[Macpartners] Color Laser Printer Advice (Ricoh SP-C430dn?)

[John Canfield]

Over the past several years, our lab has gone through three color laser printers. Though cheap in their initial prices, the cost of toner was always quite expensive; a set of cartridges costs nearly as much as the printer itself. We replaced the first two printers when each ultimately demanded an expensive internal part (e.g.: imaging drum, etc.), which combined with a set of toner would have cost more than a new printer. Our current (mediocre HP) printer hasn't reached that state yet, but I do need to order another set of toner for it. I tried buying generic toner once, but the cartridges quickly failed.

Studying up a bit, I discovered that Ricoh makes printers that use simple, large canisters to hold toner rather than the complicated cartridges HP and others use. These toner canisters yield up to 24,000 pages, which is three to four times what the others do. Despite the higher initial price, the extremely low cost-per-page would pay for itself in short order. In addition, the Ricoh printers are considerably faster than HP, and have very good reviews concerning print quality. Here's a model I'm considering:

  http://www.printershowcase.com/Ricoh-SP-C430dn.aspx

I would be grateful for any comments regarding color laser printer selection, and in particular if anyone has tried Ricoh products.

Thanks,

John-Elmer