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Ricoh needs to start developing Color MPF's that do not have ledger (11x17) printing or copying capability!

HP has done this and is generating quite a bit of business for there 4370. Oki plans to introduce a system similar to the HP sometime in the spring or summer of 2006.

Here's the skinny: Do all of these businesses need 11x17?

  • Real Estate
  • Title Companies
  • Attorneys
  • Financial Planners
  • CPA's (maybe?)
  • Mortgage Companies
  • Banking
  • Insurance

    These are just a few on the top of "my" list. Have you every printed out a meter read from the Ricohs and looked the at the volume of the "DLT" Doubleletter or 11x17? In alot of my accounts the 11x17 volume is none or maybe 5% of the entire volume.

    What's the key to a better unit than the 4370 or the OKI. Develop a color MFP with multiple paper trays, fax, LAN fax, Scan2Email, Scan2Folder, Scan2FTP, Network Printing and all of the other cool things. However add this one key feature!, add a Document Feeder that will scan 11x17, this allows the customer to reduce the 11x17's if needed and the ability to scan the 11x17 and then tell them to print on a smaller paper size.

    In the last few months, I could have placed 3 or 4 of these systems. However, all we had was the 3224 and the cost of the system did not meet the buyers budget. Ricoh should be able to develop a system that will retail for $6K with a speed of 28-30 ppm per minute in color or Black. The kicker would be the ability to have the additional sophisticated finishing options that HP & OKI will not have. These would be fully feature staple finsihers, dedicated fax trays, additional paper banks (HP & OKI will have these), and maybe LCT's that accept a max size of legal paper.

    Printer companies are starting to make inroads in the MFP market place and it will not be long before buyers fiqure out that they do not need 11x17 and opt for the savings from the other manufacturers, however developing a system that will scan the larger documents maybe just what the doctor ordered.

    Ricoh also need to combine the unit with a reliable MFP document feeder, not the crap that you see on the IS100 and IS200 systems.

    While they are doing this the can add some faetures to the Document Feeder, which would include "anti skew", "blank paper detection" and "two sided scanning is a single pass". These systems should been TWAIN compliant to allow us to connect with ecopy.

    Our indusrty will continue to evolve and I think the idea of mandatory 11x17 on systems that are over 16PPM is losing clicks for Ricoh.

    Hopefully someone will read this and pass it along to the marketing guru's at Ricoh. Then tell em that you heard about it at P4P Hotel

    Art Post
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    By the way I placed two phone calls to Mark Pollack and the other guy (I forgot his name) and low and behold no one called me back about this. Hopefully they are already hard at work on this or they are just stubborn and don't feel that reps in the field have a "pulse" on the market.

    Art Post
    My wish is for better handling of thick paper on color units. Doesn't seem to matter how I tweak the settings in the drivers or if I use the bypass, the toner doesn't stick well to the paper. A Konica color bizhub can handle it without a problem. I've tried fairly standard stock from various manufacturers such as Hammermill and Wausau, but I always end up going back to the Konica.
    Right, it's not for high volume. But, if I could replace 25% of the inkjets in my territory with these, imagine the clicks. Also, if it can scan up to 11 x 17 it might as well print up to 11 x 17 because the footprint will probably be the same. Maybe I'm a little ignorant about this, are there competitive machines that scan 11 x 17 and only print up to legal? Are they really that much cheaper?
    no there are not any systems that will scan 11 x 17 and only only print to legal or letter.

    Years ago Minolta had a 350Z (analog) that was capapble of reducing 11x17, but would only copy letter and leagal. The major selling point was that they could reduce the 11 x 17's to letter or legal and they would not have to make the investment into a copier that also prints 11x17 if they did not need it. It worked, I sold many of these boxes convincing the customer about thier 11 x 17 requirements.

    I beleive the same is true today. HP is the selling the crap out of thier 4370 color box. It is not capable of handling any 11 x 17 media. However, if Ricoh were to introduce a box that would be color, have 11 x 17 scanning and only print to letter and legal. I think we would have a leg up on HP, or even just introduce a box similar to the HP.

    I believe more than 50% of clients do not need to print or copy 11 x 17 on a regualr basis. We could then have a box that we can resell for $4,000 or so that will copy, print, scan all in color, with a doc feeder and sorter. Customers could scan 11 x 17 and then reduce them if needed to print onto letter or legal, or send them to a printer on the network that will print 11 x 17.

    Art Post

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