Leased photocopiers

[smurfomatic]

We currently have a lease with Ricoh for photocopiers - eight units, ranging from small B&W to a behemoth that does booklets and all sorts of other things.

 

The lease is up for renewal in April and we're looking at other suppliers - we've had problems with some copiers (one of which admittedly does have a lot of pages per month) and would like recommendations for other options.

[mrbios]

I can only make one recommendation in threads about copier leasing:

If ever a company called "EBC" gets mentioned around you, put your fingers in your ears, shout "lalalala" loudly and run away.

[Geoff]

I have over 30 Ricoh copiers and generally speaking do not have a problem with them. Overall we do several hundred thousand pages per month on these copiers. I'm curious which models and what issues you have had.

 

Edit: I lease from Copyfax.

Edited February 22, 2016 by Geoff

[smurfomatic]

Geoff - the main bugbear is an Aficio MP C3300 which has an engineer out around once a week (or so it seems!) with paper jams, finisher faults etc. It's just short of a million pages but there's probably not much left of the original machine as it's had so many parts changed...

 

The "behemoth" is a Pro C5100S, which seems to confound even the two UK based engineers who are trained to work with it! The frustrating thing with that particular machine is that we chose it on the understanding it'd do A6 booklets (A5 folded in half) but then found out it couldn't.

[nadeem]

I can highly recommend Sharp Business (who ironically in a previous incarnation of company, sold us all my old Ricoh devices!) - support is excellent, as was pricing! I'm having my last 8 old Ricoh's taken away on Thursday and replacing with 4 Sharps.

 

Ping me if you need the number of someone to speak to.

[Jawloms]

+1 for Sharp.

[eddyc]

+2 for sharp. Had a three year lease with them which expired last summer. They won a second tender for another three years. Cannot fault them.

[Oaktech]

We have a lease direct with Canon. All the way through the tender process they just beat anyone else we mentioned, even their own authorised resellers.

 

It does mean you are limited to Uniflow for print management but it is working very well for us.

[Bedders]

+3 for Sharp. Their business support is fantastic. We have 6 machines doing about half a million pages per year each. Equitrac is what we use for our print management software.

[psydii]

+4 for sharp. Very few relationships here survived/ got renewed 2008-2015. Sharp was one, they made an effort to ensure continuity of knowledge within the school that transcended the carousel of school staff, and worked hard to keep machines running for us well beyond the scope of the original specification until we were in a position to tender for a new supplier. They won it with a combination of best devices, best service offer, most glowing references, and by being at the lower end of the cost for vendors who bothered to spec their machines properly.

 

They offered us Papercut for management rather than equitrac.

[nadeem]

As so many people have replied positively about Sharp, I thought I'd post the contact details of my account director (I've asked him!) - do just mention my name when you speak to him please.

 

Paul Hennessy

ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR

Sharp Business Systems UK,

T: 01924 823455

M: 07740 839223

E: [email protected]

[Big_Ted]

We have a lease direct with Canon. All the way through the tender process they just beat anyone else we mentioned, even their own authorised resellers.

 

It does mean you are limited to Uniflow for print management but it is working very well for us.

 

PaperCut will also run on Canon embedded systems.

[Oaktech]

PaperCut will also run on Canon embedded systems.

 

That's interesting... I believe it will actually run but that there is a legal wrangle over it and they couldn't put it on their copiers.

 

However the Uniflow quote came out cheaper than Papercut MF anyway. Canon basically gave us the server side and we paid for the device licences.

[truebluesteve]

That's interesting... I believe it will actually run but that there is a legal wrangle over it and they couldn't put it on their copiers.

 

However the Uniflow quote came out cheaper than Papercut MF anyway. Canon basically gave us the server side and we paid for the device licences.

 

How do you find UniFlow?

 

We are in the process of going through submitted proposals from and one company has chosen to offer a Canon solution using Uniflow as opposed to our preferred choice of Papercut.

[MatthewL]

If you want a print management system PaperCut MF in my opinion is the only way forward, it works across different manufacturers so in 3 years time when you renew again you have the software and you can change to which ever make of machine but still retain the features.

 

Of the systems I have used PaperCut wins hands down, so flexible and features constantly been added to it.

[Oaktech]

How do you find UniFlow?

 

We are in the process of going through submitted proposals from and one company has chosen to offer a Canon solution using Uniflow as opposed to our preferred choice of Papercut.

 

I have no problem with it, it does what we need it to do and it's easy enough to administer. I'll say it now, it's not Papercut easy. I administered Papercut for 4 years without having to read the manual and I've got the Uniflow manual open permanently on a tab - but it's very easy to read and is comprehensive.

 

It is vastly more capable than papercut, but it's additional features over Papercut are probably not worth having in a school if you are having to pay for it. As I said, Canon basically gave us Uniflow

[HTCPCP]

Another one here backing sharp kit. Never had any problems with it except 1 machine that kept breaking down just before the end of the lease (we had underestimated the demand on it and this has now been replaced with a far higher spec device with a better finishing unit). We lease through a local company, and even have one of the top brass pop in a couple of times a term to see how everything is going. We run papercut here, with no real issues at all.

[MatthewL]

Alot of people under estimate Sharp kit, you get far more standard with Sharp than you do other kit. I have used various ones over the last 10 years and Sharp is the way forward. Now having said that, if I was a small office and just wanted print and scan I could put a Toshiba in at a lower cost but the features are not as simple but would do. Sharp work closely with PaperCut and recently Kyocera too to bring scanning in with PaperCut to all be integrated.

 

Sharp have just launched their Phoenix and Griffin machines (some to be launched later this year) but these even OCR straight from the copier. Personally for me any future copier would be Sharp unless I needed something in a print room then it would be Toshiba or Xerox for quality but then the new Sharp with decent media is just as good as Toshiba.