Which fax/printer/scanner/copyer for small biz?

Hi,

I need fax/printer/scanner/copy manchine for my (small - 6 ppl) office. I am thinking laser printing technology, combo (all in one) machine.

Any recommandations? Should be cheap, but not obsolete and scale fairly well if we grow.

Thanks!

Marble
Thursday, April 15, 2004

We are using a HP LaserJet 3300 and have been for a while now. It seems to be working pretty well for us.

Chris Ormerod
Thursday, April 15, 2004

have you looked into leasing one of those big ones?

Given the rate that you will ammortize the cost of a small one, the lower printing costs, and the longevity of the tiny ones, (especially in high volume printing environments) it might be better to lease a big one.

You tend to get a lot more for your money, like doc  mgmt software, autostapling etc. Might even save you money on your external printing costs.

Tapiwa
Thursday, April 15, 2004

osx can handle everytbhing except the printing :)  seriously, these days you may as well get a computer that does it all, and can also be used for other things (like your admin persons computer) as spend even more to get a specialised service.

FullNameRequired
Thursday, April 15, 2004

How about the scanning?

Marble
Thursday, April 15, 2004

Well, It only covers the printing aspect of things, but www.freecolorprinters.com is a great program from Xerox.  Get's you a Tektronix Phaser 8200 for free.  Requirements are a 3 year contract printing X pages a month, and that you purchase all supplies from them.  Only 9 more months to go on mine, although I have the older Phaser 860.  Still a very nice printer though.

Elephant
Thursday, April 15, 2004

Check out the Brother MFC-8820DN.  It gets good reviews and I just purchased one two weeks ago and am very pleased with it so far.  Has a built in network card so you can attach it directly to your network instead of USB or parrallel.  Also does some cool things like 'Scan To PC' where you can scan a doc and it gives you a list of computers you want to scan the document to.

Haven't really put it through it's paces yet since I've only had it for two weeks but it's been really easy to set up and is working well so far.

If you do like it, I'd recommend getting it from Costco.com as everyone else charges about $780 for it but I got it from costco.com for $630 with an additional $50 rebate.

smallbiz
Thursday, April 15, 2004

I bought a HP OfficeJet 4-in-1 thing a few years back.  What a piece of flimsy crap.  It drinks down ink faster than a sailor at dollar draft night when it decides it does want to work.  The only 1 thing it appears to do correctly is fax.

When it was having some brain cramp recently I was tempted to take it out back and give it a Louisville Slugger session ala Office Space and go get a cheap fax machine.
So it's currently on death row with me.

Makes me think twice about being any other product with the HP name on it.

Carly
Thursday, April 15, 2004

We bought a Canon D780 last week. Doesn't scan and not cheap but it has 3 year warranty with the first year in-house. We made our final decision based on size / looks, and warranty. The prices were very similar. I think the more expensive machines give you a lower price per copy -  a lower TCO. Canon telephone support so far is excellent.

That said, it replaced a Xerox XE-80 that was a very low-end laser printer/copier at the time. It had a 3-year warranty. For 3 years we used it at 5 times it rated capacity - sometimes we used a cartridge a month. That machine was so good we want to be buried with it. It's still going strong. It's past warranty now but Xerox will ship us a rebuilt one for $217 if we want. Xerox support was superb.

We made our final decision based on size / looks, and warranty. There are so many models that warranty was the biggest differentiator.

tk
Thursday, April 15, 2004

I should also mention that the document feeder wasn't a priority for us while shopping. But now that we've had it for a week, the document feeder is already a very big time saver.

tk
Thursday, April 15, 2004

  Recent Topics

  Fog Creek Home