Small/Medium Business Printer Solution.. Quality Color MFP Choices?

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seaneboy

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Small/Medium Business Printer Solution.. Quality Color MFP Choices?
So, a quick lay of the land here.. We're a medical supply company, with a warehouse here behind us. I am thinking of going to a larger, in house print solution. Versus using our small fleet of (3) Dell 1815dn's that are all about one error code away from the ole Office Space treatment, and simply going to Staples/etc whenever we have a larger print. I'm imagining that the benefits of having our own large(r)/or single unit print solution in house will greatly benefit us in both productivity, and perhaps even expense?

Things we daily print include invoices, quotes, picking/packing slips. None of these need to be color, really. Also, we are a (6) person office, so we're not that big. However, we are at the point where I want to start including some targeting sales sheets in the orders we ship. I also was thinking we could start printing our own tradeshow materials in house as well. Both of which I would want some decent quality color prints on. I don't want this to look like we made it in the basement using MS Paint, and printed it with our dot matrix...

My question is.. At which price point would I expect to find myself? What is really going to be the lead determining factor here? If it's speed, we don't care about that, so perhaps I can save a bit by going with a slower unit?

In my Dell-branded mind (also thanks to financing), I looked there first, and in my elitest mind, I immediately notice the C5765DN, and it's glorious price tag of $2900 @ 'egg Business. Long story short, I'd imagine there are features on there that I might not need, or are there...?

In reality, things I need:
Duplex Printing/Scanning
Quality color printing (500-1k runs)


Things I'd like:
Multiple trays to accommodate different paper types (picking/packing slip tray, invoice tray, quote tray, check tray, etc)
Scan to searchable pdf (not required, but I bet it would be nice!)

Another question I have.. Am I taking the right approach on this? Will it be cost beneficial to have a machine in house? I'm thinking that productivity might be the largest benefit, as I know we don't spend $1k on print materials/year. But then again, ideally this printer lasts a few years. I'd greatly appreciate any input or insights you have to offer either for, or against going with a larger unit.
 
To give a bit of warning, at least where I work: when we had the color laser (Cannon MFC XXX) shared out to everyone, they never really set their prints to grey scale so we ended up running through a ton of color toner. So in order to combat that we got a third HP Laserjet 4000 and set that up for general printing. The three that we have are pretty much tanks, I think one is a 800k pages printed with the other at around 500k, with maybe two rebuilds on them over the last 10 years.

All that being said it really is environment driven for your choices. Have you looked to Xerox or other vendors to see how much it would be to drop one of their fancy machines in your office with a service contract. It might make more sense if the cost is less than the $2900/3-4year depreciation of the Dell unit you are looking at.

Also what kind of print volume are you looking at for your company?
 
Based on what you said your needs are, I would consider http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IAUZW78
I bought the lower-end of that printer but this lacks duplex so I cannot recommend this to you -- http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IAUZVFQ

Consider this ink at less than 1 cent per page for that printer: http://www.4inkjets.com/CF380XRTA-HP-Laser-Toner-HY-Black-Compatible

I was also looking at the lower-end of http://www.amazon.com/Brother-MFC-9...004GXAY9E/ref=psdc13_t2_B004ARMN1S_B004GXAY9E

Another great printer.. If your budget is limited then consider this instead http://www.amazon.com/Brother-Printer-MFC9330CDW-Wireless-All-In-One/dp/B00C6MNQ92/ref=pd_cp_e_1

If your budget is much higher for large office than mine for home office ($350), there are of course much better printers.
 
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Find the total usage on your 3 Dell 1815's via System Data Report (Menu>Reports>System Data).

Determine how many total pages printed per year (Total Pages / Years Owned).

Calculate total cost spent on supplies: (Pages Printed x $.025 per page [calculated off oem toner/maintenance kit prices])

Find total amount spent using print shops and if possible how many pages printed. (11x17 counts as 2 pages)

The bigger and better the machine usually equates to a lower CTO (Cost To Own) and CPP (cost per page) but higher initial cost. This goes for both B/W & Color but more so for color. Your cost to own will be higher than total cost spent on supplies if you've had service calls, etc.

Do you need 11x17/Ledger support? Fax? Finishing options (staple, punch, fold)?

Answer some of these questions and I could give you a better idea of what to look for and what not.
 
Thanks for the responses guys!

rhansen - There's only (5) of us here, and we're all environmentally conscious, so I'm confident that we wont have that issue. But I appreciate that, as it sounds like it totally sucks.

Unfortunately, we're not like a typical business.. I inherited one of these printers from my neighbor, another from somewhere else, and we actually had bought the original. But anyway. So, for usage cost, here is what I calculated....
It cost me $700 to print 1k duplex color on glossy paper in San Diego last year. Basically as long as my printer doesn't cost me $700/year, and I'm capable of doing what I want, I'm in the game.

Blade was on point with his recommendations, as I called our dhell rep (whom I'm capable of leaning into a bit, which is always nice) and he got me on a C3765DNF. He mentioned that they use them for their own in house prints, and they come out great. Got me down to about $750, but I see they're on Ebay/Amazon for $600. I also now am going to look at Blades HP recommendations. I thought I read somewhere that Dell printers are actually made by HP.. Could that still be true? They kind of look the same in a way. I'd imagine there are benefits for going direct to HP, versus an HP for Dell, if that is indeed still the case?

Confused -
It's hard for me to judge the usage due to our hand me down printer program that's been in place over the years. We print a packing slip, and two invoices per each order. No 11x17 necessary, staple, and fold would be nice, but I highly doubt I can justify that cost. The big prints will all be one pages of marketing materials. So, the real core features I need:
Scan
Fax
Email (receive fax, distribute email - not even a necessity, just a cool feature, but I think it's a cheap one)
Quality Color - to be used for marketing hand outs at conventions/in orders
Duplex

I honestly can't think of anything else that's not listed on there that we would need....Feel free to enlighten me to something I should have, but am not thinking of.

My budget is now pretty much in the $600 range, with this Dell C3765DNF. I don't think I really want to go for anything in the $800 range, and when this printer dropped $200 in price after little time shopping, I'm interested. We don't need a hard drive, or any of that fancy stuff.

I'll compare the HPs to the Dell, and let you know. Thanks again guys. I feel like all I found for printer reviews were paid advertisements.

EDIT: Here is an interesting paper I found, of course in favor of HP, but I always like reading criticisms of something I'm interested in.
http://www8.hp.com/h20195/v2/GetPDF.aspx/c03562895.pdf

Interesting things I'm finding:

Dell C3765DNF.... $830 straight from Dell with $100 off, BEST PRICE of $609 via Ebay seller: Buy, or Amazon.com
HP Pro 500 M570dn....$999 straight from HP (no haggling done yet), BEST PRICE of $877 via Amazon, also available for refurbished as low as $463 (Rakuten though, for whatever that means).

HP brags about first color print speed - we don't really care about that. However, they brag about having 1/3 time for a scan. Now, that is something we might actually care about. Then again, this can be mitigated by simply scanning in batches. But, they also claim that their prints are of better quality. Now, this could just be a whizzing contest, but I'd like to know more.

I actually found that Xerox makes the C3765DNF, it's a rebranded Work Centre 6605: http://www.crn.com/reviews/componen...iew-dell-c3765dnf-workgroup-color-printer.htm
 
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Dangman said:
Look at the costs of the toner: The Dell's Extra High Capacity Black toner with 11,000 capability costs $135 from Dell itself:
http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=bsd&cs=04&sku=331-8429

Look around and you might find it for less. Compare that to the HP's similar toner which costs $165:
http://www.amazon.com/HP-507X-Black-Original-Cartridge/dp/B005JZNUPI
Click to expand...

Found dell in first google hit for $70.

Found HP on first google page for $99.

I would love to know what put out better quality color/photo. We're not exactly printing photos, and this is a photo intensive example of what we would like to print for trade shows... but, it's all I could come up with quick:
http://pdf.medicalexpo.com/pdf/carefusion/alaris-pc-unit-brochure/75330-105243.html

In reality, it's one pagers, a few photos of product, with a bunch of info/specs on it. So, imagine that brochure, with smaller photos, more specs. But, we'll want our logo on there in nice color, etc. We'll want people to look at the products, and not notice any potential shortfalls of the printer. I hope that makes sense.

I'm ok with an "older" printer, provided the technology has not advanced in any manner that would aide in what I'm looking to do. So, for example, touch screen is great, but in all honesty, we don't even need that. Hard drives? No, we don't need that. From a quick glance, all I see increasing with price is speed, bells and whistles, and I think that's it.

To be honest, the more I look at last years print bill, the more I want to splurge... PROVIDED it gets me somewhere, and not on the whizzing scale. What I purchase for personal use is one thing, and I'm entitled to that. But, here at work, it's all business.
 
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