Konica Minolta earns multiple BLI awards

Konica Minolta Business Solutions Australia, a leading provider of advanced imaging and networking technologies for the desktop to the print shop, today announced that Buyers Laboratory Inc (BLI) has awarded Konica Minolta 2011 BLI “Pick” Awards in two categories and an outstanding achievement in Print Driver Innovation, including the following:

bizhub 552 - Outstanding 51- to 60-ppm A3 Monochrome MFD

bizhub 652 - Outstanding 61- to 70-ppm A3 Monochrome MFD

Universal Print Driver - Outstanding Achievement in Print Driver Innovation

“Outstanding reliability and very good print quality have come to be the norm for Konica Minolta’s devices, and were common threads among the two most recent engines tested in the mid- to high-speed range of Konica Minolta’s monochrome product line, the bizhub 652 and bizhub 552” said Mikolay. “Add in fast scan speeds in both black and colour, and the models are ideal fits for busy mid- to high-volume workgroups.”

Both the print drivers and control panel offer customization to make each user’s experience unique to their requirements. In addition, modular finishing allows users to easily and affordably upgrade to more robust finishing capabilities, including saddle-stitching for booklets up to 80 pages. With security at the forefront of many customers’ minds, the robust standard offerings of the bizhub 652 and bizhub 552, which include hard drive overwrite and encryption, are another plus.

“Add to their outstanding performances strong feature sets and competitive to above average copy and print productivity, and it’s clear why these models are winners,” said Mikolay.

“This recognition from BLI is a great honour for Konica Minolta and acknowledges the company’s market-leading performance and innovative technology,” said Reichter Aguilar, Product Manager for office MFDs at Konica Minolta Business Solutions Australia Pty Ltd. Both the bizhub 552 and bizhub 652 have been developed to serve our customers with high-quality black-and-white output and an attractive cost of ownership. However, it is their comprehensive scanning functionality and versatile application support that make these black-and-white MFDs true enablers for colour workflows.”

Konica Minolta UPD Wins Accolades for Ease of Use and Innovation

Konica Minolta has been honoured by BLI with an award for “Outstanding Achievement in Innovation” for its UPD, which allows users to easily find and print to a variety of Konica Minolta and third-party printers and MFDs on a network, while offering a consistent driver look and feel.

Because businesses often use a variety of printing devices from multiple manufacturers, it can be a strain on any IT department to keep users’ PCs constantly updated with the latest print drivers. With Konica Minolta’s universal PCL driver, organizations can deploy a single driver for every compatible printer on the network, saving time and streamlining workers’ productivity.

“We’ve seen quite a few universal print drivers and while they all simplify driver deployment, Konica Minolta’s UPD simplifies the process of finding a device to print to in a way we haven’t seen before,” said BLI Senior Test Technician Tony Maceri. “While many competitors’ universal drivers can find network devices of other vendors, the Konica Minolta solution takes this discovery a step further. Not only does the UPD’s device list provide each device’s status, but it also lets users know whether or not a selected device is compatible with the UPD, saving users the trial and error of sending the job to a non-compatible device only to find out that the job either didn’t print or printed incorrectly, ultimately wasting time and resources.”

“BLI’s Outstanding Achievement Award for its Universal Print Driver (UPD) further showcases the depth of Konica Minolta’s award winning technology which continues to provide our customers with innovative solutions that meet their demanding printing requirements.” said Michael Anastassiou, software solutions manager at Konica Minolta Business Solutions Australia Pty Ltd. “Konica Minolta’s complete office range of multifunctional output devices will benefit from automatic detection and identification – an important time saving benefit that every IT professional will appreciate.”