When Fast is Slower

Copiers Vary in Speeds

Sometimes it is strange when facts of a situation change how you look at them. We have clients who want the fastest copier available, but it is interesting because sometimes fast copiers are slower than the slow copiers.  What do we mean?

Take the example of cars.  A car may have a top speed of 180mph, and another 12omph.  Now most of us would agree the 180 miles an hour is faster.  But what if the car at 120 accelerates much faster but has a slower top speed.  Now the question would be how far is the race to know which car would win.

In copiers it is the same.  A fast speed per minute is cool, but if the warm up time is really slow, the top speed will ultimately still be a lot slower.  For example the Colorqube copiers from Xerox generally are slow to warm up, especially if it is the first copy of the morning.  Now, if you needed a 10 page document first thing in the AM with a Colorqube 8700 which top rated speed is 44 pages a minute or a WorkCentre 7830 which is only 30, the WorkCentre 7830 would likely be done with that job 40 seconds faster because it doesn’t take a minute or so to warm up from total coldness.

Speed is determined by 3 things – top engine speed, warm up time, and processing efficiency.  Don’t make the mistake of thinking faster rated speeds mean a faster copier.