Colour laser printer recommendations

[ban-all-sheds]

For several years I've been running a Konica-Minolta (nee QMS) Magicolor 2.

Basically I started doing that when I was given a couple of them when the company I worked for at the time were refreshing, and were just going to skip them.

Since then I've kept them going with toner cartridges, cleaning rollers, OPC belts etc bought on eBay, plus one actual printer to cannibalise (IIRC I ended up using that and cannibalising mine).

Anyway - it/they have performed well, as you'd expect for something which cost £4.5K in 1998 , but there's no getting away from the fact that it's long in the tooth and becoming a pain to keep fettled.

K-M keep offering me deals to trade it in and get a shiny new one for 50% off, but when I look at the price of toner etc I think "yeah - I can see why you'd do that".

So basically I'd like to buy a printer which is

1) Old enough for consumables to have fallen to a reasonable price

2) New enough for it still to work OK and for consumables/spares to remain available for some years

3) Originally made for the business rather than home market and therefore not likely to fall apart in the near future.

Does anybody have any suggestions?

 

[jj4091]

It really depends on usage. It may be worth considering buying/renting/leasing one with an all in copy/print charge that includes all consumables & or maintainence if necasary. If you go for one of the more well known brands then my advice would be to play them one against the other to get the best deal. As they are often all made by the same manufacturer & just badged up then there probably won't be much difference in the reliablity stakes. If you want to stick to the way you have been doing it then looking on e-bay again for the availability of spares/consumables will probably give you the best idea of what is currently available. As you probably know, it is a fast changing market & now(recession) is probably the time to get a good deal.