Xerox Phaser 8560 and Phaser 8860

I wanted to take a moment and help clarify some interesting facts and myths about the solid ink series of Xerox.  Just to have full disclosure here, we do sell quite a few of these, but we also sell Ricoh, Lexmark, Okidata, Kyocera and HP color.  Manufacturer’s love to sell fear.  What they like to do is to make sure they make you afraid of what the other manufacturers are doing or maximize their competitor’s weaknesses while minimizing their own.  This is prevalent when coming to the Phaser series of solid ink printers.

What are some Myths and truths?

If you leave prints made from a solid ink machine in your car, they will melt.  — Little bit of both actually.

We have left prints made from a Xerox 8560 in our car here in the middle of summer on 90 degree days and the prints did not melt.  They did change color in the pictures and the ink obviously made its way deeper into the paper as you could see a reverse image easily on the back which normally you could not.  It was not, however, like someone was melting a candle on the dashboard.  We have also had a customer who makes books with the solid ink machine deal with some sticking together in the same test when it was in a book format.  Bottom line — If your prints are going to have a ton of intensly heated, direct sun exposure…  maybe a traditional laser would be a better fit for you.

Solid ink is “better/worse” than laser printers — Myth

I would call this a myth  because color quality is subjective.  We have lots of customers who think the Phaser 8560 or the Phaser 8860 are the best printers on the market and others who will not touch them.  Really, if you are not sure of what sort of print quality these machines have, you really need to test them with your own file so you can compare.  It is a very subjective thing.  Similar to whether you like blondes or brunettes… there isn’t technically a correct answer, but people tend to have preferences.

The Phaser 8560 / Phaser 8860 goes 30 pages per minute — BOTH

Techically, the printer CAN go 30 pages a minute, in fast draft mode.  The thing that generally happens is people print using pactorty defaults of “enhanced” and print at 20 pages per minute rather than 30 pages per minute.  The Photo mode is only 10 pages per minute.

The Phaser 8560 / Phaser 8860 should be shut off at night to conserve power — Myth

Although you would technically save some power if you turned the machine off and on everyday, you would waste so much ink and money this would be a horrible decision.  From a financial and green standpoint, you would be far better off leaving it on and then putting the printer into sleep mode.  This is the way it was desigend.  You would probably triple to quadrouple the cost of ownership if you turned it off and on every night.

Hope this helps, and if you are looking for a Phaser 8560 or a Phaser 8860, please give us a call for a quote.