My dad's office needs a new copier or maybe two. Right now we have a color Ricoh and a B&W Sharp. Both machines are contributing bundles to the maintenance community. So, since they are leased and much too heavy to take out into a field (:)), we want to get new ones.

In the vast experience of board members here, what is the very best copier you've ever used in your office(s)? We're talking about a 17 person office, with a good amount of use throughout the day for each machine. Our graphic design/desktop publishing person prints to the color copier as well. So those are pretty much our requirements. We keep a B&W copier for fast copying, and the color for advanced jobs.

The problem is that in the past 3 weeks, we've had someone out to fix both machines about 6 times. That's unacceptable.

So, suggestions?

I don't know diddly about copiers... but our entire company switched over to Savin machines in the past 6 months and they are pretty damn sweet. They are incredibly modular and obvious if there is some sort of paper jam or something. One of the machines is a networked color printer/copier/fax machine that does a huge amount of thouroughput. Might be a brand to look into.

Avoid Xerox like the plague. Maybe its just our office, but it breaks all the time.

What model Ricoh do you have now ? Also what company services it ?

I work for Ricoh fixing copiers, printers, and faxes. Ricoh makes / ownes Ricoh, Savin, Gestetner, and Lanier.

The most reliable models that ricoh currently makes have been this one and this one

Canon is supposedly the best for color I haven't worked on Canon or Ricoh color machines so I only know what I have heard from customers. From what I hear Canon is the best color but you pay a heavy price for it.

We've got a Xerox Document Center CS50 and it's okay. The duplexer is a little temperamental though. It's broken on several occasions and we've had to get the engineer out to do mystical things to it.

That's interesting. I'll have to check the model tomorrow at the office. I believe it's being serviced by Commonwealth something. I guess they're the ones who've leased it to us.

According to my father, we don't actually lease the Sharp, and it really isn't as bad. It's eight years old and it was given to us when our lease ran out, so now it's now really having any more problems than you'd expect.

The Ricoh, I'm sorry to say, was a bust for the organization. Apparently we've had two machines in 4 or 5 years, and they've always given us more problems than the Sharp, it's just that with the Sharp's age it's catching up.

Anyway, I'll let you know what model it is tomorrow...

We have an Aficio Color 6010, though it looks way more like the Aficio 6110 only without that thing hanging off the top right of the machine. Perhaps they redesigned the model. I don't know, it's about 2 to 3 years old now.

Any experience with it?

No sorry I do not work on the color ones. Have you been having a repeated problem ? I can look and see if there is a bulletin for it if you are.

I don't think Ricoh is highly revered in the color market Canon has the largest market share. I used to work for IKON and they sold Canon color machines and the color group had as many techs as any other group even though they had the fewest number of machines. All color copiers require a lot of maintenance.