Printing/scanning options

[Phandalyon]

OK, I am debating in my head what to do here.

In the office I work we do a lot of scanning and a lot of copying.

Currently we are using an HP Laserjet 4200 and a Brother HL4200CN for our printers. They are both right around 25ppm and the brother does color at 25ppm.

For scanning we are using 2 HP 8850 scanners with doc feeders.

We do some scanning (<100 pages a day) every day, but can on occasion do more than 1000 in a day.

My boss is looking at a new copier, but I am not sold that we realy need it. Admittedly our copier is old and slow, but I am not completely convinced that we need a new one.

Most of what the copier is used for is when something is printed on our HP laser the person will take the printout to the copier and make copies. It makes more sense to me to just print multiple copies to start with as the copier really has no special features like collating or stapling.

As for the scanning, the copier my boss is looking at will scan 50ppm. This is nice, but I am looking at document scanners that are just as fast for half the price is the copier. The other point with this is that I am not sure that anyone would want to stand at the copier for 1000+ page scans. The Document scanners are small enough to hook up at a desk.

IT seems to me that with our combination of printers and a good document scanner it would be more efficient than forking out the cash for a new copier.

So, am I missing something or does my plan seem OK. We could use the printers more and have the current copier as a backup since it still works fine. And then we would have a much more robust scanning solution. It just seems a waste of money to me to fork out for a copier to gain printing speed when we have 2 fast printers and to gain scanning ability when we can get that far more cheaply.

Am is there some type of duty cycle or durability issue that would make the copier a better choice?

For document scanners I am looking at a Fujitsu FI-5530C with a duty cycle of 3000 pages per day.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

We use a Ricoh Aficio 3245C with the optional duplexer, hole punch and stapler units in our QA / Doc Center dept. There is even a booklet stapler unit but we don't have it.

The machine prints very nice and crisp in both color and b&w at 1200x1200dpi.

Printing speeds are 45ppm black and 35ppm full color. Scanning speeds are 50ppm black&white, 35ppm full color. It supports scanning to email, or to a networked drive via SMB and FTP in pdf, tiff and jpeg formats. It also has a twain driver that can access the scanner over the network for more heavy duty scanning.

We rented ours through ricoh business services and they even threw in a smaller 1200x600dpi color laser free with the deal.

The machine hasn't been the bastillion of reliability the advertisements call it out to be, but its been decent enough, and if we ever have problems the ricoh people are here almost immediately.

 

[Phandalyon]

We just had the copier sales rep here and he was pushing Savin color copiers. I have no doubt about the quality and speed. The reliability and usefulness in the office is the issue that I am worried about.

We have just come up with another possibility. And that is to get a document scanner for huge amounts of scanning and pick up a few portable scanners for people to use at their desks.

One question on the scanning capabilities of the Ricoh. Does it allow you to set the file names while you are at the copier or do you have to scan to a network location and then go back to your computer and rename each file.

The reason I ask is that we will do several 2-3 page documents at a shot and we are not sure if you would have to do all of your scanning and then walk back to your desk and do your renaming. IF you can do file names at the copier I imagine it would suck to have to type out fairly complex names.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

One question on the scanning capabilities of the Ricoh. Does it allow you to set the file names while you are at the copier or do you have to scan to a network location and then go back to your computer and rename each file.

The reason I ask is that we will do several 2-3 page documents at a shot and we are not sure if you would have to do all of your scanning and then walk back to your desk and do your renaming. IF you can do file names at the copier I imagine it would suck to have to type out fairly complex names.

You have the option of either letting it randomly assign a numerical name, click the "use filename" and the touchpad turns into a keyboard allowing you to name the file. You get a standard keyboard layout, though it isn't quite as natural to type as on a keyboard, it isn't bad either.

It's really quite nice.

I've done some really high quality 1 bit scans for printing purposes on it, and once scanned and reprinted they look exactly like the original.

 

[Phandalyon]

Excellent information, thank you.

It is not out of the cards yet, we are just trying to figure out what would be the best for production as our needs are a little weird. Like today we have to scanners running since 8 am scanning 1-20 page documents and they are still going. There are other days when we would use a scanner maybe twice.

We already have a good color printer and b/w laser printer, so printing is not really a necessity.

Our copying needs are about to change and be less demanding since we are building a database that will help reduce the amount of paper we are using. Right now we use 2-3 reams of paper a day and we should cut that back to about 1 ream.

So it really comes down to a scanner I guess. Our scanner usage will be about the same. Right now we are barely getting by with the scanner situation. NOw that I think about it, scanner usage might increase once we are up and running. But it will be a ton of small files from many different people. Maybe the answer is putting a scanner on every desk.