Renewal of printer fleet

[Archipelego1]

Salutations all,

 

I'm currently looking at our managed print contract which comes up for renewal towards the end of the year. We currently have nearly 40 managed colour printers which we pay quite a lot for. I'm looking to review this with a view to reduce the number of printers and replace some colour for mono.

 

I'm currently looking at my options. Whether we signup for another managed service, with a review of our printer fleet. Have a hybrid solution with the main school printers being managed, then other subject areas and offices have standardised school owned printers. Or go fully school owned, managing our own printer fleet.

 

What have you deployed in your schools and do you have any views on the solution/company you use?

[sonofsanta]

Switched ours over in October half term, at the end of a 5 year managed contract.

 

Swapped everything out for the new HP OfficeJet Pro range of inkjets--chiefly because, over 5 years, it saved us 40% compared to continuing our existing contract, something like £50,000 (we were spending ~£20-£24k a year by the end of the last contract). Quality is not quite as shiny as laser--mostly a lack of contrast, which bothered Art and nobody else--but they're fast (55pm/70ppm), reliable, easy to support and maintain, and as cheap as 0.44p/2.9p per mono/colour click (0.6p/3.5p on the lower end device). Given that they're mostly used for internal homework and/or using paper before it goes in the bin, the lack of contrast was a compromise we were happy to make (resolution and colour accuracy are excellent, it is just the depth of the blacks).

 

We've got them on a 5 year managed print services agreement with Landscape, who have been excellent so far, and were marvellous in the setup--they helped me set up Web JetAdmin and provided me all the details of the printers (serial etc.) so I could prepare the printer configurations to be automatically pushed to each printer as it was connected. In the end, all we needed to do at each printer once it was physically unboxed and connected was tell it its IP address; it got everything else from the print server.

 

We invested the capital to buy the printers outright as a cheaper option overall, but I know finance is available.

 

We also still have--as we always have--a handful of older Brothers still lurking in low volume areas that nonetheless need a private printer e.g. Heads of Year. The threshold was something like 300 pages a month, I think--below that, we make do.

[Archipelego1]

Thanks for the reply and information.

 

In terms of your managed contract, is ink and warranty included, with you just paying a price per colour/mono page?

 

How have you found the durability of the printers, have you had much damage or faults? Are they student/teacher proof?

[timbo343]

We have gone with arena and nearly had a year with them. I can honestly say things have been spot on with them and our 9 toshiba estudios and 4 kyocera 6000 colour desktop printers with papercut mf.

 

We had some challenging scenarios at first but arena have done a great job making some custom scripts for us.

 

The devices are teacher and student proof and toner is included in the contract to the point where the devices order their own toner. Only the waste bottle has to be manually ordered. I cannot sing their praises enough.

 

We still have some old HP 2015 and 2055 printers linked into papercut too.

[sonofsanta]

Thanks for the reply and information.

 

In terms of your managed contract, is ink and warranty included, with you just paying a price per colour/mono page?

 

How have you found the durability of the printers, have you had much damage or faults? Are they student/teacher proof?

 

We bought the 5 year CarePack with the printers, which is an all in service agreement, and all goes through Landscape. Having bought the printers & warranty, we now pay the click charge per mono/colour copy and get all the inks and other consumables included. It's all in.

 

Devolving the capital purchase of devices + warranties over five years made this cheaper by far than any other the other leasing options, and even if we'd gotten it on a finance agreement it would have been cheaper.

 

The devices are as sturdy as any laser I've ever seen--the build quality is excellent, the paper trays etc. are all really solid. If anything, the ink cartridge mechanism makes them more student proof, as people aren't pulling out toners and drums to try and clear paper jams.

 

Regarding Arena... we were with them before (after they bought out a local company) and we found their service got steadily worse over time we were getting completely the wrong toners sent to us (as in, needed an A3 Cyan, got an A4 black), deliveries were taking up to a fortnight (when they used to be next day), we were having to replace broken printers with completely different models because they couldn't get parts... YMMV: we all know the difference a good account manager can make, and our troubles may have been because ours was an adopted contract, but I was glad to see the back of them here.

[Archipelego1]

I'm also thinking a Hybrid might be an option. When company did you choose for your MFD Leases?

[truebluesteve]

We used Konica Minolta but they are jamming a lot now. Should have talked to LaserLife as they provide MFD's with no hardware cost or agreement. You just pay for the usage at standard rates in the market. Just like the printers I have from them.

 

Speak to my account manager - Robert Chalkwright - 07894 593 061. He has helped me a lot and I have rolled out the printers when I wanted. Allowing to use the toners I had already. Also 2 months in I needed to change something so he just collected a machine (no questions)

 

Just as a matter of interest is Robbie Chalkwright the same chap that opened this thread - which seems to be a thinly disguised plug for Laserlife?

 

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/hardware/162441-pay-you-go-managed-print.html

Edited February 9, 2016 by truebluesteve

[markofealing]

We have found that our Laserlife printers (Kyocera) go through waste toner bottles very quickly, also the toner is not original (re-manufactured) and reliability has started to become an issue. Yes the engineers come out to fix the problems but in general terms these printers are turning out to be less reliable than our old HP lasers which need no maintenance other than a quick clean occasionally.

 

As we are also paying premium prices for the toners (more expensive than original Kyocera!) I would look elsewhere. In particular LNL LNL Printers for Schools. We are currently trialing two of their Lexmarks, very impressed and they undercut all the online completion when replacing consumables. The waste toner bottle takes ages to fill up as well.