The Heavyweights Square Off

Xerox has a lead with its DocuTech, but other vendors are successfully challenging it. In-plant users have strong opinions on the available machines.

by Allan Martin Kemler

Xerox has ruled the high-speed black-and-white digital printing world since it launched its DocuTech in 1990. So when Heidelberg, a giant in its own right, decided to step into the fray, everyone wanted to see what would happen next.

What happened was Heidelberg partnered with Danka, Canon and IBM to sell its print engine to the world's print-on-demand customers as the Danka/Heidelberg Digimaster 9110, the Canon Imagerunner 110 and the IBM Infoprint 2000.

Now, everyone wants to know how the machines these two corporate giants have manufactured stack up.

Paul Adkins, program director of the Texas General Services Commission, in Austin, recently purchased a 9110 from Danka. But before he did, he put machines from both companies through their paces.

"We did an equipment trial for approximately 60 days on each piece of equipment," he explains. "And during that trial period we had a request-for-offers out. By the end of the trial we had done the analysis of the offers and made our decision based on cost, and we stayed with the 9110."

Cost seems to be the bottom line for in-plants, with features running a close second.

"The DocuTech had a few capabilities we liked," admits Adkins. "We didn't feel we'd be using them at a level that outweighed the cost difference."

The DocuTech's in-line tape binding is one example, he says.

"We already have a fully equipped bindery department...so doing it offline just allowed us to more fully utilize the capacity we already had," he says.

The Tale Of The Tape

For other managers, though, the DocuTech's tape binding feature is a hard one to give up.

"If you've been taping for years, can you make a smooth transition with your customers when they know in-line is good and off-line is bad?" asks Xerox user Tom FitzSimons, of Intelsat in Washington, D.C.

Though FitzSimons concedes that there are some situations where saddle stitching and/or cover binding would be fine, overall he didn't feel a 9110 was a good fit for his shop.

"They [Heidelberg] try to steer you to saddle stitch or cover bind because they just plain don't have the tape," he says. For his shop's needs, Xerox's in-line tape binding is extremely efficient, FitzSimons says—especially for the directories and manuals that make up much of his 6180's workload.

"Bindery drives deadline," he quips. "They [Heidelberg] try to tell you the front end is slower because the Xerox takes an hour to RIP, but once it clears and gets in the back end, people sit there with their mouths open. Once that thing fires up it's a real life saver."

Quality Concerns

For Vic Barkin, however, the best feature isn't related to cost or binding. It's all about quality.

"The image quality of the 9110 and the optical resolution just blows the DocuTech away," says Barkin, Printing and Reproductions Manager for Northern Arizona University, in Flagstaff.

After four years with a Xerox 135, Barkin decided it was time to upgrade. When he learned the cost of the software upgrade was steep, Barkin decided to look around.

"We looked at the 9110 and we looked at the 6135, so what happened was during the bid process, Xerox could not compete with what the 9110 had," he says. "And we got a really great rate from Danka."

Bindery concerns did play a role in his decision, however. Because of the 6135's price and the fact that Barkin's shop already had ample bindery equipment, the shop decided to forego the Xerox. Yet, because Xerox offers in-line tape-binding, and because the only finishing Danka offers—booklet making—Barkin already has, he decided to see what he could do to get Danka to sweeten the deal with him. As a result, he got an offline Standard GMS-7 tape binding system that binds 3,000 to 5,000 books an hour, Barkin says. It uses a water-based adhesive. The tape essentially covers over the booklet staples.

"The students really don't know the difference between that and tape bound," he says. "Actually, I like this system better. It really feeds a lot of stock that the Xerox equipment never could. We're printing on coated stock, on heavy coated card stock."

Tips For The Wary Shopper

Not every 9110 user is so pleased, however. Some users have reported numerous front-end problems. To help in-plant managers avoid them, Paul Thomas, director of Printing and Copying Services at Georgia Tech, has some advice.

"If you are contemplating the 9110 product versus the DocuTech or anything [similar], make certain that you are very careful to explore every available option that's out there," he says, referring to the differing 9110 front ends from Danka, IBM and Canon.

He suggests in-plants test the equipment with one of their own jobs.

"Take your most complex job, your job that consumes the most computer resources and memory...and make certain it can do that productively and in an acceptable amount of time," he advises.

One of the most important features, he says, is a scanner to convert hard copy documents to digital files. Thomas urges managers to look beyond just the speed of the scanner.

"It does you no good to scan pages at 65 pages per minute if your scanner is going to skew the image on the page and your software is incapable of deskewing the image," he points out.

The most important advice he has is this: "Go with a tried-and-true product," he says. "Something that's been out there, that's had some experience." And check your references very thoroughly, he adds.

"You need to not only go out to the demo site...you need to see this equipment live in real print shops," he says.

Other Output Options

Of course, Xerox and Heidelberg aren't the only vendors with high-speed black-and-white printers. T/R Systems has had lots of luck with its Micropress Cluster Printing System (see sidebar). And Océ Printing Systems USA sells the PageStream 110 DC Plus and 155 DC Plus cut sheet printers, as well as a host of continuous form devices.

The University of South Carolina-Spartanburg added a 100-copy-per-minute Océ 3100 black-and-white printer a year and a half ago.

"The solids are wonderful and I like the way it lays the ink on the paper," says Charmaine Hazekamp, manager of Printing Services. "I can do mylar tabs. This has been a boon for our business."

But the 3100 has no in-line perfect binding and has an occasional streaking problem, she says.

"I wish I had a DocuTech," Hazekamp confesses. Unfortunately, for space reasons, that will have to wait until the in-plant moves into a new facility in a couple of years.

So even though other vendors are making inroads in high-speed black-and-white printing, the Xerox DocuTech is still the most well known name in the business, and the 9110 is its biggest challenger. For in-plants, though, price may be Xerox's main obstacle in retaining its lead.

"Had Xerox been lower than Danka," admits Northern Arizona University's Barkin, "we'd have a Xerox today."

Read On: The Cluster Contender