Ricoh Aficio SPC240DN laser printers?

[ffutures]

My colour inkjet has died, but I only bought it because I couldn't find a decent affordable duplexing colour laser a couple of years back. Before I buy cartridges, I want to look at alternatives.

In particular, Misco are selling a Ricoh duplexing network colour laser, Aficio SPC240DN, for £105 plus delivery. It looks interesting but big and the toner is moderately expensive, over £200 if you had to refill all four cartridges at once. However, there don't appear to be any other expensive consumables, the drums are part of the cartridges. Anyone know anything about them? Or a cheaper source for the toner cartridges?

Comments

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

At a slight tangent, my laser printer has started printing things with vertical paler streaks. I've never had a laser printer before. Does this mean the toner cartridge is about done?

Is there anything I can do to it to eke out a bit more life?

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Give the toner cartridges a shake and tilt, gently rocking them left and right. It may help.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Rightie, I'll give that a go. Thanks.

Do I have to remove the cartridge from the printer to do this, or could I just rock the whole printer?

/ potentially stupid question.

[robertprior.livejournal.com]

I always remove the cartridge.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Definitely! One thing though - don't vacuum any toner you spill unless you want to breathing the stuff for the next few hours, most vacuum cleaner filters are useless for toner.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Rightie, cheers. I've never actually had to remove the cartridge from this printer before, but I'm sure it won't be complicated.

[heliograph.livejournal.com]

While I have not had bad experiences with that specific model of Ricoh laser color, I have had many bad experiences with Ricoh laser color. FWIW.

But, having said that, I do think laser color is the way to go. Just make sure you don't get any models that use "solid ink" (ie crayon blocks) technology. Unless you're using them a lot, they burn through your "solid ink" melting it and dumping it periodically.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

My first laser was a Ricoh and pretty good for its day, so I'm inclined to give it a try at that price.

I suspect that as with most printers it's heavy use and incompetent users that give a lot of the problems - most of the Ricohs I've seen recently are networked printers at work, where they get used by teachers and kids and mostly still work despite a lot of abuse. I have problems with our network printing system, but they're mostly down to paper being loaded badly and an appallingly bad network user interface rather than the printers themselves.

Thanks for commenting - reminds me to say Merry Xmas; I've been a bit slow putting my card on line this year, hopefully it'll happen this weekend.