Hello everyone,
Just joined, and pretty impressed with the quality of the discussions and advice. I'd like your opinion on an issue I'm facing.
I work at a small engineering office. Despite our size it seems like we use a lot of paper, mostly letter and tabloid (11x17") sizes. Our work product is engineering and GIS drawings (used to be in B&W, now mostly in color), specifications (large B&W documents), proposals (color), and general correspondence (some color). For internal use we print a lot of color drawings on 11x17" paper. We have the following printing equipment:
HP DesignJet T1100PS - For full-size drawings. Works well.
Canon iR2020 - For B&W copies and prints up to 11x17. We have it under service contract. Pretty happy with it. Two drawbacks: it cannot scan to color PDF at 600dpi (which we prefer for engineering drawings), and it doesn't support TWAIN.
Ricoh Aficio CL7200 - For color prints, up to 11x17. Gets used a lot to print in color. Works well and it's reliable.
HP LaserJet 8000DN - For B&W prints, up to 11x17. Workhorse, works well.
RICOH Aficio SP C242SF MFC. Junk, it eats toner as if it were free. Print quality is not impressive. Not happy with it at all. It replaced a Brother MFC-9840CDW which was also a POS.
So now we want to simplify things a bit. I want to get rid of the Ricoh C242SF MFC and am also concerned about not having a reliable backup for color prints, particularly 11x17" drawings. I don't have numbers, but we do consume several cases of paper a month, and print in color a lot.
We are thinking about purchasing or leasing a Canon imageRunner Advance C2225. This is a color MFC which can print and scan 11x17, including via TWAIN and to a color PDF at 600dpi. We would have a service contract and we have been quoted $0.016 and $0.08 per B&W and color images (which I guess includes prints and copies).
Does anybody have experience with the Canon C2225? Any reason why we should avoid it? I haven't really looked hard at other manufacturers, but what I'm looking for is: a) quality (prints, copies and scans), b) reliability/ease of use, and c) cost-effectiveness.
I welcome any suggestions, thanks in advance.
Ed