bookfever.com
Xerox's free color printers program
We have printed over 2,500 catalog pages a month and thousands of color
invoices for almost 3 years for the cost of supplies alone. Read our
review here. Please use our referal
number 202472 when you apply. Note the newer printers available
overcome many drawbacks and include legal size paper, built in booklet
printing, lower ink usage during startup, faster startup ...
From: Shep Iiams <shep@bookfever.com>
Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2001 10:31:34 -0800
To: <office@nciba.com>
Subject: freecolorprinter referral from bookfever.com
Friends:
We will go ahead and send your email address to Xerox for the offer,
and you
should get a formal invitation to apply soon (remember to include our
code
which will be on that email to show us as the referring party - I think
our
code number is 202472.)
The free printer in question is a Xerox/Techtronics Phaser 850 -
Techtronics
was bought out by Xerox about a year and a half ago, so I think this is
one
of the first printers developed by Techtronics after it became part of
Xerox
- it is not a laser printer, but a "hot wax" - or to be more accurate,
hot
resin printer.
Before we ordered this, I had never heard of this technology, so we
read a
bunch of reviews, and some of them commented negatively on the
sharpness of
the black and white - However, while I¹m not a fanatic about this,
I think
the black and white looks great - the hint of gloss to the letters
seems to
make it look better with the resin giving an almost embossed quality.
The
colors seem much more vibrant than color laser printers in this price
range
($3,600). The first page out is wonderfully 3 times faster than our
previous
printer and faster than almost any other printer out there. The
automatic
duplexing is a godsend compared to manually feeding pages thru a second
time.
Nevertheless, there are some downsides to this printer- first of all,
you
should never feed a page thru twice (just use the automatic duplexing),
and
you need to be careful about the kind of self-stick labels you use (to
be
really safe you should probably order Xerox labels made for this type
printer) You cannot use partial sheets of labels. The upside apparently
is
that the machine is a simpler one, and fewer parts get used up (more on
that
later) -
Other drawbacks to the machine -
- You can only print on 8 1/2 by 11 paper or smaller (no legal size
paper -
envelopes are okay to print on one side only, etc) (We have a cheap
refurbished high resolution Epson that prints very expensively per page
up
to 12 x 48 for our infrequent needs)
- You cannot use really heavy cardstock (the max is 80 lb. cover stock
or
110 lb. index stock single sided printing only, 32 lb. limit for 2 sided
duplex printing)
- You should never turn it off, because warm up takes 17 minutes and
uses a
lot of ink (sort of a purge self-cleaning process) - it has an energy
saving
sleep mode, and will learn your pattern (e.g.: if you start printing
about 8
am it will wake up then, and if you normally quit between noon and 5, it
will go back to sleep) If you have a lot (3 or more per month?) of short
power outages (millisecond to 10 minutes long) - it will probably pay
in the
long run to get an appropriately sized Uninterruptable Power Supply
($100 -
$200?)
Typical Power Use: Continuous printing 220 watts per hour; Idle 180
watts
per hour; Standby 130 watts per hour; Energy Star 30 watts per hour
- If you are not familiar with small business class color printers, it
is
some what larger (especially taller) than a personal laser printer and
quite
a bit heavier at 79 lbs. (It comes on a little 100+ lb. wooden pallet,
packed split in 2 pieces. It is pretty easily assembled with 2 people
lifting the 2 pieces on top of each other on a tabletop)
- Not really a drawback, (in fact a plus) but a difference for
single
computer Mac users. While single PCs connect with a normal printer
cable,
for one Mac you connect it to your built in ethernet port and use a
crossover ethernet cable. If you use other ethernet devices with one
Mac (or
PC) such as a cable modem, DSL or ISDN router then you use a multiport
hub
or switch to connect all the devices to the ethernet. For
multiple Macs,
PCs or mixed, it is a PostScript III printer and works fine across the
ethernet with a multiport hub or switch. It auto-senses10baseT or
100baseT
ethernet which is nice and fast if you have a Mac or want to upgrade
your
PC.
If you haven¹t had a color laser printer, let me give you a few
comments
about our experiences:
Before we got this, we had been using a Techtronics Phaser 740, which
is a
color laser printer still being sold, I think - it was only about 6
months
old, and while it was a fine printer in most ways, when we were doing 2
sided printing (feeding thru once and turning it over in the manual feed
tray), we found that we had to use 24 lb. paper and even then it would
still
sometimes feed 2 sheets at a time, thus messing up the rest of the
batch of
catalogues. (20-lb. paper costs much less, makes thinner, lighter
catalogs
for the biggest savings of all which is cheaper postage!) - It required
close watching and was rather frustrating - Plus the consumables were
quite
expensive: we could only order the cartridges on line (not available in
Staples, etc) and the black cartridges cost about $100 at the least
expensive place - We tried a refill kit, but it didn¹t work
right. We were
still on the original color cartridges that came with the printer, but
the
cost of replacing them was $676. In addition, there were a long
list of
parts that needed to be replaced periodically - the only one we
actually had
to replace was something to do with the fuser and this cost about $80
every
10,000 sheets - other parts lasted longer, but cost more. On the
other
hand, this Phaser 740 could handle card stock up to about 240 lb. weight
(which is probably why light weight paper, even at the light weight
setting,
didn¹t work as well) and we sold it to a small press publisher who
wanted to
use it primarily to print covers for his chapbooks - so he was pleased
with
it.
The Xerox Phaser 850 - the free printer - also comes with free black
ink for
the life of the machine (you have to pay for shipping) - and so the only
consumables which you have to buy are the color ink sticks and a
"maintenance kit" - the extended maintenance kit costs about $140
dollars
and lasts for 45,000 pages or 2 years - the color sticks are about
$35-40
each (depending on the quantity you purchase at one time) - we
haven¹t
figured out yet how many we will be using, but we are guessing that we
will
be paying about $100 per month for them - (we plan to start including
some
color pictures in our catalogues, and haven¹t started doing this
yet) -
Since we had figured that our absolute minimum cost for consumables for
the
740 was going to be at least $100 per month (black ink alone was costing
about $50 per month), then paying about the same per month for a printer
which is better, faster, more convenient for us, has the comfort of the
service warranty and absolutely no upfront purchase costs seems like a
wonderful deal to us - worth the minor hassle of filing a monthly usage
report.
This printer, the Xerox Phaser 850 retails for about $3600 and comes
with a
3 year onsite service warranty, an extra 500 sheet paper tray and
duplexing
and free delivery - The value of the total package is stated at about
$6000.
When we applied, we were asked to estimate our usage - and looking at
our
average on the old Phaser 740, we came up with 2050 pages per month, 25%
using color - We were also asked what we were going to use the printer
for -
and I think we were honestly able to check off almost all of the 10 to
15
usage types items shown on the list - for at least a few pages per
month-
although 80% of our use is for catalogs and invoices. Obviously,
the more
you plan on using the printer, the more likely you are to get a free
one,
since you do buy the color ink from Xerox - I don¹t know if the
fact that we
had already been using a color laser helped our application or
not. The
emphasis is on giving the printers to organizations or businesses - not
individuals.
Unlike a few other places we saw that advertise "free" printers but
require
a really large monthly purchase, there is no set amount of ink that you
have
to buy with this printer. Instead, you have to fax a usage report
(which
you print out of the printer) every month. If your average usage
falls
under the target amount on your application, then you have to pay $75
for
that month. If you fail to submit a report, then you are billed
$100. We
asked about grace periods and reminders and they said they send a
reminder
with a 10-day grace and for months when you print under the quota, they
look
at the past average before billing you. (presumably, if you fail to
submit
reports several months in a row, you are out of the program) - Although
the
program indicates that the printer can be setup to automatically email
usage
reports if you have a full time internet connection, this is not
working and
faxing is the only way they will accept the reports at this time -
At the end of 3 years, the printer is yours, free and clear (no more
reports
required) - If you change your mind and want to cancel the arrangement
or
decide you do not like the printer, you do have to pay to return it -
but
you can do this at any time -
Xerox itself -not some 3rd party - is actually offering this deal.
As I mentioned, we were initially dismayed when our printer stopped
working
after only a couple of months and even more dismayed when we were told
that
a service tech would be out in 3 days (we had just sold our Phaser 740
the
week before, but fortunately we still had our ancient QMS PS-810 laser
printer to use as a backup) - In reality, the service tech called us the
same day, and made an appointment for the next morning - however, his
fix
only worked for a few hours - so when we called again (on a Friday this
time), the next service tech had already ordered a whole new part, and
he
came out on Monday and fixed it - when we complained on the phone that
these
problems meant that the printer had been turned off and on a lot (thus
wasting a lot of expensive ink in the 17 minute restart process) they
sent
us a free package of ink - so while we hope never to have to use their
service again, we were happy with it -
One last point, we used to use ClickBook for the duplex pagination to
do our
catalogues (very simple to use), but couldn¹t get it to work right
with the
way the duplexing works in this printer - so we had to switch to Print
Chef
(Both Mac and PC - $20 for the simple version) - If you are
currently using
something more sophisticated like PageMaker, etc. you shouldn¹t
have any
problems -
We tried to cover everything - but if you have any more questions, let
us
know.
Chris & Shep
Christine Volk & Shep Iiams,
Booksellers
heyyou@bookfever.com
Toll Free in USA 877-bookfever (266-5338)
toll (209)-274-6960 efax (617) 812-5371 mail P.O.
Box 696, Ione CA 95640