Most folks treat printers as commodity items these days. Requirements usually run "laser or inkjet", "networked or USB", "color or B&W", "paper tray size". Maybe they look for an evelope feeder, too. BUt while that will get you a decent printer for either personal or small biz use, there's a lot more to the paper pumpers than just those five criteria--and Xerox is trying to make that apparent with 7 new offerin At this shindig, Xerox introduced three new color lasers, two color multi-function jobs and two new fax boxes–no partridge, no pear tree. Pricing starts around $499 and speeds go all the way from 5 ppm to 42ppm depending on your pleasure.But Xerox isn’t stopping with base hardware specs. Everything’s getting smarter these days (except me) and printers are no exception. One addition that Xerox is pushing, for example, is document management. Nope, it’s not just a doc management platform that Xerox bought and pasted onto its products. This is a whole consulting platform, similar to what Toshiba does with their print products. Buy a certain amount/type of Xerox machines and the company offers consultants to come on-site, identify your document processing model and then streamline it. Hopefully using all-Xerox products. And that, by the way, lets us digress to Xerox’ new sales announcement. The company used its Florida engagement to make clear that it wants a bigger slice of the SMB pie. So, they’re making their full family of office products available through a new network of certified resellers. And, yup, you guessed it: These same resellers will all be qualified and trained on Xerox’ doc management consulting services and similar technologies. They’re also providing these agents with new account leads, incentive plans and similar sales tools all aimed at selling into SMB. Don’t panic. You’ll still be able to do a quick printer purchase off the Web, but talking to a reseller and/or their consulting branch can get you new business process information that might save some real money. But let’s get back to new printer techs to watch. Green is one. Xerox’s new Phaser 8560, for example, is based on a cartridge-less print engine–that means about 90% less ink and plastic waste for this type of printer–at least according to Xerox. If you do a lot of higher-end photo printing, then check out the Phaser 6180, which apparently uses a new type of ‘high gloss’ toner to achieve excellent color reproduction. Okay, they’re not earth shattering innovations to the bedrock of your bottom line, but they can all either save some money or put out a better document. Either way, it’s worth the 10 minutes of extra think time before purchase. Technology Industry