Buying printers - which manufacturer?

[nielpeel]

Hi, I need to buy some colour lasers to replace our 4 year old Konica Minolta workhorses which have been very busy, yet reliable, in our main ICT rooms. Most of the printers were in place when I started my job here a year ago, but I have bought some Samsung mono lasers in for the admin office.

 

I took the opportunity at BETT this Friday to scope out the latest printers, and some guy told me "no-one ever got fired for buying HP" - an American sentiment, methinks.

 

I'd like to stick with Samsung for our mono lasers because they are fast, reliable and cheap to run.

 

However, I'm undecided about the colour laser options; can anybody recommend a robust and economical colour laser printer? Our Konicas have been great yet apparently (according to info gleaned from BETT) 95% of schools run HP, there must be a reason for this!

 

Thanks in advance for your opinions.

[PEO]

when it comwes to colour, its hp, I tend to buy brother mono.... just recently I installed konnica 14 colour lasers in to the dep and head teachers office, to see how they get on.

[Brpilot99]

Ditto on the HP's ... Also there's normally a good range of cheap(ish) toner compatables that can save some cash after your purchase ....

[kmount]

We solely buy HP and this has unfortunately bitten us badly with the awful P2015N's.

 

For a colour laser, I still think the HP Colour Laserjet 3600N is a lovely piece of kit.

 

We're looking into compatibles now, and indeed whether we stick with HP in the future.

 

Good luck.

[AngryTechnician]

apparently (according to info gleaned from BETT) 95% of schools run HP, there must be a reason for this!

 

Because they are cheap.

 

I inherited a school full of HP printers when I started 3 years ago and stuck with them when I bought replacements. I have now come to loathe HP printers, chiefly due to the extremely poor customer support and their bloated and unreliable drivers. As kmount says, the P2015n printer is awful; all three of ours have had hardware faults. The 2600 and 1020 lines all contain a cheap and nasty Zenographics print engine and the drivers are worse than HP's own. We had to uninstall them all from our printer server as they routinely crash the Spooler service.

 

I will almost certainly never buy HP again.

 

I would recommend having a look at the Xerox line of networked lasers printers. They are a bit pricier but I've recently deployed a couple of these and they have been utterly hassle-free.

[Sylv3r]

All of our colour printers are HP with our mono printers being a mixture of HP and Brother.

 

We have a couple of Samsung printers in individual offices - but they are not very good so will be getting replaced ASAP.

[kesomir]

I use Brother for the mono lasers - very impressed with them.

 

I have a konica minolta colour laser and I'm not impressed with it.

-doesn't print on card (smears colours all over the place and then needs cleaning)

-toner costs a fortune

-linux printing is a rpita

 

It was however free with tesco computers for schools several years ago, so beggers can't be choosers. I'd go with a different brand if spending money.

 

Don't own an HP, but they come with an initial hefty price which I would assume correlates to solid build quality, speed, reliability and hopefully lower consumable costs - investigate though.

[imiddleton25]

We bought the old QMS (later Minolta) colour laser printers when they first came out.

Then as we expanded to more colour lasers we looked at a more robust and cheeper running cost. We had a kyocera mono that was still in daily service after 8 years so we bit the bullet and although not the cheapest printers to buy, we have been very impressed by the kyocera colour machine we now have 10 colour and 14 mono machines.

 

Apart from toner replacements had to do nothing to them. They just keep going and more importantly are robust (so kids dont break them).

 

We spend no time unblocking or fixing printers so a ery big plus point for me.

[steve]

We only buy HP for our lasers - over 20 small mono (HP1200/1300) and 30+ colour lasers (HP3800/CP3505)

 

We've had very few problems over the last 3/4 years with these since ditching Epson. The main reason for our change was print quotas - all print quota software works with HP. The rest can be a bit hit and miss I've found.

 

HPs colour laser support was based in the UK the last time I called (not sure if they have changed this). I've always found their support good for the colour lasers on the small number of occasions I have had to use it.

 

The down side is the cost of the toners and how quickly they ditch a type of toner. We like to keep the number of different types of toners we stock to a minimum. HP usually change printer models every 12-18 months. A model of toners sometimes fits 2 models of printer.

 

Since the fall of the pound against Euro / dollar, HP toners have become 10-20% more expensive. Not sure if this is true of other makes, its now cheaper to buy a new printer.

[SYNACK]

We have had Minoltas and found them to be horrificly expencive on toner and very unreliable. We mostly buy hps for the lower running cost ( as they use less consumables in general ) and greater relyability. Still you need to buy mid range printers as the cheaper ones as stated above can cause lots of problems.

[teejay]

If they are in heavy use areas have a look at Rocih. With these you either buy or lease the printers and are then charged a cost per page which includes toner and all maintenance. It works out a lot cheaper and you have the benefit of knowing that they are warranted for their lifetime.

We are gradually moving across to these as they have worked out about 40% cheaper in tco for A4 colour and 80% cheaper for A3 as they charge the same cost per page for A3 as A4.

The printers work great as well.

One tip is to insist on Catalyst pricing as this is a lot cheaper!

[AngryTechnician]

One tip is to insist on Catalyst pricing as this is a lot cheaper!

 

That's an excellent point, and not just for printers. I generally won't even give sales calls the time of day if the answer to my first question ("Are you a Catalyst supplier?") is not "yes".

[SteveMC]

If they are in heavy use areas have a look at Rocih.

 

Another thing to bear in mind is that Ricoh, Gestetner, Infotech, Lanier, Nashuatec and NRG are all actually the same company! Quite a few printers/copiers are sold under different model numbers with the various brands, so it's worth looking around.

 

The only problem with using the copier type machines is that staff end up competing - someone will start a 1000 copy run locally, and then other staff will sulk that their print-job has to wait.

 

If you've got any Apple machines (or Linux/Unix for that matter) it's always worth buying the PostScript add-on, as it makes life so much easier.

 

Stephen

[teejay]

 

The only problem with using the copier type machines is that staff end up competing - someone will start a 1000 copy run locally, and then other staff will sulk that their print-job has to wait.

 

 

Stephen

 

Ricoh don't just do photocopiers, they do printers as well, including gell printers (their equivalent to inkjet but much better), A4 & A3 b/w and colour lasers and multifunction printers.