Two new product announcements recently came from Xerox – a 100-ppm and an 80-ppm color EP production printer. At $500,000 and $390,000, respectively, these are not even remotely considered direct competitors to RISO's ComColor high-speed inkjet printers.

On a separate note, I heard a rumor today that Konica Minolta will soon introduce a new 85-ppm color printer. Possibly a bizhub pro c8500 at around $150,000?. This should be another nice system for high-quality digital production color and, again, not comparable to ComColor inkjet.

These announcements are just interesting reinforcements of the fact that the market wants (no, craves) higher speed digital color production systems. OEMs like Xerox, Canon, Ricoh, and Konica-Minolta respond well to this demand by continuing to increase the color speeds of their output.

I spoke with a print service provider last week at the Print & Imaging Summit in Los Angeles. He says he has a couple of iGen 3 systems - he loves them and has no desire to replace them anytime soon. He apparently has all the capabilities one would need for high speed color. Yet, he has asked for a proposal and a trial for four 150-ppm ComColor 9050 inkjet printers. Why? Small footprint, envelope and carbonless capabilities, and an ultra low-cost running costs for both color and black in a single device. This total package should cost him less than $200,000 and give him 600 color pages per minute.

ComColor cannot come close to the quality or capabilities of EP printers, but many find it an affordable and versatile supplement that can expand digital color output options.