Canon Computer to Transfer Its Support Center to Virginia : Relocation: Forty will be moved, 60 will lose jobs. About 200 will remain at Costa Mesa headquarters.

Computer printer maker Canon Computer Systems said it will move its technical support center by the end of the year from Costa Mesa to Virginia, offering transfers to 40 employees and dismissing 60 full-time but temporary workers.

The company, which will keep about 200 executive, administrative and marketing jobs at its Costa Mesa headquarters, said it wanted to move the support operation to Chesapeake, Va., to be in the East Coast time zone so workers don’t have to face the strain of arriving at the office at 4:30 a.m., as some must do now.

“We looked at dozens of cities, but pretty early on we made the decision that we should be on the East Coast,” said Peter Bergman, a vice president for marketing. “We saw it as a quality-of-life issue.”

By the end of the year, Canon hopes to employ 200 at a new 48,000-square-foot building in Chesapeake.

Canon Computer Systems said it will not shut the Costa Mesa service center altogether. Rather, it will keep about 25 higher-level support jobs here. The company has 400 employees altogether at its Orange County headquarters, at a Memphis, Tenn., assembly and warehouse facility and at sales offices nationwide.

It is one of four Orange County divisions of Canon USA in Lake Success, N.Y., which itself is a subsidiary of Canon in Tokyo. The other divisions are Canon Business Machines and Canon Information Systems, both of which are research and development operations, and Canon USA’s western regional offices in Irvine.