In its latest bid to increase the use of color in large organizations Hewlett-Packard announced today two high-volume multifunction printers it says can cut the cost of using colour by 30 per cent over traditional printers.
The CM8060 and CM 8050 are the first models to use HP’s Edgeline Technology, which the company says merges laser and ink jet expertise to deliver fast yet economical colour.
From its roster of 30 Elite printer partners who sell its existing line of colour MFPs, HP has selected about a dozen to be the initial VARs carrying these models – including NexInnovations and Compugen — although more will be added later.
One of those who will be carrying the new models is Pro Tek Systems of London, Ont., whose president, Harvey Schilke, said they will be good additions to the market for 50-plus page per minute printers.
“My suspicion is we will sell more units because of the technology and the anticipated operating cost advantage than what we have had in the past in that category,” he said.
The units go on sale June 1, but to whet customers’ appetites will be shown off at HP demo sites across the country.
“We know colour is important to customers, especially in the high volume area,” said Ryan Dudgeon, HP Canada’s category business manager for MPFs.
“If you’re looking for an MFP that can do everything this is a breakthrough opportunity to get a printer that can od it all and offer up to 30 per cent colour savings.”
Savings are achieved in part by using Edgeline ink jet print heads, which span the width of a page, and in part through offering users three colour print modes: Professional, for best quality; General Office, for internal use; and Colour Accent, for pages that need only a small amount of colour – say a company logo, or up to 10 characters of 10-point text.
The amount of colour allowed in this category is negotiated with the customer and partner.
Typically, in this category of office printer organizations lease the machine and pay a additional per-page charge for monochrome and for colour pages. Some competitors, HP says, charge a full price for colour even if its used minimally on a page.
But on these new models HP says the savings come because pages printed in Colour Accent mode are billed at a monochrome price.
The CM8060 prints 50 pages of colour per minute (ppm) and 60 ppm in monochrome. The CM8050 prints colour at 40 ppm and monochrome at 50 ppm.
HP is also touting the usability of these new models. They include a 10-inch touch screen navigation panel for easy visibility and a menu system that should allow a user to print a page with only three touches of a button.
The screen can also show an instructional video if a user gets stuck.
There’s even on-screen help for clearing paper jams.
For partners, the new units offer a big opportunity, said Dudgeon, because customers want affordable colour. “There’s a significant amount of organizations with colour MPFs out there that have slower devices that are not getting their efficiencies,” he said. We’re going to have a great customer opportunity where they’re going to want to move up to a device such as Edgeline.”
Organizations that only have monochrome high speed MFPs will also be attracted to these models, he said.
Despite the fact that users are in a digital world, “paper is still an integral part of most enterprise organizations,” said Peter Grady, vice-president of marketing and channel sales for HP Canada’s imaging and printing group.
“For HP, this is a giant step forward as we evolve from a printer company to a printing company.”
Comment: cdnedit@itbusiness.ca