In Living Color Color copiers give customers one more reason to choose you over the competition.

If you're willing to invest a serious portion of your officeequipment budget in an all-out effort to edge out the competition,consider buying a color laser copier. While they cost severalthousand dollars on average, over the long haul you'll save atleast that much doing all your own color copying and printing andhaving control over content if you want to make last-minutechanges. Some commercial copying centers charge as much as $1.50for a single color copy, so if you need several hundred or a fewthousand copies a month, buying your own machine will probably bejustified.

"It's not necessary to pay an outside printer to handlea variety of color orders these days, when top-quality colorcopiers are now accessible to all sizes of businesses," saysRick Taylor, vice president of marketing for Toshiba'sElectronic Imaging division, whose FC-70 state-of-the-art colorcopier is among the quietest on the market--a factor to consider ifyou have a small office.

The most sophisticated color copiers for small offices arehighly versatile. They combine digital laser technology withnetwork connectivity, can copy transparencies and photographs, canhandle oversized and heavyweight paper, and have printing andcopying capabilities. Most offer as close to original color andimage perfection as possible and print at high speeds. LanierWorldwide's 5603DC color copier, for example, can copyledger-sized materials and has three photo modes: printed, glossyand copied. Minolta's CF900 can color-copy books andthree-dimensional objects as well as full-bleed 11-by-17-inchsheets.

List prices for color copiers range from $846 to $29,995.You'll pay another $1,500 to $9,000 for the print controller,an optional link-up device that enables the color copier to alsofunction as a color printer. Some units come equipped with thisdevice as a built-in feature, like Canon's CLC320 color copier,the best-seller in the full-color market. Remember, though, streetprices can be considerably lower, and many dealers offersubstantial discounts whether you are buying or leasing.

Color copier options include extra paper trays, documentfeeders, sorter bins and staplers. While the units in our chart arethe lowest-priced base models of manufacturers' lineups, thereare usually upgraded versions as well. For example, Lanier's5603DC is $15,495 in the chart, but two faster models, priced at$18,495 and $20,595, are also available. Savin's lineup ofcolor copiers range from $14,995 to $33,995.

Most stand-alone color copiers are bulky, requiring severalsquare feet of floor space, especially if they include three orfour paper trays. Hewlett Packard, however, has just introduced theSeries 100, 210 and 210LX desktop inkjet color copiers, which use asimilar digital inkjet technology to that found in color printers.Besides taking up less room, these machines gobble up less of yourbudget--some cost less than $1,000. The main difference is in theirslower printing speeds, but they also don't have printing ornetworking capabilities.

"Color now far outshines monochrome in the businessenvironment. Look at the color [computer] monitors we use,"says Raymond H. Brubaker, general manager of Hewlett Packard'soffice products division. "Color printing and copying arebecoming standard."

Copiers are vulnerable pieces of office equipment because theyhave so many moving parts. Before buying, make sure you checkservice and support features, warranties and guarantees carefully.Warranties usually cover parts that malfunction or break down andthe labor to repair or replace them; guarantees assure owners thattheir machines will operate as claimed by the manufacturer.

It's Your Choice

To help you determine your needs when shopping for a colorcopier, here's a glossary of features:

Bypass. This feature is useful for making a single-sheetcopy that is a different paper size or type from those alreadyloaded into the paper tray. The downside of bypassing, however, isthat on some copiers, you must feed these documents in one page ata time.

Digital. This is an imaging process that takes a scan ofthe image being copied and translates it into data that can beedited prior to printing.

Manual duplex or auto duplex. Duplex means printing onboth sides of a single sheet of paper, which saves both time andmoney.

Network connectivity. Most color laser copiers can hookup to one or more computers to input and share data, edit images,and be used as a printer as well as a copier.

Reduction/enlargement. Most color copiers resize imagesfrom 25 percent to 400 percent, usually in 1 percent increments,and from one paper size to another.

Resolution and dpi. Copiers "look" at an imageand turn it into millions of minute dots. Dots per inch (dpi) is ameasurement of the clarity, crispness and quality of the picturebeing reproduced. The greater the number of dots concentrated in asquare inch of space, the clearer the image. Today's colorlaser copiers have an average resolution of 400 dpi, which isnear-photographic.

Running costs. The cost of copying a page in full colorcan vary, depending on the number of colors involved and thedensity and quality required. The average cost is around 20 centsper copy for digital color laser copiers. Hewlett Packard'sbase Series 100 inkjet averages 3 cents a copy, one of the lowestper-copy prices of the copiers listed in our chart.

Speed. Most digital color laser copiers produce three tosix color pages per minute, and black-and-white pages two or threetimes faster than that. Inkjets are a little slower but can produceup to three color pages per minute, depending on the color densityand quality required, and up to 10 black-and-white pages perminute.

Touchscreen control panel. On Mita's Ci7500, forexample, this panel allows you to fine-tune color images andquality by adjusting brightness, contrast, density, sharpness andsaturation.

Copier Price and Features Table

Get the complete list of features, prices and web sites for allthe copiers discussed above.

Jill Amadio is a writer in Newport Beach, California.