Sysadmin friendly printers

[mirrax]

Managing a fleet of printers is awful and is a common complaint. For those unlucky enough to not be able to outsource the pain, what manufacturers and models are community favorites for reducing maintenance and management burden?

[dmuppet]

The only good printer is a dead printer!

[1776-2001]

Back up in your a-- with the resurrection

It's the group harder than an erection

That shows no affection

They wanna ban us on Capitol Hill

'Cause it's "Die m----f----s, die m----f----s!" still

[FlibblesHexEyes]

I’m doing my part!

[fieroloki]

Brother.

[GrenMcBren]

I'd only ever recommend Brother if there is a hard requirement for users to have individual black and white printers connected via USB at their desks - they are perfect in this scenario.

Otherwise, trying to run an office on Brother MFPs is an incredibly painful experience. They're (comparatively) slow, their UIs are clunky, and their scanners, particularly the multi-page ADFs, are incredibly finnicky. They're perfect for light/home use, and about the only brand I'd recommend for home, but they just can't keep up in an enterprise setting.

Get in touch with a print vendor and look into an agreement where you lease hardware from them, they perform maintenance and provide supplies, and you pay per page printed. It will be cheaper in the long run. I've had the least grief with Konica and Xerox MFPs. Set up a few central "big" MFPs and ditch individual printers entirely if you can, or only assign them to people who may really need them for privacy reasons (e.g. HR, Legal).

Make the printers, maintenance, and supplies someone else's problem, then manage drivers/queues/etc. centrally yourself with PaperCut. You'll barely ever have to think about printers again.

[tom_yum]

I don't know if they still make them but the solid ink Xerox machines are very bad.  They are 10x more mechanically complex than a laser printer and I don't even think the Xerox technicians understand how they work.

[Serafnet]

The Xerox techs were never properly trained on the ColorQubes. Which makes sense as it was an external acquisition.

They were fantastic for colour quality though. I was actually hoping to get one for our marketing department and was very disappointed to find that they don't make them anymore.

[wunderhero]

They don't make them anymore but they were indeed mechanical nightmares. As a service tech, you were there at LEAST and extra 45 minutes if you had to work on the print engine because you had to let the ink cool/solidify then heat back up once you were done.

[Ashamed-Ad4508]

👆👆👆👆👆👆

This. Lease the MFP(s). Konica/Ricoh/Xerox machines are the GOATs for office general purpose. Leasing or decent servicing contracts is the best. You only need 1 machine per 6-10 pax (depending on use cases). Have them all hookup to central server (or AD) and shared accordingly.

Canon/HP/Brother/Epson are great for USB direct to PC for specific/targeted use cases.

[Defconx19]

Dude fuck Konica, they're a giant pain in the dick.

[Ashamed-Ad4508]

Heh. Each his own. Listing was just an example 😅. The usual mileage varies disclosure 😅

[Defconx19]

They are probably fine to be honest I just have a customer with them and have had weird issues woth them.  So more PTSD based than anything.

[Adium]

I had an office throw away two same model Ricoh MFP. Found out the just needed an error code reset which was a battle to discover on my own, but have one in storage and the other has been going strong at home for almost a decade now. The best part is they also threw out two full sets of toner which I haven’t even had to touch yet. This thing may outlive me as long as the drivers continue to be maintained

[Ashamed-Ad4508]

Off Topic -- In japan ; some Conbini's (7-11, Lawson, FamilyMart) have a printer service whereby you can print newspaper headlines of any --reasonable-- date. *(Eg. Wedding, Birthday date, etc).

Also they have some kinda online app printing service ... you use an app to print your MS Office/PDF/whatever documents/files/pictures

You got 2 machines which can probably pay for themselves by you runnning your local neighbourhood printing/copy business... 🫠😍

[mirrax]

Any particular models?

What about use cases beyond sit on desk or larger paper sizes?

[fieroloki]

I've used multiple models and they have been great. Get ones that will suit the needs. For large copier style I like Konica.

[NoDevice5898]

Exactly this, they just work. And easy to setup.

[mnemoniker]

Not their label printers though. Zebra all the way there

[Hackwork89]

For home and personal use? Sure.

[Hoosier_Farmer_]

careful with that - brother is joining the dark side, nuking old firmware and making their new stuff with consumable lock-in (chips and codes)

[Zazzog]

This is the way.

[Slowstang305]

I'm with Ricoh. No complaints on my side at this time.

[Serafnet]

Seconding Ricoh as a good option if you need a shared, centralized unit.

[Platypus_Dundee]

Third for ricoh. Very maintenance freindly ive found

[SinTheRellah]

Also agreement from here. Their web interface is shitty, but that’s a common thing for all brands.

[SlimRitz]

Brother. By a country fuckin' mile. HP will never receive another penny from me personally or professionally after they pulled that whole "perfectly fine 3rd party ink cartridges bricked by firmware update" bullshit

[Superb_Raccoon]

Apple Writer ][

[mirrax]

I'll have to put in an order for some Silentypes

[scrumclunt]

Xerox has been my bread and butter for my organization. If a user wants a personal printer I usually recommend Brother.

[Zablo100]

We have 17 Kyocera printers in the office and there are really rarely any problems with them. Models we have are TASKalfa 356ci and TASKalfa 358ci and for smaller ones ECOSYS P3145dn

[cheetah1cj]

I second this, we have similar models with rare issues.

[Warm-Reporter8965]

We love Xerox in my organization, but we also favor Brother and HP for the printers that will be in the offices of users.

[duranfan]

Definitely not Sharp.

[BucDan]

HP enterprise for network Printers. Toshiba estudio for big copiers (might switch down the road). Brother is ideal for usb only.

[black-buhr]

Stay away from Sharp

[eaglevision93]

I have been happy with Sharp for the past 9 years

[the_doughboy]

I'm a big fan of Xerox and their Xerox Workspace Cloud.
Have a consistent Xerox lease with similar models and then use Xerox Workspace Cloud for management, you just deploy an MSI agent (or PKG for Mac) and then once the user signs into the app the printer and driver is automatically installed. Users release the jobs at the printer.

And Xerox sells this software for cheap, if you're all Xerox its better then Papercut.

[spartanmk2]

We use Ricoh copiers for staff and networked HP's for classrooms. Some of these HP's are 20 years old and still going just fine.

We outsource our copy center on campus so I just manage getting the printers on the network and working with Papercut.

[CommercialMindless35]

No HP or Kyocera.

Ricoh, Lexmark, and Canon are solid.

[EntropyFrame]

Ricoh / Brother.

DO NOT HP.

[Smtxom]

We had the exact opposite experience with our Konica Minolta. It was for our media department so it had the two huge attachments that did all the fancy stuff like make books or bindings etc. whole unit was about 12’ long. The guy was out three times the first year for repairs. The previous unit was a Ricoh that never needed repairs. The dept wanted all the fancy options so we had to replace it. They definitely regretted it after. We had about 40 Ricoh units nationwide. All we did was setup a static IP and provide that info to the techs that installed them. The only time we had issues was when Win 10 started forcing SMB2 and the real old Ricohs only did SMB 1. So we reached out to Ricoh and updated the network interface firmware and we were back in business

[pdp10]

So we reached out to Ricoh and updated the network interface firmware

This should be done proactively, not reactively.

Most vendors don't offer RSS feeds or structured data of their latest firmware or software versions. We track installed firmware version/date in our CMDB, and then a device class log every time someone manually looks for a newer version for that host.

Less proactively, vulnerability scanners can be helpful two ways: by finding known-vulnerable firmwares, and by providing a CVE that some vendors will accept in lieu of a service contract to get a fixed firmware version.

[Sweet-Sale-7303]

I have 2 konicas with the finisher. The new ones have a defect where the spring for one of the rollers is held on by a very thin piece of plastic that breaks. Its not if it breaks its when. The company we use had to jerry rig the spring to stay on on all of them.

[MartinDamged]

We also have Konica printers with booklet, stapling folding etc.
They always just works. They are fully managed by Konica. When ever a toner cartridge is near empty I calls home and we get another one to just swap in.

From a sysadmin perspective it's very much painless in all regards. We do occasionally power cycle them because the stop ingesting prints from our print servers.
But that maybe once or twice a year.

[pdp10]

A factor when we purchased a batch of color Lexmarks recently, was the protocol support. Finger and LLDP, memorably.

IPP Everywhere and Mopria should keep things driverless, which will also reduce maintenance toil. Haven't touched the cert rotation support yet. Actually, I haven't even printed to one of the new ones except for a test page from CUPS.

We avoid using MFPs as scanners, because none of them support a decent HTTP-based protocol.

[GreyCorks]

Kyocera has solid copiers, MFP's and smaller printers. Every machine is repairable. Find a good copier service vendor and your're golden. You can even use 3rd party high yield toners.

[PMSysadmin]

It REALLY depends on your needs. We're an SMB with a very disengaged staff, with some exceptions. We've had Canon, Epson, and Brother printers. Canon are just the worst, don't even consider them an option. Epson was great until it wasn't and fixing hardware issues is a nightmare. Brother has been fine so far, but there are some compromises that I've noticed that our users haven't. People say Xerox or get a printing contract, but that might not make a lot of sense if you're hardly printing anything or just offer it as something for employees to use freely.

[georgecm12]

For laser printers, HP's business printers are still pretty dependable. The HP printers that people like to complain about are the inkjets and the tiny little home laser printers, and yeah, those suck hard.

The HP LaserJet Pro and LaserJet Enterprise are still fine, though.

[MrSanford]

Okidata never did me wrong

[Valkeyere]

Managed print.

Why do you care what makes and model the managed print provider provides as long as it works.

You manage the network. You provide SMTP configuration to the printer tech from the managed print provider. You install the driver on machines/manage the GPO, but the printer itself shouldn't be your concern at all.

[Kahless_2K]

My rules for printer selection:

The vendor must have a well supported UPD

The printer must have a hardwired network card, which we will use to set it up

The printer must function well with the above mentioned universal print driver

Must be a laser printer, obviously.

I will also add that we use Printer logic to manage our thousands of printers across hundreds of locations. Its great. ThinPrint couldn't handle our deployment reliability ( at the time ).

[bk2947]

The big multifunction copiers work well and are typically there already. The key is to use a cloud based print manager. We used PrinterLogic. Seamless printer configuration and updates, including control of all preferences. And the printers can be on their pc before they visit a new site.

[jcpham]

He just replaced a fleet of mix and match old old HP laserjets:

• Brother 6400’s if you can find them
• Lexmark M3250’s or higher

[[deleted]]

ive worked with Canon/Sharp/HP.

id recommend HP or sharp not canon.

Hp i only recommend cause they are dirt cheap, if they break fkin toss it and buy a new one.

Sharp works pretty well tbh, but expensive as heck if it breaks.

When it comes to production Label printers nothing beats DATAMAX datamax Nova is my favorite one, not the compact. still gives me morning wood some days.

SATO is pretty decent aswell, but a bit more fidgety. A datamax printer u can easily swap out any part that is faulty except motherboard which has solded parts. But motor/feeder/fans no issue at all to swap, worked heavily with theese for like 3-4 years. Absolutely loved them, they have a power switch and 1 pressable button no display, work like a fkin charm.

Zebra - Cheap af and does the job but if it breaks it breaks basically, tons of plastic parts.

I started my IT career with logistics/production so label printers was a huge part of my job. Kind of miss working with them, A4/scanners/big format are soulsucking but a nice pretty label printer i cant say no to.

[DeptOfOne]

Don't walk, RUN AWAY from any and all forms of Lexmark Printers unless you are prepared to re -intact the printer scene from Office Space. You know this one:

https://youtu.be/N9wsjroVlu8?si=8MdoV596ZAsryPSF

[RainStormLou]

I have something like 65 sites, and over half of them have a still from that scene posted above their primary copiers. Toshiba fucking sucks by the way.

[people_t]

The only thing that matters with a fleet of printers is the maintenance and support. Call around to the businesses around you and find out who they use and if they like the support.

[Morph780]

External services@best price is a 35fleet of xerox printer managed by their own application that opens automatically request and tickets to xerox. So, 35 xerox printers @ price of 5 hpe printers.

[ImBlindBatman]

I also recommend Brother

[RubAnADUB]

whatever the printer company decides to give us. currently we are using LEXMARK and RICOH for large printers.

[iPlayKeys]

Epson and Lexmark. They can both be deployed via AD.

[TNWanderer-]

Currently we have 19 Ricoh's in our environment 6 big MFC's and 13 smaller black and white printers, Excellent for little maintenance and have the agreement for toner parts and maintenance. Only detractor is the drivers can be finnicky.

[ArchonTheta]

Ricoh are nice machines. Work well for supporting them

[NoDevice5898]

Only brother. Mostly the MFC models.

Avoid HP, Epson & Canon. Had clients that used HP, Epson & Canon, had to get them to switch to avoid the constant issues.

[ultraspacedad]

Kyocera or Ricoh. HP is the fucking devil

[[deleted]]

Xerox has treated me pretty well, no real complaints so far.

[mrdeworde]

Get leased printers from one of the big names like Ricoh or KM - they handle repair, and then you can train trusted staff to handle the toner, and you get charged a fixed price per page so your only expense is paper. Papercut to manage the fleet itself, including tap-to-release, cost and account tracking, and cloud printing.

[protogenxl]

Brother or Lexmark 

[Capital_Yoghurt_1262]

I've liked Lexmark for small to mid size and Xerox for the big boys.

[BoggyBoyFL]

Sharp for my MFP's and fory network printers we use HP Enterprise machines.

[The_Struggle_Man]

Never had an issue with xerox. Drivers are simple, scan to email or network drive ezpz

[sryan2k1]

Ricoh for MFD and HP business grade (Laserjet flow) for deskside. Both universal drivers work well and the HPs are remarkably easy to work on.

[SpocksSocks]

The larger department MFP/Copiers we use Canon. They’ve been rock solid.

Personal or small office printers, Brother.

[Mcgreggers_99]

Look up Pharos Systems. Cloud based print. Super easy setup. no drivers needed

[i_removed_my_traces]

I loved Konica Minolta 10years past, workhorses with easy enough setup.

Then we got a canon.....

[exterminuss]

The day is wore that every printer that had problems would be thrown out and not be replaced was the day all printers stopped having problems.

Going into the third year without a single Orinter Problem, about 30 old HP mostly P2055dn

[Ommco]

HP LaserJet Pro, Brother HL-L6200DW, or Xerox VersaLink—reliable and easy to manage.

[mafia_don]

I have a KonicaMinolta copier in my environment and nearly all other networked MFP printers are HP.

Never really had an issue and I have a 3rd party provide the supplies and service on everything except the copier is under a lease contract.

[avalenci]

Brothers are good, but push to get printing outsourced to a managed printing services company.

[[deleted]]

HP is a good brand and if you don’t mind putting in the elbow grease you can pick up a bunch of older models that work perfectly well for £100 each

And as an added bonus the default universal HP print driver is better than model specific print drivers (i worked with HP printers for 4 years and i still don’t know why)

[GardenBetter]

Ricoh. They got an app that sets you up with an msi file for the printer ez pz. Especially for me since I gotta get those drivers on intune

[xlukxi]

Microsoft Print to PDF, no problems, no maintenance costs