Re: Which printer?? -- MIDRANGE-L

Kathreen,

As another post mentioned, the "shake and bake" workhorse printers you have can
be cost justifiably replaced with either the 4xxx or 6xxx series of printers and
I'm willing to bet that the maintenance fees alone would pay for a newer 
printer.

BTW, we still have a few in operation ... no maintenance ... run them till they
drop.

For example, I work with a utility company where the printer barely gets warmed
up three weeks out of the month but between the 25th and end of month 60,000
invoices and all supporting reports get produced.  Single part.

According to a broker sheet I have before me, a used 4234 @ 800lpm can be had 
for
$2,100 ... hey, at that price buy two forget the maintenance.  It's cheaper to
replace. Now a NEW 6400 @ 900lpm can be had for $5,900.  Just between you, me,
and the fence post, I would rather spend $4,200 and load balance 2 - 800lpm
printers then put all my eggs in a single 900lpm basket.  I could even buy a
third for backup and not break the bank.

The "it depends" part comes to play based upon your situation.  The utility
company I mentioned actually is a small conglomerate of 7 companies so that 
means
7 invoices, 7 statements, 7 payables checks, 7 payroll checks so we are talking
about stocking 28 different forms.  Not to mention stock tab in multiple 
flavors.

Since they do "on demand" check writing we faced three choices in the A/P
department: 1) a single printer and change forms for each request. 2) 7 
printers,
each with a different company's check. 3) a single laser printer that did forms
on demand.

In this case we looked at the cost of 7 printers vs the cost of a single laser
printer.  Even a brain dead dot matrix would cost $300 x 7 = $2,100.  For that
money we could buy a color laser printer that could handle the "on demand" print
requirements and still stock 7 preprinted forms for batch process on a 4234
printer.  If we ran out of preprinted forms, we could still pay our bills, on
time, with the laser printer.

Now having said all of that, have you checked the price of laser cartridges?
Zowie!  Not for bulk output. No way.  Give me a impact printer for the "big" 
runs
any day.

IMHO, printers are like disk arms, the more the better.  I would rather have 2 @
400 than 1 @ 800.  If the one breaks ...

Just my 2 cents
James W. Kilgore
email@James-W-Kilgore.com

==============================================================
Somehow my earlier request got hooked to the wrong thread so I'm asking again.

> Our tech guru is "no longer with the company" so I'm stuck trying to
> figure out a printer replacement.
>

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