By Richard Mullins
Democrat and Chronicle

(Thursday, January 31, 2002) -- In about two months, Xerox Corp. plans to start taking orders for its iGen3 digital printer, the largest machine in the company's history.

Standing nearly 8 feet tall, the iGen3 took Xerox nearly a decade and more than $1 billion to produce.

When operational, Xerox says the iGen3 will change the business of color printing because the machines can produce photo-quality color prints at 100 pages per minute, while making them highly personalized.

Xerox hopes the iGen3 will do for color printing what the DocuTech machine did for black and white: create a market and a profit.

"For many years, the industry has been anticipating what they call the color DocuTech," said Frank Steenburgh, senior vice president and general manager of the iGen3 project. "I believe that iGen3's acceptance in the market will meet and exceed the success of DocuTech."

Xerox officials said they will put a price on the machine at the IPEX 2002 trade show in England, set to begin April 9. A small number of units have already been placed with certain customers. Shipments "are slated to begin in the second half of 2002," Xerox said in a statement.

Xerox is under strong timing pressure to launch the iGen3, said Frank Romano, a professor of digital printing at the Rochester Institute of Technology, especially since German companies are already selling other kinds of color printers.

"Heidelberg, through NexPress, has already shipped 100 of their machines," he said. "If they (Xerox) do not see any real shipments until the end of the year, that could be a real problem."