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P H A S E R 7 7 6 0 E VA L U AT O R G U I D E
A color printer’s overall productivity represents the sum of many of its specific capabilities. Print
speed is an obvious specification to compare, but many other factors play an important role in
determining whether a printer can support a busy workgroup, deliver the performance you expect
and meet the demands of your users. This criteria set will help you evaluate all aspects of a printer’s
productivity, and show how the Phaser 7760 printer can help you increase the productivity of your
employees.
Consider print speed
Since color printing, rather than black-and-white printing, is the primary use for this class of color
printer, it makes sense to pay close attention to the color print speed. For larger print jobs and longer
print runs, the rated engine speed of the printer will play a large role in how quickly the job is
finished.
Calculate print job throughput
Print job throughput is the time it takes from clicking the print button on your computer screen to
the final delivery of the document to the output tray – sometimes called “click-to-clunk.” Rated
print speed is only a part of the time it takes to print a job – image-processing speed can be even
more important to maximizing throughput. Test against jobs typical of your work environment – do
you regularly print large, image and color intensive images that place an emphasis on RIP speed?
Or, does your business regularly print runs of 25, 50, or hundreds of color documents or
presentations?
Measure overall performance
To accurately measure overall printer performance in a real workgroup environment, send a mix of
black-and-white and color documents of different length and complexity to the printer over a stan-
dard Ethernet network. This combines the network transmission time, first-page-out time, and
multi-copy engine speed to paint a clear picture of the actual overall performance of the printer.
Consider multiple users
A color printer must be able to handle a wide variety of documents quickly and reliably. A color
printer must keep up with the performance demands of a shared network environment, and be able
to process jobs quickly and efficiently to keep from becoming a productivity bottleneck.
Consider media flexibility
Think about the various document types your business could generate in-house, and ensure the
printer you are considering can support the type of paper or other media you would like to use to
produce that document. Things to keep in mind as you evaluate this area are media size, media
weight, whether you’d prefer to use custom-sized media, and how the printer is able to
communicate the media it has loaded to users via the print driver.
EVALUATE PRODUCTIVITY
