VA Beach Completes Long Overdue Upgrade

“We had one of the first DocuColors.”

There was a time when Kevin Field might have been bragging when he said that. But 15 years have taken their toll on that Xerox DocuColor 40, as they have on all of his in-plant’s aging Xerox printers.

So recently, Print & Mail Services for the City and Schools of Virginia Beach replaced those printers with a host of newer, faster devices. New on the shop floor are a Xerox DocuColor 260, two DocuTech 6135s (one with a square fold booklet maker) and a Xerox 128 highlight color device, which went into the data center.

“One of our goals was to have them all networked,” Field says. Now jobs can be moved around to the most appropriate printer. This will eliminate a common problem that plagued the data center.

“If their machine went down, they had to wait until they got back up because there was no simple way for them to get the jobs to one of my older DocuTechs,” Field explains.

In addition to this new flexibility, the printers are providing a better quality product, he says.

“I already got a lot of compliments from people,” Field reports.

The in-plant negotiated a seven-year lease for the equipment. Though others in city government wanted to purchase the gear, Field was adamant about leasing. He didn’t want his shop to end up in the same situation 15 years from now—squeezing the life out of obsolete printers. He wanted the option to upgrade in a few years to the latest technology.

“This kind of forces us in the next seven years to start looking at what’s out there,” he says.

Field looks forward to providing variable data printing using Xerox FreeFlow software.