Xerox Phaser Solid Ink Printers - Any good?

I'm in a primary and our OKI printer is starting to trap paper in it's fuser unit and burn them. I've replaced the fuser (after it nearly went on fire) but I think it's on it's way out. It's 3 years old and probably done about 50,000 prints (which isn't much as it's supposed to have a 50k per month duty cycle).

I've been reading about the Xerox Phaser 8500 - £520 (+ £200 worth of free ink). It uses solid ink sticks (wax, i think) instead of toner. According to one review "it is a joy to fill up" because you can just drop in an ink stick before the last one has finished (even mid job). Apart from all you need to replace is a maitenence kit every 10,000 pages (£70).
Good for the environment too.

The review said "page costs work out at 1.93p for a five per cent black page and 8.51p for a twenty per cent colour one" - seems more than our OKI, which proably is 1p for bw and 6p for colour, but difficult to compare.
Page price is important - we spend ~£2000 a year on printing which is more money than I have in my budget.

I like the idea of not having to stock a load of different consumables then spend my whole life replacing them.

Any experience of these? Or other ideas?

Our new Admin Officer before she disappeard on maternity leave ordered two new lease Toshiba photocopiers both are network linked and one prints colour. I fear they are going to work out pretty expensive to run - but heck not my budget!

These two machines have brought considerable relief to our other machines particularly the two brothers: HL-5130 mono which hasd been tremendous value and CN-2700 which is it's bigger brother light use colour. That machine seems to be wax colour and looking at it on the WWW slightly worryingly expensive when it comes to replacement refills.

I have two 8400 printers but cant compare costs to colour lasers as they are our only 2 colour laser type printers. The ink comes in blocks and will only go in a certain slot like a kids toy. The maintenance kits last quite a long time as well.

I can tell you for sure that an A4 photo costs about 22p to print! The printer tells you exactly what it has used for each print out.

What Toshiba copiers are they speckytecky? I am a Toshiba fan and find them much cheaper to run than any colour laser out there.

Aren't these very fast too!? Mattpant(EG Member) near me has one andis very happy with it.

A few places to try for input..

news://comp.periphs.printers
Note: there's a few resident trolls (you'll work out who pretty quickly) but some very knowledgeable individuals on there

http://www.stevesforums.com/forums/view_forum.php?id=91
Okidata seems to be one of the popular brands discussed here quite a bit


Can't help more as I'm more focused on inkjets.