New colour printer needed for a school/work

[2StepSteve]

Hi all

I work in a primary school as the ICT tech. We currently have a QMS magicolour2 laser printer that we have had for about 5 yrs its ok for graphics but very terrible for printing colour photos, only 600x600 DPI. Over all a very solid printer though.

Im very out of touch with laser colour printer models.. but know def don't want a inkjet based printer, it would so not cope with the workload that the school demands.

Are there any decent colour laser printers that you can recommend that give excellent/stunning photo results and that also arent too expensive for toner/inks running costs. Anyone have any experience of models?.. Also needs to be network ready out of the box.

Budget of around £600

Many thanks for help

 

[bitslice]

we had a lovely Xerox wax printer (for marketing), amazing quality, and really fast.

also a HP8550 colour laser (for Excel prints), which sucked badly, t'was slow as a dead sloth on it's day off and cost more than poll tax in toner.

oddly I believe the Xerox should have cost more to run ?

Eventually we binned both and went to a hire company, we get a free colour laser as long as we buy toner from them.

.

 

[2StepSteve]

thanks i'll take a look at Xerox and see what they have.. Any other ppl with their thoughts?

 

[Datamonkey]

I would suggest going hire company with a maint contract if your going for the wax printers mate.

Their expensive to run, and maintenance on them is very expensive.

On site here we have canon rc6800's which are excelllent, their a mopier, printer and copier all in on jobbys.

But very good. so much so the client now has 12 and removed all printers from the building, each section has its own copier/printer.


You can hire/lease these direct from canon, and also they can include consumables in the contract.

I am pretty sure for a school you would get a decent hire rate.

 

[2StepSteve]

I'll look into that thanks might work out better with hiring... We have a big canon photo copier its a big beast, but is only black and white.

Looking around at just laser printers they have come down a fair bit in price.. still havent come across a model thats screaming at me yet... any others that can recommend?

 

[bitslice]

when I was at primary school, we had big wax crayons and big pots of thick paint, sometimes we even had four colours.

Now they have 1200dpi thermal dye sublimation printers and wotnot.
Tsk and pffft. Kids eh ?



.

 

[4ndy89]

In my old school, they used to have a B+W Laser & a Colour inkjet, maybe this would do the job for you?

edit : gah ignore me, i guess primary school kids wouldnt know how to switch between printers.

 

[2StepSteve]

when I was at primary school, we had big wax crayons and big pots of thick paint, sometimes we even had four colours.

Now they have 1200dpi thermal dye sublimation printers and wotnot.
Tsk and pffft. Kids eh ?

haha indeed primary schools are different from the days when I went aswell... had one BBC computer in the classroom and that was it lol! Im getting ready to order 32 new computers kitted out with LCDs for a new suite... they dont realise how jammy they are! Im lucky in that my school even though it is a primary focuses a fair amount of budget into ICT.

In my old school, they used to have a B+W Laser & a Colour inkjet, maybe this would do the job for you?

edit : gah ignore me, i guess primary school kids wouldnt know how to switch between printers.

They do know how to switch printers .. We have a mono laser and a colour laser. I was thinking about a dedicated photo inkjet printer but gah the print heads always seem to get messed up.... not sure if they would like the kinds of load they would be put under..

 

[2StepSteve]

Hmm been looking at inkjets for cheaper cost of running... been looking at continuous ink supply system, anyone think these are any good and have u been using them for awhile without any probs?