Looking for an All in 1 solution!

I'm looking for an all in one printing solution for my fledgling business and am tired of the Kinkos rut! I don't know much about printers though. I want to print color, fax, scan and copy all from my desk without having to waste any time and I want it fast, state of the art and high quality!!! I know I'm demanding. Can anyone point me in the right direction here? I don't want to spend tooo much dough, but I want quality. Many Thanks in advance
Zara

[vee_ess]

try looking at www.pcworld.com for any reviews and maybe search for their most recent.

[wizbones]

HP is the best in my books for All in One solutions, print, fax, copy, scan the works. Check out their latest products http://products.hp-at-home.com/sub_c...egory.php?id=4

I just installed a G95 for one of my clients and it rocks. I use the HP 750xi (no fax, no need) and it's great. Meets all my needs and the scanner is sweet. I scanned in 80 photo's three at a time and cut them into individual graphics in less than two hours.

My old scanner that would have taken me all day and into the next possibly.

Good luck on your search. If you are looking for less expensive the Brother Printers aren't all to bad. http://www.brother.com/usa/printer/printer_cntr.html

I would also recommend the HP printers and companion scanners. Should be one there to fit your budget. For fax, buy yourself a fax machine, they are dirt cheap now and have it as a stand-alone unit.  Don't opt for any printer/scanner/ fax/  conglomeration or you will be sorry.

i also agree; HP is the best for all-in-one printers.  i have one of them and i've never had a problem with it.  NEVER BUY CANON PRINTERS!!!!!!!!!!!! the place i work at bought a whole bunch of them, and holy crap do they suck.  i'm constantly trying to troubleshoot those things.

Different opinion here from Chef :

Never buy all-in-one peripherials, cause if one part goes down, and you don't want to fix it for some reason (let's say you just don't feel like wasting 200$ to replace HP's print heads, or 300$ for ink drum), then you loose the whole thing ...

Believe me, when you'll have to send this baby for repare, you'll waste MUCH more money then you expect.
It is sometimes cheaper to by a new one, then to repare it (!).

About Canon printers, my ex-company sold lots of (BJCs 100,300,2000,2100,5200,6200 ...). Don't know about lasers ... And I don't remember any serious probs with it. Canon is much cheaper in repares too.

And here's the most imporant concern : INK PRICES !
HP totaly screwed it, you replace color ink 2 times and voila, you've paid the price of the printer itself.
Canon in other hand has cheapes prices for ink and when you'll print 500 p/per month you'll see what I mean.
At this point laser printer can be most cost-effective solution, but combo with laser would cost you $$$


Cheers
Chef

P.S. You'll never get state of art quality with all-in-one. nothing is 100% perfect

I agree with Chef here, although its ok to have some things that complement each other together..

ie. in my humble office for my consulting business (very humble...spare bedroom), I have a combo scanner/photocopier/fax combo and a printer (cant be bothered running up the stair tp look @ brands...however I am finding that as business expands I am going to have to invest in a seperate photocopier...in fact I have already ordered a Xerox.

SO in my opinion for a business that has any sort of quantity of paper to deal with, get a seperate printer, seperate photocopier and a scanner/fax combo (or copy/scan combo and seperate fax).

Also with the copier make sure its a flatbed..

This might seem expensive advice, but it will save you money when your business expands and you find out that you need to print/fax and copy all @ once!!

More things to consider, the HP printer cartridge's come with a new printhead, so with HP you change the printhead each time you replace a cartridge, black or color. Not so with most other printers.
Print head imperfections cause poor print quality and result naturally with usage, dust, lint etc.  Sooner or later no mater how great the printer is, the printhead determines the quality.
If I remember correctly, the HP printers will print 500-600 pages at default settings per cartridge,  which ( color ) cost about 30-35 USD $. A few have success with refilling but I would not recommend it, hopefully if it gets to that I can pick up enough aluminum cans to buy cartridges.
If you don't have wholesale copying to do, the HP scanners have a copy function that works perfect. Just slower than Xerox, but in color too.
No I don't work with HP but having printers here now made by Canon, Lexmark, and Epson, I sure love the HP.  

yep, that's ~20-30$ for 1 of 3 cartridges (if you are smart enough to get printer with separated color printheads).

"HP printer cartridge's come with a new printhead" - ??? perhaps specific models; never heard about. I think Jinx is wrong cause spare HP printhead itself costs ~ 60-100$ to replace. (don't fix it, throw it !)

500 p/per cartridge for text printing, in theory. With color printing it would be 70-100 p/per cartridge

About the quality, if you want state-of-art quality nothing beats the laser Ink jets have almost the same quality today, it depends on output settings/paper/...

HP is popular, but so is Windows, does it say anything ?
Another sth : Cheap printer -> Expensive ink & repairs  ( Lexmark, Epson, some HP's )...

About scanners. Fast scanner must be SCSI, that's the rule, I personally prefer UMAX, always was good, but $$$


Cheers
Chef

Zara, I'd say that's good advice from the Golden Techie, can't beat HP for all in 1 solutions. Considering the intended use for your growing business and your demand for quality I would further point you to the hp LaserJet 3300 series with a 1200 dpi high resolution laser printer. This will take the kind of efficiency already mentioned to the next level. To get a good overview of what's available I would have a look at HP's CeBIT site: http://www.hewlett-packard.de/cebit/...one/index.html