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

[David Wang]

I have co-owned a Ricoh Aficio SP c821dn for a little over 2 years,
it's a networked, 11x17" color laser, and it has been both cheap to
operate and easy to use. It is indeed very fast, cheap per page, and
my architecture friends who do graphics design like borrowing it for
jobs. I would highly recommend it (at least this particular model).

I suppose my two complaints with it are:
1. It will jam if you feed a sheet through it that is thicker than its
current sheet thickness setting, even if using the bypass feeder. So,
it operates fine for standard 20lb-24lb paper, but heavier weights
reqire a setting change.
2. The setting for what type of paper you are using for a job can be
set at the physical printer. In Windows, they can be set at the
printer preferences page, but I couldn't find those settings in the
Mac drivers.

This company (http://www.printershowcase.com/) offers, for a small
fee, sample prints from the printers they are selling. I found the
samples useful in judging print quality when I was looking into a
purchase.

Note that not all models, even higher end color lasers, can be
expanded to multifunction copy/fax/scan units. So, it's important to
make the decision as to whether you need a scan feature when deciding
which base-printing unit to buy.

- David W.


On Wed, Sep 28, 2011 at 12:02 PM, John Canfield <canfield at mit.edu> wrote:
> 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
>
>
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