Business info Magazine awards Oki MC860MFP Editors Choice Rating
April 17th, 2009 Posted in Industry News, Printer Reviews
Okis MC860 is an A3 MFP for small businesses and workgroups with limited space and budgets.
Recently businesses have woken up to the fact that they print relatively few A3 pages – between 3% and 5% according to most estimates – and have begun to question the need for A3 MFPs that cost a lot to buy and take up a great deal of space.
Instead of having a large number of A3 MFPs dotted around a building, printer companies like Lexmark, HP and Samsung advise customers to install high speed A4 MFPs with just a small number of A3 devices for oversize documents, sophisticated finishing options and large print runs.
This is a compelling argument and businesses have saved hundreds and thousands of pounds by heeding it.
But what if there was an alternative: an A3 MFP that didn’t take up a lot of office space and was reasonably priced so that small businesses and workgroups could benefit from A3 colour printing (and the ability to create A4 colour booklets) on demand. without having to go to a copy shop or queue at a large departmental device along the corridor?
Well now there is: the Oki MC860, Based on the world’s smallest A3 colour printer engine, this 26ppm (colour) and 34ppm (mono) printer. copier. scanner and fax has two main selling points: Its low RRP of £3,050; and its compact shape and Size – it takes up little more space than an A4 MFP and is designed to sit on or beside a desk. making workgroup users more productive.
Alan McLeish. senior product marketing manager for Oki Printing Solutions. Told Business Info that the product was designed to be sold through the IT reseller channel, which to date has had limited choice of A3 devices from HP. Lexmark and occasionally Xerox.
Some customers like to buy print predominantly through the IT channel
What we want to do is make it easy and affordable for people to buy colour MFPs through that route. We know it works with A4 devices because we have a range of three colour A4 machines, We see the MC860 as an opportunity to do this with A3 MFPs at a price point that is much lower. than that of other machines: for example the HP Color LaserJet CM6030 is twice the price of the MC860.
EVERYTHING INCLUDED
One of the ways in which Oki has made things easier for customers Is by offering everything as standard, including a fax capability; 40GB hard disk drive; 512MB memory; 16MB fax memory; PCL6, PCL5c and PostScript printer languages; touchscreen display. Encrypted Print for confidential printing; and a 50-sheet Reverse Automatic Document Feeder (RADF), The only variable is the number of paper trays.
“For £3,050 RRP you get a fully configured machine that can do copy, print, scan, faxing and printing. It comes with an RADF as standard. so you can do duplex (two-sided) copying and printing; a 300-sheet paper tray; and a 100-sheet multipurpose tray. The CDTN version. costing £3,320. comes with an additional 53()..sheet paper tray and floor-standing cabinet. We expect this to be the biggest seller, as you can have one tray for A4 and one for A3. A third version, the CDXN, has two additional paper trays and a smaller cabinet,” explained McLeish.
There is just one additional accessory. An extra 0.5GB of memory for people doing intensive graphics work. “But most people won’t need that”. added McLeish.
ACCESSIBLE A3
The MC860 is not Oki’s first A3 colour MFP, but according to McLeish, it is the company’s first one designed to meet the day-to-day printing needs of office workers,
“In November we launched the C9850MFP but that’s more expensive – three times the price – and we have sold relatively few through the IT channel.So the MC860 is the first accessible colour A3 MFP for the IT channel” he said.
“The 9850 has a Fiery controller for the print engine that adds a level of sophistication that most office workers don’t need, And it has in-built EFI SendMe capability. so it’s also a document management device for integrating with Microsoft Sharepoint. You can scan and edit and annotate documents at the MFP prior to sending them to Sharepoint, In that sense it is a very sophisticated product.”
One of the caveats concerning machines with a low purchase price is that the cost of consumables can be high, With a cost per page of O.96p for B&W pages and 5.37p for colour, running costs on the MC860 are cheaper than Oki’s A4 MFPs but more expensive than large departmental devices. However, the low purchase price means that he MC860 is still very good value for small businesses and workgroups of up to 10 people requiring a single device for A4 and A3 colour printing.
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