Konica Minolta Receives Six 2007 BERTL’s Best Awards

BERTL’s Best Awards Recognize KONICA MINOLTA’s bizhub Color,
Monochrome MFPs and Innovative Solutions for Product Excellence

ON DEMAND Conference & Exposition – Boston, Mass. – April 17, 2007 – Konica Minolta Business Solutions U.S.A., Inc. (Konica Minolta) is pleased to announce that BERTL® Inc. has named Konica Minolta a 2007 BERTL’s Best Award winner in six categories.  BERTL is one of the best sources for objective, independent product evaluation reports and comparative analyses on digital imaging devices and workflow solutions.  Keeping with the times and the demands of its end users, BERTL focused on the user and the business dynamics when putting together this year’s “Best of the Best.”

“Konica Minolta is honored to be a recipient of six BERTL’s Best Awards,” said Bill Brewster, vice president, marketing, Konica Minolta Business Solutions U.S.A., Inc.  “We are especially pleased with the BERTL Innovation Awards, recognizing Konica Minolta’s drive to improve and advance the multifunctional product (MFP) industry. The fact that both our bizhub™ and bizhub PRO™ color and monochrome products were recognized for their performance and value – by one of the leading testing companies in the industry – is independent validation that our feature set, performance and reliability puts us in a good position to continue to grow our market share in key industry segments.”

KONICA MINOLTA was awarded BERTL’s Best in the following categories:

Best Departmental Color MFP Range with an Outstanding Print Feature Set:
Konica Minolta - bizhub C352/C450/C550:

The departmental device often sits in the corner of the room, laden with paper supplies, finishing attributes and built to withstand high volume workloads. Often frequented by the junior members of staff and temporary help, the departmental device must be easy to use. With its location often out of line of sight, new issues like security and queue monitoring become more important. With departmental devices often being shared across multiple workgroups, a much wider range of features and workflows need to be accommodated.

The Konica Minolta bizhub C352/C450/C550 line excelled within the Color MFP range with an impressive array of media supported through both their main trays as well as the duplex unit.  Their ability to make complex tasks easy by storing multiple lists with page-by-page programming sets the document production capabilities apart from rival devices.

Best Desktop Document Management Application: Konica Minolta Unity:

As the integration between the desktop and the walk up MFP become more and more important to the successful management of document workflow in the modern office, BERTL recognizes that some applications have taken the desktop experience to the next level.

Konica Minolta Unity’s intuitive user interface took no time for BERTL analysts to master.  Its easy navigation through the entire Windows® folder system doesn’t need to pull files for further processing into specific application locations.  Unity also has drag and drop functionality with a wide range of standard workflows that makes it a valuable time saving resource.

Best Light Production Monochrome MFP Range with an Outstanding Print Feature Set: Konica Minolta - bizhub PRO 920/1050:

When jobs get too big or too complex for the departmental device to handle, the light production device takes over. Commonly located in the central reprographic department (CRD), a light production device will usually be used by a trained operator, who is being paid to get the most out of the device. With a CRD operator, often managing multiple devices and carrying out offline finishing, packing and distribution tasks, it is important that a light production device be kept productive with the minimum of operator intervention, be it carrying out copy, print or scan tasks.

The Konica Minolta bizhub PRO 920 and 1050 maintain an impressive scope of online document production capabilities with a selection of unique selling points with which to wow the buyer.  Their well laid out user interface, from both the desktop and device itself, facilitates complex document production tasks to be completed with minimum fuss.  The bizhub PRO 920 and 1050 combine good image quality, Konica Minolta’s Printgroove solution, and excellent paper handling to make for an ideal light-production monochrome MFP.

Innovation Awards:

BERTL, which prides itself on being at the cutting edge of the analyst community, is always eager to promote new technology that in its expert opinion is likely to help shape the way the market will look in a year or two. It is a testament to BERTL's analyst team that many of the products and inventions BERTL has, in previous years, recognized with innovation awards are now common in the marketplace.

"In many instances, today's innovation becomes tomorrow's business necessity and Konica Minolta’s solutions will clearly shape the way the market will look in a year or two.  BERTL's analysts had an opportunity to spend extensive time working with this manufacturer’s cutting edge solutions and we can state with confidence that they are sure to draw positive attention at the 2007 ON DEMAND event," said Margie Davis, Managing Director of BERTL.

Konica Minolta walked away with three Innovation Awards:

Konica Minolta - Biometric Authentication for the bizhub C550:

Now more than ever, every enterprise must safeguard its data and documents, as well as the devices used to print, scan, store and send this data.  Konica Minolta’s innovative Biometric Authentication option provides state-of-the-art user authentication to guard against unauthorized access to sensitive data.  When equipped with this option, the bizhub C550 actually scans the finger’s vein pattern of each user – more reliable than matching fingerprints – for the ultimate in device security.

Konica Minolta - bizhub C550 User Box Feature:

The lifeblood of many businesses is information – they must be able to access and communicate it effortlessly and quickly in order to stay one step ahead of the competition.   With Konica Minolta’s User Box feature, administrators can configure up to 1,000 user boxes on the bizhub C550’s hard drive.  Users can store, copy, print, scan and fax data in their individual password-protected user box.  Then, they can quickly Email stored documents, print them, forward them to an FTP site or computer desktop.  And, enterprises don’t have to worry about capacity – a total of 10,000 pages or 3,000 documents can be stored in all user boxes. 

Konica Minolta – Printgroove:

The need to effectively manage document-production workflow in an in-house CRD or quick printer is critical to the success of the investment or business venture. While there are a multitude of expensive workflow management applications in the market, many prove to be too costly or complex for CRD / quick printer environments. Konica Minolta's recently launched Printgroove addresses both of these issues by placing budget and ease of use at the center of the equation.

About BERTL
BERTL® Inc. is the source for objective, independent product evaluation reports and comparative analyses on digital imaging devices and workflow solutions.  BERTL’s evaluation reports, customer satisfaction research, awards and product ratings are undertaken entirely at BERTL’s expense for the benefit of its international subscriber base.

At all times, BERTL’s primary focus is the end user.  Covering all major digital imaging manufacturers, BERTL publishes the world’s most extensive Web site of evaluation reports, comparisons data, vertical market research, news and more on copiers, printers, MFPs, production and workgroup scanners, fax machines, color and production equipment and wide format devices. BERTL reports, research and other industry informative services are available in a range of specialized subscription services. To learn more about BERTL, visit www.BERTL.com or telephone 1.732.761.2311.