[Misc] DocuColor 242 vs. WorkCentre 7655?

[Guest]

We have a Xerox 7328 (no Fiery) on contract that is acting up and despite many repairs Xerox have been unable to make it work reliably so are arranging an exchange.

The options put forward are the 74xx, or a slightly older but higher rated Workcentre 76xx or Docucolor 242.

I'm not sure if we'll end up having a choice or if Xerox will do what they see best on the basis it will be at least equivalent if not better, but I'd like to be able to have some idea of my preferred option.

The 7328 is used as a general office copier, for scan to email with LDAP lookup to our Active Directory, and for printing ad-hoc marketing material, I guess the marketing usage borders on pre-production but the print quality is quite acceptable.

Whilst well within the duty cycles, we print a reasonable amount (afraid I don't know the numbers off-hand) of duplex, folded and stapled stuff on 160gsm A3 and A4 and it seems the 7328 simply can't cope with this despite being rated to.

We also have a professional finisher to do the folding and stapling, but it would be nice to be able to do this on the 160gsm paper which the current copier can't.

I believe the Docucolor 242 is almost a mini pre-production machine so whilst it may be older, it seems a more heavy duty machine so I'm leaning towards that, but I'd be grateful for any opinions from people who know these machines.

Thanks in advance.

[DFM914]

A Doc242 with the bustled Fiery is the best as far as color output. Though not great for scanning to email especially with LDAP. The Xerox Workcentre 76xx series would be much better for that as well as color output. A WC74xx series is practically the same as a WC73xx series machine so this may not be the right replacement.

[hutchingsp]

A Doc242 with the bustled Fiery is the best as far as color output. Though not great for scanning to email especially with LDAP.

Thanks for the reply. Can you expand a little on "not great for scanning to email" please? All we do right now is point the copier at our LDAP directory, walk up to the copier and put the pages in the auto-feeder/on the platter, hit "scan to email", type in the first few characters of the recipient and hit "search" and it shows the matches.

I'd assumed the DocuColor would work in a similar way?

[DFM914]

I have never had much success scanning to email from a Doc252, I normally would set it up to scan to a mailbox and have the user retrieve it from their PC with a link I setup on their desktop. The method you described above works great on a Xerox WC76XX series machine and has virtually the same color quality as the Doc. I think it is because of the Fiery integration with the Doc. I know for a fact you cannot change the port setting (other than port 25) for SMTP. So overall, the WC76xx is probably a better fit for your situation.

[hutchingsp]

Thanks, tbh the scan to email stuff is almost all "office" stuff so B&W scanning, invoices, that sort of thing.

I'd be especially grateful for any breakdown of the difference between the WC6xx and the DC2xx as from the Xerox website that look very similar - not quite sure what distinguishes one from the other?

[DFM914]

The Doc252 is really a small to mid-production color printer,most of our customers that have them are print-for-pay places doing small run press type jobs; flyers,business cards, church bulletins, etc whereas the Workcentre 7655/7665/7675 are more common in a workgroup office environment where scanning and copying are as popular as color printing. The customers that have the 76xx series tend to do alot of scan to email / network scanning as well as copying rather than mostly printing. The 2 models both utilize the same print engine.