High volume MFD's. Xerox or Ricoh?

[ajf]

I have been tasked with looking at some replacements for our aging Canon printer/copier devices.

The two manufacturers we are choosing from is Ricoh and Xerox.
Just wonder if anyone has experience of these two brands from large MFD type machines point of view?

Xerox is (surprisingly) the cheapest option at the moment by quite a margin, but Ricoh seem to have a larger dealer network.

Any comments/feedback appreciated.

 

[ajf]

Thank you for all the feedback.
The top thing with the Xerox was the colour accuracy 'out of the box' for our Publicity department to use.
I think it was the 7535 that was the best.
We only currently need 3 devices - 2 colour and one mono for bery high volume copies - but I want a brand I can stay with when we get more.

I have tried Ricoh direct as one of the options, but purely on cost they are not competitive, and they accept they can't match resellers.

I have worked with Canon MFPs and Uniflow but there is some negativity to Canon in my current company hence looking elsewhere for the replacements.
Uniflow is not something needed anyway. All the copiers I have looked at have the basics such as secure print built in and nothing is audited by user etc.

I will double check drivers as we will need 64bit ones for the 2008 print server and Win7 64bit PCs. They also need to be fully PCL6 compliant for use with some specialist software that prints via raw PCL commands.

Devices will be purchased outright but have a per copy maintenance contract so not too worried about user replaceable parts.

 

[ajf]

Hmm, a couple of interesting comments there. I will certainly consider them when making the suggestions to those with the money!

Xerox was certainly my initial choice but then I just became a little unsure for some reason.
Just checked, the models we are looking at is 5745 for high volume mono (500k+ per year) and a 7535 and 7120 for colour. The 7535 is apaprently an MFP version of the 7500 printers which is the model that was very impressice colour wise.

Konica was looked at but seemed 'too' cheap and both myself and a colleague have in the past found them to be less than the best around. The standard colour output was also pretty poor too.

 

[ajf]

Konica Minolta MFDs not an option? We put 95 of them in across our entire infrastructure, not many complaints to be fair!

sorry to drag this back up.

Just gone back to have a look at Konica machines - it was actually Kyocera we discarded.

What sort of feedback have you had about quality in terms of colour accuracy etc?
I've been told they are seen as 'the' machines for graphic design and other colour sensitive applications?

Whilst not our foremost criteria at least one device will be heavily used by our Publicity Dept so it is relevant.