Panasonic Document Imaging's KX-PS8100 Enhanced With Fiery Driven Color Output

Panasonic Document Imaging Co. is shipping an enhanced version of its multifunction office product to computer and business technology resellers.

The KX-PS8100 combination desktop color printer, scanner and duplicator offers Adobe PostScript 3 emulation and Fiery Driven color output with a suggested list price starting at $8,999.

"I like the fact that it has the same functions as the KX-PS8000," said Dale Dahlgren, managing partner for Best Transfer LLC, a Mundelein, Ill.-based reseller. "But the Fiery function gives a lot more benefits for a lot of applications."

Dahlgren, whose company sells mainly to computer clients but also has a foot in the business technology market, is currently testing the KX-PS8100, and said it is a versatile machine.

"It allows [clients] to crop a photo, resize it, adjust the color and mirror it on the screen," he said. "You can scan in a photo, apply the text, and it all fits in the machine's memory. You don't have to bring [the image] into the computer at all."

Dahlgren said the unit is good for corporations printing internal documents, as well as for doing proofs before sending jobs out to print. He expects it to do well with certain vertical applications, including clients who use the transfer materials his company sells for use in making gifts, awards and so on.

His only complaint was that, coming from the PC side of the business, he had some trouble working with the different color models available for PostScript Level 3. "For people who are Mac-based, or have to provide proofs to Mac customers, it's great. . . . I'm used to no-brainer solutions," he said.

As a printer, the KX-PS8100 offers 1,200 x 1,200 dot-per-inch output, print speed of up to 4.7 pages per minute in color or 14 ppm in black/white, and 10/100BaseT Ethernet connectivity.

As a flatbed scanner, it features up to 9,600-dpi resolution and 30-bit image quality. With the 50-page automatic document feeder, it can do low-resolution 300-dpi scans at up to 17 ppm. The scanner and printer functions are connected via firmware to let the unit act as a stand-alone color copier.

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