplies. When your machine breaks, they automatically send somebody over. In exchange for giving them this inside look and the purchasing order flow, they give you free service to the Colorqube (and I am assuming all covered Xerox machines) for the life of the program (of which they can discontinue at any time). You can also save time in that they can diagnose your machine over the internet and you can spend less time in purchasing. Their direct prices for ink is not explicitly marked up, however you can sometimes find better 3rd party deals online for original ink.
Another way to deal with sticker shock is to use their traditional leasing program. They have an innovative tiered billing structure including tiers like "everyday color" and "expressive color" and charge you according to the print count. Usually these programs have minimum print requirements that have to be met.
Yet another way to deal with the sticker shock is to use a vague program that I call the pseudolease which only works if the printer is in a commercial location. This requires you to hit a certain amount of minimum ink usage every month and you have to fax in a report otherwise you get your credit card charged. Since the usage requirement is structured in a contract that is technically an agreement and not a lease, this is not a lease. There are some horror stories online where people's usage counts were incorrectly counted and their CCs got charged. If you dont want the machine or they do not think you are profitable enough you can return the machine. Horror stories include collections agencies, but I take this with a grain of salt considering that when you have so many clients there are bound to be ones with difficulty. I think the printer under this new spin on the old Tektronix "free printer" program is the 8570, and if I understand it correctly the color is priced significantly higher than that of the 8870 (and even the B&W is priced cheaper with the 8870).
Considering my print usage, it is easy to exceed $63 of the "depreciated capital machine expense" in a month, so it is cheaper for me to go all out and buy everything. Because I own it outright, nobody can tell me what to do. In my opinion, everybody should do their own IRR and NPV calculations. For my situation, the most "expensive" thing is to stay as is, using traditional inkjet and laser printing. Pseudoleasing is one step better. External leasing with usage restrictions/requirements (where somebody else owns the machine) is one step better than that. Owning outright with e-Conceirge is better. Best in my opinion is neutral between owning outright and 3rd-party capital leasing at ~4%.
Loading ink requires putting the cubes into the slots. The machine recognizes it and opens a little gate and the cube slides down towards entry point. I wouldnt necessarily load up all $450 of ink at once, as I would imagine the ink would get stuck in there. If you ever need to get the machine yanked, say for a service call or replacement, you could lose all the loaded ink.
In this case, I hope that the machine combined with the extended warranty lasts to its expectation, or at least 4 years. In my case, the printouts that I have used in client presentations have more than paid off the machine in less than 1 month of ownership. This machine is definitely YMMV.
All this prior discussion was a lot about money and the machine, but one area that cannot be overstated is the environmental benefit. Xerox has Youtube videos up on how the ink is green, the machine is greener (especially now they have cut down the warmup time and power usage), and the total lifecycle is very green especially with supplies. The printer driver also has built-in N-up so you can put 4+ readable pages on one physical piece of paper. That being said, one area not often stated is that the duplex speed is FAST and simplex is REALLY FAST. So you do not feel bad printing double sided, as simplex means that you have roughly double the number of pages to flip through. Instead of a final presentation being a 95 page booklet, I am making 50 page booklets which are faster to flip through and do not intimidate the client. These are seriously #firstworldconcerns.
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