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Sound Reinforcement - Forums for Live Sound Professionals - Your Displayed Name Must Be Your Real Full Name To Post In The Live Sound Forums => The Basement => Topic started by: scottstephens on February 20, 2017, 11:37:53 AM
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Hey all,
I'm needing to update some office equipment. Do any of you use the "all in one" scanner/copiers? Which one would you recommend? I'd like to keep the price under $400 if possible. My local office supply store has them from $99 and up. The only difference I can tell is that on the higher priced ones the copier is faster.
Thanks guys.
scott
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If you do much printing/copying I suggest you look at the cost per page of consumables - ink/toner, drum kit life, and mechanical PM kits.
I used to buy cheap printers until I saw the cost per page...
Right now my personal AIO is a Lexmark X464DE. Probably just under $1,000 when it came out, I purchased it NOS from an outfit in Burbank for about $450, shipped. Toner is about 1.5 cents per side compared to 3 cents per side for the printer it replaced (a Brother that gave me 50,000 pages before the network port was taken out in a lightning hit, the USB port still works so I gave it to one of my crew). The down side is that here in Wichita I can't just pop down to Staples or Office Despot for toner for the Lexmark.
Interesting point: at Office Despot the printer back in the furniture dept, the one that spits out the orders, is a Lexmark, but they're not Lexy dealers....
For casual use I've got 2 Canon D-420 (discontinued), one at my office and the other I've loaned to my IATSE Local for use at the arena downtown. So far both have been reliable but cost per page is higher than my Lexmark.
The rule of thumb is the cheaper the printer the higher the cost of consumables.
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Hey all,
I'm needing to update some office equipment. Do any of you use the "all in one" scanner/copiers? Which one would you recommend? I'd like to keep the price under $400 if possible. My local office supply store has them from $99 and up. The only difference I can tell is that on the higher priced ones the copier is faster.
Thanks guys.
scott
Consider flat bed or roll fed BEFORE you purchase dependent upon how you see your needs. You may want to go with a laser depending upon how much printing you're planning on doing as the inks tend to go bad in the ink jets when they're just sitting around unused. If you see yourself doing a lot of black, a printer that has black is more cost effective than a color printer that's always mixing black for you.
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard.
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Unless printing color is important to you, go with a black & white laser unit. (They'll still scan in color.) It will last a lot longer and have a much lower per-page cost.
Look for one with a real manual-feed tray for printing. The ones with the slot-feed are just about impossible to insert the paper straight when you want to print on custom stock such as address labels.
They almost all now will connect to a wireless network. If you get one with a wired network interface, it will be a lot less problematic if you can connect it wired. Some that I've dealt with in the past would go to sleep, and put the WiFi to sleep to, so you couldn't print until you went over and kicked the printer to wake it up. Generally the wired interface either doesn't sleep or will wake up on a LAN packet.
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Brother MFC-J985DW
Super easy on ink (main selling point), runs solidly. Love it. The only drawback is it doesn't hold much paper.
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Definitely go laser for business stuff. Way cheaper in the long run, much less hassle compared to those @#$#* inkjet cartridges.
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If you want to stay in the inkjet realm and keep a low cost per page, Epson recently introduced the Ecotank line. They are more expensive to purchase initially but the ink is dirt cheap, compared to the likes of HP.
I haven't bought one yet but as soon as my HP Officejet Pro 8600 dies they are on the top of my list.
https://epson.com/For-Work/Printers/Inkjet/c/w110?q=%3Aprice-asc%3AdiscontinuedFlag%3Afalse%3APrinters+Facets%2CType%3ASupertank&text=#scrollTgt_onRefresh
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Unless printing color is important to you, go with a black & white laser unit. (They'll still scan in color.) It will last a lot longer and have a much lower per-page cost.
Look for one with a real manual-feed tray for printing. The ones with the slot-feed are just about impossible to insert the paper straight when you want to print on custom stock such as address labels.
They almost all now will connect to a wireless network. If you get one with a wired network interface, it will be a lot less problematic if you can connect it wired. Some that I've dealt with in the past would go to sleep, and put the WiFi to sleep to, so you couldn't print until you went over and kicked the printer to wake it up. Generally the wired interface either doesn't sleep or will wake up on a LAN packet.
Agree 100% I have HP Color Laser CM1312NFI at home and it works great. Lexmark, HP and Ricoh make some fine gear. I have been looking for a Ricoh C400 close enough for me to pickup. They are workhorses with great image quality.
Inkjet will eat you out of house and home.
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Unless printing color is important to you, go with a black & white laser unit. (They'll still scan in color.) It will last a lot longer and have a much lower per-page cost.
Look for one with a real manual-feed tray for printing. The ones with the slot-feed are just about impossible to insert the paper straight when you want to print on custom stock such as address labels.
They almost all now will connect to a wireless network. If you get one with a wired network interface, it will be a lot less problematic if you can connect it wired. Some that I've dealt with in the past would go to sleep, and put the WiFi to sleep to, so you couldn't print until you went over and kicked the printer to wake it up. Generally the wired interface either doesn't sleep or will wake up on a LAN packet.
This is almost exactly why I've been buying Lexmark printers for business use - wake up on LAN; the front loading manual feeder (feeds envelopes, too); scanner is flatbed *and* duplexing sheet feeder; and cost per page.
I don't want to be the annoying fanboy but when the national chain store uses Lexmark printers instead of the brands they sell, that says something.
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Lexmark and HP lasers are my first choices for smaller "spot" printers at work. HP seems a little easier to setup. Our large printers are Xerox but I would never recommend that make.
You really have to do your research on cost per page printing. The printer is the cheapest part of printing.
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HP tends to have a lot of bloatware in their driver installs that's hard to get rid of. I've been using a couple of small Canons for home use over the last 8 years. But for small business I agree that a B&W laser is the most cost efficient.
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HP tends to have a lot of bloatware in their driver installs that's hard to get rid of.
Don't get me started on how bad the HP software usually is. Which is annoying because their hardware is pretty nice.
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Brother MFC-J985DW
Super easy on ink (main selling point), runs solidly. Love it. The only drawback is it doesn't hold much paper.
I have the Brother MFC-J4510DW. Runs great ok on ink, can print to 11x17 single sheets, holds at least 100 sheets of 8.5x11. Fits in a foam lined Pelican 1610 with an extra set cartridges, a stapler and a ream of paper.
It's what I take to send all the daily frequency coords to all the stages at Panorama festival.
Mac
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Don't get me started on how bad the HP software usually is. Which is annoying because their hardware is pretty nice.
This is precisely why I'll never buy an HP all in one. The last one left droppings everywhere, and I had to go to great lengths to get that crap off my hard drive. Their uninstall package sure as hell didn't do it. The printer was junk, too. I have recently had Brother and Canon, no probs.
I'm fine with HP for real printers, though.
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We've got the Brother MFC-9330CDW color laser jet for the shop office. It's fairly large, but lives on our wireless network and has been extremely reliable for printing, scanning and copying. The document feeder is a big plus. Color laser printing is very nice when sending out lighting plots and other color-coordinated plans for gigs.
Been using it fairly regularly for about 8 months and have yet to replace any of the toner.
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Had an Oki mc342dn for the pas year or so, toner cartridges are not the largest in capacity but it seems fine with compatible cheapies (eBay's cheapest at £30 for a full set).
Does duplexing on both the adf and the output (which on the output will even duplex light card), has usb scanning and printing, can even do banners if needed and has a built in fax machine.
Cost circa £200.
Sent from my Lumia 625 using Tapatalk