Recommend me Printers?

[JRA]

Hello everyone,

 

My old, faithful printer fleet (largely of HP CP3505s and 4700s for colour, and Brother 2250DNs for mono) is starting to get a bit tired, parts are getting a bit thin on the ground, and it's time to put them out to pasture. Or out the window.

 

I was wondering what people out there in the wide world use for printing these days. We've some Kyoceras too, but they're somewhat flakey. I wouldn't have more tbh.

 

Does anyone have any recommendations for reliable workhorse printers? I'm looking for pretty much everything; easy to repair, hugely available parts, cheap etc.

 

Thanks all for any suggestions.

[HTCPCP]

Have a look at MFPs with Papercut. The days of the small printer in every room should be long gone by now. Expensive toner, low yields, agro for IT teams who have to maintain them all, huge stocks of spare toners, people printing to the wrong printer etc.

 

Lease the printers, and you don't even need to worry about doing the repairs yourself! It's great!

[djm968]

Sharp MFDs with PaperCut

[JRA]

Cheers for that!

 

Have a look at MFPs with Papercut. The days of the small printer in every room should be long gone by now.

 

You would think so huh. But no.

 

Lease the printers, and you don't even need to worry about doing the repairs yourself! It's great!

 

Tbh we have an agreement with a company who *maintain* our fleet and from whom we buy toners, and the very reason I don't want to lease is that I can get out of bed with them at a moment's notice if I need to, and I've been VERY tempted to do that on a number of occasions. If I were renting any nu ber of printers from them they'd have us by the proverbials, which is no good for me.

[eyetea]

Happily recommend Xerox devices alongside Papercut

[synaesthesia]

As long as they're not any of the colorqube devices which are just rotten, poorly made rubbish.

Been very happy with our Kyocera fleet for reliability & running costs although getting more and more HP Pagewides these days.

Would love to have a decent few large MFPs

[djm968]

Tbh we have an agreement with a company who *maintain* our fleet and from whom we buy toners, and the very reason I don't want to lease is that I can get out of bed with them at a moment's notice if I need to, and I've been VERY tempted to do that on a number of occasions. If I were renting any nu ber of printers from them they'd have us by the proverbials, which is no good for me.

 

I would look into terminating that contract and as others have said, get some new MFPs on a lease with a decent company.

Edited March 6, 2018 by djm968

[JRA]

I would look into terminating that contract and as others have said, get some new MFPs on a lease with a decent company.

Heh, yes one day (perhaps soon) I might, but the second part of that (the part where SLT come in and their own dedicated printer/in some places BOTH THEIR OWN COLOUR AND THEIR OWN MONO PRINTER are gone, and a post-it sits on the desk which effectively says "use the printer down the corridor on the right like a commoner") will get me hung and burned at the stake in the playground at pitchfork-point.

 

In short, we're never getting rid of their precious precious printers. I'd definitely do that if I could, but I've also seen MFP implementation just fail spectacularly and at great expense, and been removed. Things have probably moved on a bit since then however.

[Rob_D]

We use papercut with the fleet of Kyocera MFPs and a couple of office printers. The head fully supports follow me printing, as long as we don't take her office printer.

[Oaktech]

Managed MFD contract.

 

Don't think about it, just do it.

 

Le Edit... We have a managed contract with Annodata using Kyocera kit and Papercut. They *threw in for free* when we mentioned that it would help SLT get behind it, a printer for the exec head and head - we just pay per sheet on it, there is no lease fee for the machine.

Edited March 6, 2018 by Oaktech

[sted]

Heh, yes one day (perhaps soon) I might, but the second part of that (the part where SLT come in and their own dedicated printer/in some places BOTH THEIR OWN COLOUR AND THEIR OWN MONO PRINTER are gone, and a post-it sits on the desk which effectively says "use the printer down the corridor on the right like a commoner") will get me hung and burned at the stake in the playground at pitchfork-point.

 

In short, we're never getting rid of their precious precious printers. I'd definitely do that if I could, but I've also seen MFP implementation just fail spectacularly and at great expense, and been removed. Things have probably moved on a bit since then however.

slt having their own printers makes sense just because of what they print sometimes but they and the school office to me are the exception to the rule. theres no reason most people cant just print to a small number of mfds they may not like it but it can probably save you a fair chunk of cash to do something more useful with

[HTCPCP]

slt having their own printers makes sense just because of what they print sometimes but they and the school office to me are the exception to the rule. theres no reason most people cant just print to a small number of mfds they may not like it but it can probably save you a fair chunk of cash to do something more useful with

 

If you have a MiFare card system, then that argument is blown out of the window really... They can't see the documents others are printing, and others can't see what they are printing unless one side leaves their documents on the printer. The only exception to that rule would be the front office in a primary school, where they constantly have to print off letters because a kid has lost/eaten it.

 

Have you got a friendly SLT member who can get the rest of the SLT to buy into it? When we did it at a secondary level, we had 1 governor and 2 members of SLT who basically brought the whole of the secondary school leadership around to it, and when doing it in primary schools, very proactive and respected IT Coordinators who basically spoke to the LT and basically said, well, if we do this, we are looking at saving £Y which will mean that we can use that money to buy a set of 4 or 5 ipads for different areas which were were wanting them - SEN, Gifted and Talented, and also PE.

[sbrade47]

Would definitely recommend an MFD contract. We went from 25+ ancient HP 4200 and 4100 printers and some M401dne's PLUS a set of 4 contracted Toshiba MFDs to a single lease contract of 14 Kyocera printers with Papercut through Alto Digital.

 

Previously I'd be repairing printers on a weekly basis whenever they decided to shred their fusers. Ordering toner is also a thing of the past. I actually (sadly) love telling cold callers I don't order toner anymore.

 

Papercut is one of those software gems where everything works perfectly and it does everything you could ever wish. Cannot find any faults with it at all. MFD integration is also excellent. It's worth every penny.

 

I'd also recommend Kyocera for MFDs and desktops but I am biased and wouldn't have anything else personally. As a technician I used to fix much older ones and (again sadly) developed a love for them.

 

With Papercut wastage will nosedive as people become much more conscious of what they are printing and they have to release the jobs. It's pretty much win-win-win.

[newpersn]

As long as they're not any of the colorqube devices which are just rotten, poorly made rubbish.

Been very happy with our Kyocera fleet for reliability & running costs although getting more and more HP Pagewides these days.

Would love to have a decent few large MFPs

 

You got HP Pagewides in contract or outright?

[rpain]

Hi - I'm going through a similar issue but the 'problem' is that getting inkjets and 3rd party cartridges works out a lot cheaper than the .44p per colour page (and scan!) it costs through our copiers. This is even factoring in throwing away 3 or 4 printers per year. We have until the end of next year before we can negotiate a different contract but this cost may be reasonable these days. I find it hard to justify paying .44p per colour page scanning, though.

 

I disagree with this on both an environmental/waste basis but also on time spent attempting to fix but mostly replacing them which I could do without. Does anyone still use inkjets in classrooms based on this reason?