Please help me find the perfect printer(s) for my project!
May 17, 2012 4:35 PM   Subscribe

Please help me find the perfect printer(s) for my project!

I have been tasked with finding two printers for a biannual, week-long work project: one black & white printer, which will handle 75% of project-related print jobs, and one color printer for the remaining 25%.

Required features for both printers:

1) Must be FAST! We produce a large amount of small print jobs (50-200 copies each) on a very limited schedule, so a fast printer can literally save us hours per day.

2) Must use toner/drum that can be purchased from a typical OfficeMax / Staples-type office supply store. We order all the toner we think we'll need and then some in advance, but we MUST be able to purchase last-minute backups if needed. Difficulty: largest major city is more than 2 hours away, but there is an office supply store within a 30 min drive.

3) Must run smoothly, aka not be prone to paper jams or other errors. Obviously all printers are susceptible to these types of things, but I'd like to avoid anything where this is a known issue.

4) Must be able to print on cardstock.

5) Copy and scan functionality a plus, but definitely not required. Same with double-sided printing, although this is probably more important than the other two features.

Cost is always a factor, of course, so nothing too extravagant, but the powers that be are definitely willing to pay a premium for something fast & reliable. Aside from these incredibly busy two weeks a year, both printers will be in storage, so nothing too fragile or that can't easily be boxed up.

Any brand, series, or model number suggestions welcome, up to and including specific printers to avoid. It seems like we have incredibly frustrating and project-stopping printer issues every time this comes up, and I'd really like to save myself and my team from unnecessary stress and late hours this time around. Thanks in advance!
posted by perpetual lurker to Technology (1 answer total)
 
Best answer: I am an IT guy at a library. We have tried laser printers from maybe 5 or 6 different companies and keep coming back to HP. We used oki data ,ricoh, canon, xerox, brother and others.

We just bought brand new b&w hp printers and color laser hp printers.

For color we got a HP LaserJet 500 color M551. Its a brand new model but so far its been great , just keep in mind you might need to do a color calibration out of the box. Its set for awesome pictures and not documents out of the box.

For b&w we have been using a HP LaserJet 600 M601 printer. It has been a godsend and has not died or had any errors on it. Each cartridge lasts us 1 month. This is with heavy printing since its a public lab printer. If you get this printer get the m602 model since the m601 model does not accept high capacity cartridges. I did not know this until i bought the 601.

we had to go back to hp laser printers because all the other brands we had had horrible quality control and had problems a month or two after being set up

PS STAY AWAY FROM OKIDATA . their tech support sucks and they will not send a tech out and require you to send the whole printer in for repair.
posted by majortom1981 at 5:36 AM on May 18, 2012


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