Professional Color Printer

[Jeff]

Hi,

I am looking for a good quality color laser printer for professional
looking color documents. Our office normally prints around 20,000
pages per month and we need high quality graphics, text and pictures.
We normally print from MS Word with embedded graphics, pictures and
black and colored text. Our existing printer is a Lexmark C720 and we
have had nothing but trouble. It seems that the printer is constantly
being worked on and may print one or two acceptable color pages and
then starts printing blotchy, steaky prints. The printer is only 2
years old. We really need to find a replacement that is reliable and
prints high quality color prints at a reasonable speed (greater than
10 ppm). Any ideas?

 

[Elmo P. Shagnasty]

I am looking for a good quality color laser printer for professional
looking color documents. Our office normally prints around 20,000
pages per month and we need high quality graphics, text and pictures.

You need a professional/commercial solution, something like the Xerox
DocuColor 12 or 3535. At 9 cents per color page/2 cents per black page
fixed cost for everything, you'll spend far less on 20K pages/month than
you will with any consumer-oriented solution.

You could also see what www.freecolorprinters.com can do for you, but my
guess is that the supplies you buy will be more than 9 cents per page.

 

[ed]

I agree with the earlier recommendation of a DocuColor 12 or other similar
product. The most important item to consider AFTER you find the quality you
want as well as handling a variety of substrates that meets your needs
(cover stock, etc.) is to make sure the RIP (Raster Image Processor) is the
most efficient for your the files you will be submitting. Many times a file
will RIP slower than the rated speed of the machine, causing a bottleneck.
If you are using variable print or printing short quantities, this is a
major consideration.

You may also wish to investigate a PDF (Portable Document Format) workflow
for submitting jobs, optimizing DPI and insuring output fidelity.

JMHO

 

[OKI Tech Support]

Hello, Jeff!
You wrote on 11 Dec 2003 20:04:07 -0800:

J> Hi,

J> I am looking for a good quality color laser printer for professional
J> looking color documents. Our office normally prints around 20,000
J> pages per month and we need high quality graphics, text and pictures.
J> We normally print from MS Word with embedded graphics, pictures and
J> black and colored text. Our existing printer is a Lexmark C720 and
J> we have had nothing but trouble. It seems that the printer is
J> constantly being worked on and may print one or two acceptable color
J> pages and then starts printing blotchy, steaky prints. The printer
J> is only 2 years old. We really need to find a replacement that is
J> reliable and prints high quality color prints at a reasonable speed
J> (greater than 10 ppm). Any ideas?

Surely DC12 recommended before is a great machine. But it is little bit too
expencive. There are lots of "up to 5000USD" printers with good print speed,
quality and reliability. It's Oki C7300/7500, Xerox 6250, Epson C1900 and so
on. The are even "below 3000USD" capable to cover all requirements.

Best Regards,
Sergey Lebedev
OKI Europe Ltd.
Tech Support
http://www.oki.ru
Tel: (095) 564 8421
ICQ: 32244445

 

[Elmo P. Shagnasty]

Surely DC12 recommended before is a great machine. But it is little bit too
expencive. There are lots of "up to 5000USD" printers with good print speed,
quality and reliability.

What do you mean by "expensive"?

It sounds, by your posting, that you're talking solely about purchase
price. It sounds, by your posting, that you're ignoring the cost to
operate the machine when you discuss "expensive".

So how expensive is it to operate, say, an Oki? Is it fixed at US8.9
cents/page for full color, regardless of page size and regardless of
toner coverage?

It's Oki C7300/7500, Xerox 6250, Epson C1900 and so
on. The are even "below 3000USD" capable to cover all requirements.

You missed the requirement about being cheaper to operate than his Xerox
7700.

Once you get beyond a few thousand pages/month, purchase price has
almost nothing to do with it compared to how much it costs to operate
the thing.