Ricoh Printers- any good?

[rocknrollstar]

Hi, we are looking to get several Ricoh printers, leasing them along with a new Ricoh Photocopiers. Anyone use their printers? I've not heard of them before, and currently use HP 3800s.

 

Any comments appreciated. Thanks!

[bio]

We have about 10 photocopiers from Ricoh. I can't tell if the printer are good or not. I do know that their support is just fantastic (in the netherlands)

 

bio..

[SYNACK]

We have one of their colour laser MFDs and it seems good, they actually seem to bother to release updates to drivers and have good support for x64 apart from their network scanning drivers.

 

The one we have plays well with the network and has been reliable thus far no jamming or anything, had it almost a year now.

[Quackers]

We have 6 mono laser's leased from them. Good printers, very heavy duty.

[localzuk]

We've got 2 MFD's, which are pretty good. We've also got a DSc38u which is reconditioned but solid as a rock. It has jammed once in a year and 35k pages printed.

[Tim_S]

We've got around 30 colour lasers (C7521's and C420DN's) from richoh and an MFD (DSC460), have been working well for 4 years, with only minor part replacements - if we do need a technician then they've usually been onsite within 24 hours and often sooner. The MFD breaks a little bit more often, but then it does around 100k pages a year. Again, repair is quick.

 

Would happily use them again. Can't comment on running costs as that's the bursar's job.

[rh91uk]

We use them on the Ricoh Click program and are replacing all of our printers with them. Their absolutley fantastic and only had one problem printer (MFD) and an engineer has usually been on site within 24 hours, sometimes same day.

 

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/our-advertisers/37822-ricoh-click-pay-you-print-billing.html

[mac_shinobi]

We use them on the Ricoh Click program and are replacing all of our printers with them. Their absolutley fantastic and only had one problem printer (MFD) and an engineer has usually been on site within 24 hours, sometimes same day.

 

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/our-advertisers/37822-ricoh-click-pay-you-print-billing.html

 

Am not sure how the ricoh click works with ref to the contracts but I do know that Ricoh have different contracts in terms of the response time of the engineers ie 4 hours, 8 hours etc so depends on how much the different contracts cost with ref to getting an engineer on site to attend within those time frames.

 

Also maybe its just my personal pref but I prefer to go with either PCL 5 or RPCS driver wise with ref to printer drivers, the twain drivers only work over the network excluding a few machines which do have the usb twain driver ( but these tend to be the smaller printers ie the some of the spc machines etc ) but you would have to check the relevant downloads page for your model of printer / mfd to confirm what is available.

 

There is a new PCL 6 universal driver that you can use that automatically detects what options you have installed on your MFD and enables them automatically on the driver and it also detects what paper sizes and orientations the paper is for each tray and automatically sets those in the driver so that when you want to print you dont have to configure the driver yourself as it picks all of the info from the copier with ref to whats in or on the copier.

 

I think it still has some issues the same as the PCL 6 drivers ie problems with user codes and some other bits and pieces.

 

There is scan router ( but this is for older MFD's so as to still give users the ability to do scanning ie scan to email and folder afaik - could be wrong ) however scan router is no longer supported due to the newer machines supporting scan to email / scan to folder / scanning via ftp etc

Edited February 3, 2010 by mac_shinobi

[BrianG]

We have a colour laser from them. I couldn't tell you off the top of my head what model is it ( i'm not on site ) but it's brilliant. Fast, fairly cheap to run ( compared with other similar printers) reliable.. Can't comment no the support as we've not had to call them out. We've had it about 7 months now.

[Soulfish]

I think we've now got around 40 Ricoh printers including C420DN's, SP4100's, SP5100's, C232SF's and a collection of A4 and A3 gelsprinters and haven't really had any problems with them. Edited February 3, 2010 by Soulfish

[rocknrollstar]

Thanks everyone, exactly what I wanted to hear! Having not heard of Ricoh before, they are obviously a trusty brand and provide good support.

Thanks for your help.

[SpuffMonkey]

Thanks everyone, exactly what I wanted to hear! Having not heard of Ricoh before, they are obviously a trusty brand and provide good support.

Thanks for your help.

 

We've got about 30 of them - the kit seems OK - and the engineers are OK - but (for us at least) the training and setup was woeful.

 

Also billing seems to be a complete mess - might not worry you - but it annoys the heck out of our finance staff.

[teejay]

They work very well for us.

Also, if you have enough of their printers, they will supply a box which sits on your network, does the billing page counts, orders the consumables and alerts an engineer for any faults.

[mac_shinobi]

They work very well for us.

Also, if you have enough of their printers, they will supply a box which sits on your network, does the billing page counts, orders the consumables and alerts an engineer for any faults.

 

Which is called '@remote' and is setup by 2 of the people I work with and then sent out.

 

Billing are behind due to the new system we were put on some time back so best to call them and sort things out over the phone with ref to billing but as I don't work in the finance dept it may be a pita.

 

The guys who literally drop the copiers / printers off are literally the delivery people they have no knowledge of the workings of them from what I am aware ( I could be wrong ) either way if you call the call centre and request for someone to come out for training then they should be able to pass you onto the relevant people to speak with ref to getting someone out to train on how to use the different functions etc.

 

With ref to getting it setup - there should be an engineer call arranged to come out and set it up either that or the helpdesk ( I work on the helpdesk ) will call you back and attempt to setup some functionality of the copiers ie scan to folder, scan to email, user codes and the likes - obviously it will need to be networked for most of the functions ie scanning , printing from the network etc.

 

Over a period of time I will try and put stuff on the a wiki on how to do scan to folder, scan to email, user codes etc.

[fiona_b]

Thanks everyone, exactly what I wanted to hear! Having not heard of Ricoh before, they are obviously a trusty brand and provide good support.

Thanks for your help.

 

Ricoh make a silly amount of money each year, and not all of that comes from SLR's and blank DVD's

 

They make a lot of very nice machines, support them well (such as Tessa) and allow a lot of 3rd party companies to work with them.

[TYO]

sorry but i absolutley hate the C7521's. very unreliable. pretty much everything is a consumable (black/colour photoconductor units, transfer belts, waste toner bottles etc.) we are on consumable inclusive contract so its not costing anything but changing these parts are a waste of time. enginners are good, we no them quite well as there here every fortnight! we have 10 of these C7521's vs 10 HP 3600's. (we have only ever had to replace 1 one part in 3 years on our 3600's which was a PSU.)

 

I would stick with the HP's for printing.

[pern2808]

Hi all, being a supplier of Ricoh and HP equipment, I quite agree with several of the comments made above, the printers that Ricoh are currently manufacturing are fantastic, we have put several out in the field most recently SP8200Dn and have had nothing but positive feedback from our customers. HP printers are robust and reliable in most cases and they do exactly what they say on the tin.

[stevenlong1985]

We are currently looking to upgrade our ones with new components, If your getting a Photocopier ask if your can have "scan to network" or "scan to email" something like that saves you buying any scanners

[mavhc]

Yes, a3 colour duplex sheet feeding network pdf creating scanners for almost free is good. photocopies seem much better at working with windows shares than other network scanners on printers too.

[pern2808]

Couldn't agree more, fast, efficient and quality is superb, from both mono and colour scanning versions of MFPs. And best of all free! They also work well in conjunction with Doxcument management solutions too.

[localzuk]

We are currently looking to upgrade our ones with new components, If your getting a Photocopier ask if your can have "scan to network" or "scan to email" something like that saves you buying any scanners

 

Yup, and if you get something like the MP7001, it has a 150 page sheet fed colour scanner - which works a lot faster than most network scanners that you can buy independently for >£1000. The smaller models are almost as good too.

Edited June 30, 2010 by localzuk

[rocknrollstar]

Having started this post, and having had Ricoh printers and copiers for a while, I would say that Ricoh are excellent. No worries recommended them to others, cheaper than separate toners too