I used to work at a shop that was having this exact same discussion.
7010:
- Obscenely wide gamut
- 70ppm
- Some people have had horrible maintenance problems
- Costs more than a house
- Versatile - so you got a bunch of offset (not digital) 100# cover that's been through a thunderstorm? The 7010 doesn't care.
901:
- Spectacular spot color matching (print off a contact sheet with PMS warm/cool greys on each and you'll see what I mean)
- 90ppm - sounds good, but it's really not because I (the op) could not keep up with the machine
- I know a shop that runs 200k+/mo and NEVER places service calls
- Ricoh is still in the "having something to prove" mode so they let them go insanely cheap
- Can do long runs of B+W - only machine in its class that can do this AFAIK
The only reason you'd get the 7010 is because of the super duper gamut and the stock versatility. If you don't run weird papers and don't need ridiculous gamuts, save yourself $50,000 and get the Ricoh.
Also, we had clicks below $0.01 for black and below $0.05 for color. Canon just wouldn't do this with the black and wouldn't go below like $0.054 (iirc) for color unless we signed the minimum volume contract. Yeah, THAT contract.
The 7010 is the printer of my dreams, but the 901 turned out to be the printer of my reality
90ppm ain't no punk, also. The shop I work at now recently got a Xerox with a bookletmaker + face trimmer (a first for me) and the savings are AWESOME. We don't do that many booklets, but the time savings is AWESOME. Add up your labor costs and it kinda makes sense, too.