I've run both of those machines (well, only 9xx's of Ricoh) plenty, and I prefer the Xerox's quality by a long shot. I was informed today that some of my printing was OBVIOUSLY printed on an offset press by an "expert" designer
Now that Xerox has solved the gloss problem, the machine does a decent job on matte until the coverage gets up in the 200% range and it actually matches gloss levels on glossy pretty well also. I printed some Carolina 10pt C2S about two hours ago (paper set to semi-matte 220-256) and smiled to myself when the glossiness of the ink was pretty identical to that of the paper. I've said to myself several times that it really looks offset-esque. I'm amazed at how amazed I am by the quality of the printing. Oh, also, it has an inline spectoproofer - I tell the machine to calibrate itself and that's the end. Not sure if this comes standard or not.
Ricoh tends to have a tendency to jam unless you're running "approved papers" and our lazy Ricoh techs didn't even try to fix that, whereas Xerox is there saying WTF, mate and running test patterns within the hour. Ricoh also has that toner-not-adhering problem. Xerox does not have this problem. We don't even always wait for the wood to be converted to paper before we print it on the Xerox.
That being said, the difference in quality is not worth the difference in price. If your customers are that picky, you'd best get a Nexpress or an Indigo.
Plus, the Xerox sales people never have my best interests at heart. Unfortunately my current company's decision maker is not perhaps the most qualified to be out in the wild by himself buying equipment. Xerox sold him a Freeflow rip. Our shop is Fiery-driven. Why would they do this? Doubt it has anything to do with Freeflow's licensing fees. Also it has a punch. We have a three-hole drill which we use about once a month. Why do we need a punch? We do s*** loads of coils, but it can't punch 19 holes. Only 2 & 3 holes.
We have a job of 110,000-ish 12x18 impressions coming up that will be printed on 80 text (and it all needs to be coiled - I think I'm about to cook through some vacation days) - I'll keep you all posted on how that goes.
No clue how many impressions we've put on it since we've gotten it, but it's jammed on me like.. twice (true story). Once was from a LCT before the machine was "balanced" and once was because it tried to feed six sheets at once. That's what I call offset quality - no other digi has ever fed six sheets at once for me before
Oh one other thing - Ricoh offered super low click charges. Awesome click charges.
Xerox gave us the big blue shaft. Kicked us right in the X. Again, not sure if that's our decision maker working his magic or whether they just like to stick it to the customers.
Afterthought: I've gotten considerably better registration on the Ricoh than on the Xerox. We had to modify artwork today to make it Xerox 770-friendly. I can't recall ever having bad registration or skewing when I worked at the Ricoh-driven shop.
