Printers - Advice

[rlculver]

Hi all,

 

Hope I can pick all your brains!!!

 

Firstly we have an hp colour laser jet 4600n printer in school, which we use for the bulk of our printing. Much of our evidence of children’s work is photographic.

 

We are currently getting lots of toner, which is totalling into hundreds of pounds at a time.

 

As we are being redeveloped, are there any printers you recommend, which provide a good colour copy, but cheap to run and have a low maintenance cost?

 

We have been looking at putting in colour photocopiers, which what do you recommend?

 

Any comments would be greatly received.

[john]

Colour Photocopiers are the way to go, as those 4600s are school budget destroyers! £400+for a set of toner is stupid, only thing to do with them is run them in Cartridge Check for a few weeks until they are really empty.

 

As for the machines I favour Toshiba copiers as I have a good relationship with the local Toshiba dealer so I get good pricing on them but they seem hard wearing and have good quality colour.

[rlculver]

Hi,

 

Thanks for the information.

 

How do you run this machine in cartridge check - I have looked around the HP menu system on the machine, but cannot seem to find information with regards to this.

 

Also, how much per colour copy / print out is charged to you from Toshiba?

 

Regards

 

Robert

[localzuk]

Hmm... Looking at the per page print prices I would say that the 4600 isn't a costly printer to run - taking into account all different parts (fuser, transfer unit, toner and paper) I reckon an 'average' colour print should cost you 5.1p and an average black print should cost you 1.3p. (Using suppliesforschools.com as the price guide)

 

We pay 1p per black and 5p per colour on our per colour copy solution with our photocopier (plus paper) and 1.6p per black and 6.2p per colour for our other (epson 2600N/CX11) printers (including paper).

[SpuffMonkey]

And you could try these

 

http://www.urefilltoner.co.uk/

 

If you're really desperate

[john]

I have used compats from all sorts of makes in my 4600 and they are just not good enough, they either ooze and leak, give poorer results or don't last as long (before either cartridge check or they really run out) so I find that only real HP supplies are good enough and at £100 per colour and £95 per black its a bit pricy really. When you go through 2 sets a term, 3 terms £1800 in colour toner and £570 for black. Fine its cheaper than Inkjet, but very costly to run.

 

The other thing with them is that they are not badly priced to run if you manage to keep them at 5% or lower coverage, but as soon as they get above 5% it eats the toner faster than anything. I have one that has cyan running at 12% coverage so it lasts very little time, no matter how you explain it to them, the kids will obsess with cyan for some reason and before someone says if they love cyan the other 2 will be reduced, they run just over 5% still so its not balancing out really.

 

In terms of your colour costs you are a bit high on your black, any decent copier firm and make should easily be able to give you black at under 1p per page, if its 1p or above your being robbed (or the machine is an old model that has a high running cost). Your colour price isn't bad though, I get them for 6p per page on the newest machine.

 

As for cartridge check:

Its in the Diagnostics menu on them, and then in there is Disable Cartridge Check. If it doesn't appear, turn the printer off for 30 secs then on again, wait for it to boot and say replace cartridge X and then it should be there as sometimes it vanishes.

[localzuk]

Ah, the black is actually around 0.85p IIRC for our photocopier - but I added a bit due to the amount of time the staff have to spend unjamming the machine, and the downtime we have with it (i would say we have had 4 long periods of downtime on it of 3 or more days in the last 4 months).

[contink]

Worth considering the new HP K5400's for this but with high capacity cartridges at bare minimum (HP-88's for this printer).

 

It's a very new printer though so if you want tried and tested then the K550 seems to be in that area (search on that score).

 

... and if you really want to save some cash with this printer then do some searching for CIS for HP88 carts.. Eean on here grabbed a system recently and I'm assuming he's doing well (no news is good news)... Got 3 schools using the K550 now and the price per page is pretty much nill with good speed and colour values..

[SimpleSi]

the price per page is pretty much nill

 

I think you may have contravened EU regulations on printing price comparsions

 

regards

 

Simon

[contink]

the price per page is pretty much nill

 

I think you may have contravened EU regulations on printing price comparsions

True..

 

For what it's worth I can provide a proper comparison on the costs for a unit but anyway.. it does save a lot of money IF you take a little time to learn your stuff and minimise any need for maintenance (not much more than any regular printer).

 

Anyways... I'm going to be grabbing a K5400 for testing in the next few weeks so I'll feedback with a review in due course.

[plexer]

I've had similar experiences using compats in the 4600 but I did have some Xerox ones which were good.

 

Ben