Recommendations for High Volume Color Laser Printers?

dughutch asks: "My church currently uses a small business color laser printer (Minolta 2200), but alas, it can not handle the load of our growing congregation. We are looking at buying a higher volume color laser printer and I wanted to ask the Slashdot readers for any and all information on possible solutions relating to this question, including, but not limited to: cost, volume, repairs, and outsourcing?"

Comments

Why ask Slashdot?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why dont you send a prayer and god will give you advice - or even a color laser printer!

*grin*

Re:Why ask Slashdot?

[FroMan]

Oh Lord, won't you buy me a color TV.
Oh Lord, won't you buy me a color laser printer.
Oh Lord, won't you buy me a mercedes benz.

You're barking up the wrong tree

[karrde]

High volume Color Laser printers don't exist. They are instead called Networked Color Copiers. But forget cheap, you're looking at $16K entry, that will get you around 20ppm.

Re:You're barking up the wrong tree

[ComputerSlicer23]

Actually, the HP 4500 runs around $2K, and does 4ppm in full color, it does 16ppm in black and white. The toner's not too incredibly high priced. There is an HP 8500 if I recall correctly that prints even faster. Bought one for Mom a couple of years ago, she does desktop publishing as a business. It holds up well, and other then the inability to print the grey when printing a color document, it's great. In a B/W, it does grey just fine, but in color, it mixes in blue, so all greys have a blue tinge.

Remember, high volume, is not only that it prints fast. High volume is that it can print a lot of papers without breaking down. We've got several HP's at work that print relatively quickly, but if you print more then say 40K pages a month to them, they breakdown and need a lot of tender loving care to get them to run again. We have an nearly identical printer that prints at the same pages per minute rate, but it's rated to print 150K pages a month.

If he needs something that can print 10,000 pages without a break, that's different then he needs 86,400 pages to be printed in a day.

Kirby

Re:You're barking up the wrong tree

[Deanasc]

Yes you're correct about the 4500 series. I'm sitting next to a 4550 that's a work horse. We do roughly 2000 pages per month and replace the color cartridges about once a year and Black about twice that.

The only thing I would say about it is that if it isn't used continuously it goes into a cool down cycle that makes waiting for the warm-up on first document of the day tedious.

Re:You're barking up the wrong tree

[cybermace5]

I see the blue-in-grey problem with our Canon 1000's at work. Yes, we have several $80K color copier/printers, and the quality elicits tears of joy. They're so fast, they could print the counterfeit money to pay for themselves in ten minutes. However, the blue-in-grey problem would again surface....

Re:You're barking up the wrong tree

[chipperdog]

The municipal utility I work for uses a 8550 and we have very similar experiences. It is a good solid printer. Capable of 11x17, built-in duplexer, built-in nic and lpd, and 2500 sheet tray (I realize that some of those things are options, but they all are worth it and don't add too much to the price at initial purchase. Enveolpes even print fine through the manual feed tray
Also there is good support from HP for the 8550 for open source printing systems. It is also capable of directly printing pdf's

ah, crap

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought this thread was gonna be COOL

then I saw the word "Printer" on the end. :-(

Can you define "high volume"

[ip_vjl]

Can you give a better definition of what you mean by high volume.

500 flyers for the sunday service each week
or
10,000 11x17 double-sided brochures every week.

Do you have any special requirements?
Must print on paper type ______.
Must handle these sizes?
Doublesided printing in single pass?
Do you care: postscript/PCL?

A little more info would be helpful.

Re:Can you define "high volume"

[override11]

And why purchase if you have such high volumes? Look around for a leasing company. We use a local company, and have a Canon Imagerunner 8500 (85 ppm) and have put over 1.5 million copies through it in the 7 months we have had it. Its not color, but the concept is the same. Look for a local leasing company and see if you can get a non-profit discount, our cost per copy is about $.02 per printed page, and that includes toner and all breakdowns and on-site service. :)

Professional Printers?

[Patman]

If you're printing a lot of stuff that isn't time-sensitive(i.e., you don't need it RIGHT THIS SECOND), why don't you go with a professional printing house?

I think you'd probably have a lot less hassle with that route than with trying to find, purchase, install and support a color laser printer.

Phaser/Xerox

[SLot]

I've got an older 750N, works like a champ, cost $1400 - the toner cartridges are a bit pricey (250 each) but they last a pretty good while. Has linux support, internet printing etc.

Here is what they currently have on sale.

Re:Does it need to be laser?

[FroMan]

Ack, ink jets and high volume do not mix.

Unless ofcourse you don't mind paying through the nose for ink.

Print in black and white

[HotNeedleOfInquiry]

And show good stewardship of your congregation's money. If you have so much money that you *need* to spend it on something, open a soup kitchen.

FreeColorPrinters

[joncarwash]

Check out the following website:
FreeColorPrinters

The fraternity that I am in has been using this service for the past 3 years (that is how long the contract lasts); the printer lease runs out in a week (the printer is yours to keep after the lease expires). We have a Phaser 850DP, and I believe the current model is a Phaser 8200, which are both color wax transfer printers - check out this link for the specs:
Phaser 8200 Specs

The only thing you have to do is print the quota (if some guys living in a dorm can do it, I am sure you can as well), and buy your ink from them (all black ink is free; color ink is kind of expensive, but it is worth it for the free printer). Also included is an on-site service agreement for the length of the 3 year lease.

I would definitely recommend this service, especially for small organizations. Good luck with finding one for the church!

Re:FreeColorPrinters

[joncarwash]

This is all true, and we definitely second-guessed our decision since the ink is so expensive. In the end, though, it was a good decision since we did print our quota (the printer automatically sends the reports via email), and we took advantage of the service agreement (which really makes the plan worth it).

The service agreement to go along with the printer (if buying stand-alone) costs about $650 from Xerox, and only lasts one year. The plan that comes with this lasts 3 years and is on-site, which is not bad at all. We only had it serviced twice, but it definitely saved some time and money.

I also implemented a printer logging system so that we could keep track of all printing for each user (not that hard since everyone printed from their rooms). This way we could keep the color printing under control and thus keep our costs down. In the end we charged everyone about $10 per quarter in printing, which covered our costs and then some.

On the other hand, if you are in a larger office environment or you are not sure what your quota would be I could see buying the printer up-front as a better option, if not only for the cheaper ink costs. It is still a good program, though, and a pretty good printer.

Get a good service contract

[zaad]

I don't know what you mean when you say high volume, but...

If you're not having a speed of printing issue, but are having trouble with the printer jamming, what you should look into is getting a good service contract. No matter what kind of "high volume" printer you get, excessive printing will wear down the rollers and cause a lot of paper dust to accumulate. The only way to keep them going is by cleaning them and replacing the rollers when they wear out.

I worked at a place that had 12 printer on a single floor that printed between 5,000 to 10,000 pages per printer per month. They were all great printers, but on average needed to be serviced ever six to eight weeks to keep working.

I'd recommend getting an additional printer, and getting a service contract on both printers when one needs to be serviced.

GCC Printers

[DeadSea]

I worked for the company that developed this puppy. It's quite powerful and has great looking output.

GCC Printers Elite Color 16 DN $2099

• 1200 x 1200 dpi resolution
• 16 pages per minute
• 256 MB RAM
• Max print area: 8.3" x 13.84"
• Letter/A4, Legal, Executive, Envelope
• 500-sheet Universal Tray
• PostScript 3 and PCL5c
• 136 built-in PostScript fonts/45 built-in PCL fonts
• Ethernet 10/100BaseT, Bi-directional Parallel, USB 2.0
• TCP/IP

That should be plenty for a church.

HP Color Laserjet 4500...

[SlashChick]

It seems that a lot of people replying to this thread haven't checked out color laser prices in the past couple of years. It used to be that the HP 4500 series was over $2000. However, that's no longer the case.

I picked up an HP Color Laserjet 4500 about a year ago for $600. This awesome printer had less than 10,000 pages on it. One $89 JetDirect 10bT Ethernet card later, I have a fantastic network printer that will last me for many years. I do a lot of prepress, brochures, etc. and the thing has already paid for itself just in printing out work for my clients (I charge them about half of what the local printer charges, and I've made plenty of money from that.)

I admit that $600 for a printer with less than 10,000 pages is a great deal, but there are some on eBay that are coming down under $800. (Note: Don't have one shipped... buy locally if at ALL possible. These things are HEAVY.)

If you're interested in a new color laser, the little Laserjet 1500L printers offer great bang for the buck. They're more unobtrusive than the giant 4500 series, but they have the same great laser quality starting at around $800. PC Connection has good prices for these as well, especially if you open an account with them.

If you want a brand-new giant color laser, try the Color Laserjet 4600. Yes, these are in the $2000 range, but if you're printing hundreds of pages per day, they are a good value.

I would never buy an inkjet again for a business. Yes, you can get an inkjet printer for $100, but those cartridges are a killer ($30 and they last perhaps 150 pages.) My color toner cartridges are $125, but they last for six thousand pages. The black toner cartridges are cheaper and go for 10,000 pages or more. At 11,000 pages, I've only ever had to replace one cyan cartridge, and I routinely do runs of a few hundred pages each. I'll never go back to the treadmill of inkjet cartridge upgrades.

For a church, I'd say the 1100 and 2500 series ($1200 or less) will work out great. Good luck on finding a printer that works well for you!

Phaser/Xerox for free, direct from Xerox

[Webmoth]

Go to freecolorprinter.com. This is Xerox's program whereby you can apply for a FREE color printer (typically solid ink, but they list laser/toner printers, too). The catch is that you have print a minimum number of pages per month and commit to buy all your consumables from the freecolorprinter website for a period of three years.

It's kind of like a lease: any failures they pay for (you pay for wear parts). After three years, the printer is yours to do with what you will at no cost to you. Use it for a doorstop if you want.

Some of my customers are in this program and are very happy with it.

I'm not a Xerox employee, and I don't get any kind of kickback for recommending it.

Re:Anyhow...

[Tyreth]

I had a similar issue with my church. I agree with the reply to your post, that the printer can open up a greater potential than that money spent outright - for example, I think 25cents (roughly) of every dollar - I could be wrong on this - given to world vision is spent on admin charges, etc. However, all that money that is kept goes into advertising and other efforts that in turn produce more money than they would have had from keeping the 25cents.

However, there is some truth in what you say. In my church they wanted to implement windows desktops when Linux would have been more than perfect (in some cases it isn't, in this case it was). What that meant was spending money on winXP licenses for each PC, along with an upgrade for all but one pc because none of them would run XP - and there's no downgrade rights. They still wanted to use windows even though I showed them Linux was good (and they agreed). Why? I think because they wanted to go with what they knew, to feel safe. They said because if a secretary worked in the office they wanted her to have training in the primary applications used so she could put it on her resume. I actually left the role of admin over this - I couldn't condone spending of money on pointless endeavours when it could be saved and given to a more worthwhile cause.

On another topic, throwing around derogatory comments like "desert cult" do nothing to pursuade us, only to get brownie points for yourself with like minded slashdotters. Not all churches are the same, not all atheists are the same, no one is the same. Some live by the principles they expound, others don't. You can't look at those who transgress the principles of Christianity and say "See? I told you Christians were liers". In fact, one core belief is that Christians believe that they are basically not good people - and that's why we need God. And the atheist says "what's not good about me? I'm good enough that I don't need God". Amusing arrogance at the least. I'd be curious to see just exactly what it is an atheist could possibly believe they are "good enough" at so that they don't need God. After all, without God there is no right or wrong - there is only "something that helps me pass on my seed" and "something that stops me passing on my seed". The fact that atheists come by a set of moral laws independently of religion is a testimony to God's existence and a mockery of what the atheist believes. If natural selection sets any precedence, then almost every atheist I view is not living the way they should. They should all be living in ways that helps them get more children - what path they choose is irrelevant (being nice, deceptive, violent, etc). What is important is producing as many children as possible.

Answer to original poster.

[Glonoinha]

-My church currently uses a small business color laser printer (Minolta 2200), but alas, it can not handle the load of our growing congregation.

It sounds like your printer -almost- handles the load but falls just a little short. Simple - add another identical printer and have both printers service the same print queue. You are already experienced with that particular printer, no need to modify anything on the client side, you already have a stock of toner cartridges.

Actually I am thinking about the way Netware handles printers and print queues, not sure if it is quite that straightforward in a pure Windows environment or not .. but still you can add an identical printer to the network and just manually divide the load.

Simple, builds on your existing investment in money and knowledge, and you don't have to scrap your existing hardware.