Canon 7000 vs Ricoh 901s

[jaci]

Hello All, I need a bit of advice. We currently have a Canon 7000 on the floor. It has been a great machine for us. It is about 4 years old. We have a service contract with Ikon. Now that they are a Ricoh dealer they are pushing for us to switch to the 901s. We have seen the 901 in action, I can say that the machine did not impressed me enough to make the switch with out any doubts. The new proposal from Ikon would get our monthly cost down less then $400, but one of the options is to add the plockmatic booklet finisher and that pushes us about $100 over a month. Does anyone have any suggestions of one box vs the other.

thanks,
Jaci

 

[Joe Duffy]

IMO, the 7010 has a better image than the 901GA. The Plockmatic on the 901 make it a real workhorse if you do alot of books. I have never seen a 901 w/Plockmatic be anyplace close to the price of a 7010 though. I think you will find the 901 less needy for care but if the 7010 color is a 10 then the 901 is a 9. Get the Creo RIP.

 

[jrsc]

can't comment on the canon but we just bought a 901 from Ikon with the creo rip, large capacity stacker, and plockmatic with trimmer and square fold option. We were coming from a konica c6501. We've only had it about 3 weeks but so far I like it. The square fold option on the plockmatic is really cool. Get samples and you will be impressed. I also recommend the high capacity stacker. With the speed of this thing the regular staple finisher stacker fills up really quick and the high capacity stacker stacks much nicer. My favorite feature over the konica is that I can just toss paper into any drawer and not worry about stacking it real nice and making sure the guides are perfect. The machine just always prints with just about perfect registration both front to back and sheet to sheet. I can finish a run of 1000 postcards in the time it took me to load the paper and adjust for registration on the konica. Keep in mind I've only had it a few weeks so I haven't had a chance to experience many problems.

 

[onwsk8r]

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.

 

[Happyprinter]

Have had our 901 for over a year now and love it. The first 6 months it ran excellent. Never had an issue. After 6 months, wanted to throw it in the garbage. Wouldn't hold color. Spotting. Horrible solids. Had many tech calls, average one a day. Ikon had to fly in techs 2 different times. Finally, after a major overhaul, new everything in the machine, all the problems have gone away and the machine is operating great. There seems to be continuing issues with the developing units that Ricoh is working on according to the Ricoh tech, but, overall am very pleased with it. You can check other threads as there are many, many on the 901. Good luck!