LaserJet Printers

I tried going through some of the recent discussion pages for some insight on this, but haven't found anything.

We're a medium-sized public Library that have a few HP LaserJet Printers set up in the building for public printing.  We bought 2 HP LaserJet P3005N printers in 2007 and 1 in 2008 and all 3 of them have since failed on me. HP says it's a motherboard issue and based on the cost (since of course they're out of warranty) it doesn't make sense to try and get them repaired. These are $700+ printers that barely lasted us 2 years.  The printers were in different locations of the Library and although they received heavy usage, I would expect them to last at least 5 years.

With that said, I'm being very cautious on how to proceed.  Even in warranty the process to get them out to HP for repair seemed relatively tedious.  There are no Authorized Service Centers in the area any more that makes it easy to drop the printers off.  The cost to repair it myself is at least $200-$300.

I was just wondering:

A) What kind of LaserJet Printers do other Medium-sized Libraries use for Public Printing?

B) What warranty support options (and how long) do you usually get with them?

C) Have you thought about using MFP devices instead of stand-alone LaserJet printers?

D) Do you also elect to buy auto-Duplexing and Network-ready Printers?

E) Have you had any luck with Dell Printers or Dell Printer support?

F) How many computers do you typically hook up to a single LaserJet, standalone Printer? How about to the MFPs?

And kind of off topic ... do you use any print management software?

Sorry for all of the questions but it seems like there should be a more efficient way for a Medium-size Library to handle Public Printing requests than what we do.  I've thought about migrating them over to an MFP device that is serviced by a local shop in order to clear me free of these kind of issues.

Thanks again!

We're not a public library, but some thoughts that might be useful.

Firstly, MFPs tend to be MORE fragile for the price, rather than less. If these are public use printers, unless you want to give people access to fax ans scanning, you will get more for your moeny with plain printers. 

As a general rule, the only way to get a long life on a printer is to keep normal usage well under rated duty cycle. If your normal, ongoing usage is close to the rated cycle, you are not likley to get much more than the warranty period. This is true of pretty much all brands.  In my experience, though, HP printers will last a very long time if you follow this rule. In fact, I just pulled a laserjet 5 out of service because because it's slow, and that printer was now being shared by more users - who were each being stretched thin as it was. We're donating it downstream to a place that has nothing, because it still works fine, and slow is better than nothing. I have a number of LJ 4000 printers still happily churning away, although some of their users would love for them to die, so we could replace them. . .  We've had a few Lexmark printers as well, and while they didn't last as long as most of the HP's I can't complain. They did last a reasonable amount of time, and worked well while they lasted. Cost per page was pretty close, but the Lexmark cartridges were substantially moer expensive (they did last longer, but still caused serious sticker shock every time we needed to purchase new toner.)

There is a local company by the name of EIS that can help you. They are the warranty center in the Bay Area for HP and that eliminates the headache of having to ship your stuff in. We have a year-to-year service contract and the printer is fully covered as long as it's under contract. Our cost per month is $34 and that covers all toner, parts, labor, etc. Our contract states that if the printer is beyond repair, they will replace it at no cost to us. You can't beat that!

Call and ask for Mark and he'll answer all your questions. 925/371-4100 x 120

George...by the way, tell him I sent you. He's my son ;-)

By the way, you may want to visit www.fixyourownprinter.com They may not have the parts you need, but if they do, it will probably be less expensive that paying HP. Also, they seem to have  a reasonably active discussion forum about specific models that might be useful to you.

Check in your area and see if you have a Kyocera Mita copier dealer.  The last copier MFP we got had a usb drive port that would print any pdf in the root directory of the flash drive plugged in.  May be worth while for public printing.  They use to have special pricing for non profits.

Also check if you can get maintenance based on click charges of any solution you choose, that way you have fixed expenses based on a per copy rate.

Duplexing can help save a tree.  Network ready, it is the best way to connect your printer to the network and multiple PCs.