Xerox has shown just how serious it is about competition in the high volume digital print market by buying out Heidelbergs first London installation of a Digimaster 9110.
In an aggressive move, Xerox has bought the monochrome Digimaster from quickprinter Copyprint UK and replaced it with the faster Xerox DocuTech 6180. According to Copyprints managing director John London the offer "was too good to be true. Xerox bought the machine for considerably more than we paid for it and gave us a special deal on the Xerox 6180."
The Digimaster, which had output over four million copies, would not have been exchanged had Xerox not been so persistent, said London. "We had no qualms over the quality produced by the Heidelberg. The installation was good and we had very good engineering support," he explained.
The Heidelberg, which was installed at Copyprint just before Christmas, (PrintWeek, 3 December 1999) was "the best deal at the time," said London. "It was a good deal because Heidelberg was keen to make their first [Digimaster] installation in London. The Xerox was very much more expensive at that time - over twice the price."
Both machines offers high-speed monochrome output with a resolution of 600dpi, but the Xerox DocuTech 6180 is faster producing 180ppm, compared to the Heidelberg Digimaster 618 which has a speed of 110ppm.
Story by Fleur Priestley