Printer Advice

[Nedlamar]

Ok this thread has absolutely nothing to do with my other thread about printers.
I put this in the lounge because .... well I thought it was the best place for it lol
Please move if you so wish.

My girlfriend is as some of you know, a Needlework designer.
Her distributor at the moment is really letting the ball drop, she has just been featured in the worlds largest onshelf magazine and just got told through a standard "Mass Mail" email that her distributor will not be attending the largest trade show of the year in Nashville.
She has also had offers from 2 other very large distributors.

Now to the issue, her current dist. prints her charts for her at a cost, the larger ones do not albeit are much much bigger and will make her a lot more money.

So, we are going to need a printer.

Requirements:

Compatable with custom built Windows 7 PC
Capable of printing a LOT (possibly upto and probably more than 3000 pages per month, mix of colour and b&w at a 3-15 ratio respectively)
It needs to print decent quality, 600X600 at least.
The ink needs to be cost effective, not cheap but $180 for b&w that gets you 1500 pages is no good as that would work at near loss.
It also needs to be fairly fast, upwards of 20ppm is good.
Doesn't need anything other than printer (no scanner etc)
Would be nice to be duplex capable.

Needs to be affordable, we are looking at up to $750 ish, take with pinch of salt.

Any ideas would be most appreciated, also any links to online stores who deal mainly in printers (not staples or some such, specialists)
Also any links to ink stores that are discounted or such.

Thank you in advance for ANY info

[gman863]

What is the maximum paper size required?

[Nedlamar]

Just standard A4 , 8x11... for now anyway.

[gman863]

A Brother AIO inkjet will likely be your best value.

Brother is decent quality and uses separate color ink tanks (B/C/Y/M). The best part is that quality generic cartridges are available on line at sites such as eBay and Amazon for as little as $3 each when you buy in bulk.

In "fast draft" mode (about 600x600), I get up to 500 text pages per black cartridge.

http://www.officedepot.com/a/product...ss-Inkjet-All/

On sale this week for $59. If looking for ink on eBay or Amazon, it takes LC71 or LC75 series cartridges.

Hope this helps.

[Nedlamar]

Thank you for the effort and info, but that printer wont do what we need it to very well.
It hold 20 sheets in the drawer, we are looking at 500 with upgradable to 2200 pages.
It also only prints 10PPM, we need minimum 20PPM.
It prints 500 pages per cart, we are looking at 2500+ possibly up to 10,000.

While the carts are cheap as you say, at the rate they empty it would be counter productive on the sheer number of pages that will be printed.
We are printing a little heavier than text, so it would probably give us maybe 300 pages which is 15 charts (ish), we are looking to print 100+ each time an order comes in, which could be up to 5 times per month.
I also doubt if it would last long printing at such a rate.

I do realise that it's ultra cheap, but we'd rather spend decent money on something that will do everything we need and not have to worry about it.

Lets put it this way, the first order is likely to be 10-15,000 pages printed as fast as it can print, at about 40% more coverage than text, I would be wary that it would manage that without overheating.

But I will keep it in mind and thank you once again for the information
I've also had some bad experiences with Brother printers in the past and am pretty wary of them.

[Nedlamar]

Missed the edit:

This is actual what we are looking at, at the moment.

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en...592.html?dnr=1

And I just got told it can't be Inkjet due to smudging, these charts have to e clean lines because they are highly detailed symbols and lines.
So Laser Jet is what she wants and it also now HAS to be Duplex and we will be using 28lb paper.

[gman863]

When you look at laser printers, research what model toner it takes and check the listings on eBay and Amazon to see if aftermarket generics are available.

Generally, must Brother laser models have generics available. I'm not up to speed on the entire Brother laser lineup; however I know they have a few higher speed B/W laser models available.

If you stick with top rated sellers, the generic toner is usually as good (and lasts as long) as the name brand.

[Nedlamar]

I apologise, I did intend to thank you for the idea of Amazon and Ebay, for some odd reason I didn't think of either of those.

I think she found the high capacity 2500 pages per cart for around $50 a piece.
But I figure I could possibly drop a few $ off that with some indepth searching, but now you have given me 2 ideas to start with