laser-lovers@uw-beaver (laser-lovers) (06/14/84)
From: alfred%ct.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa The following is a short summary of the responses I received from my request for user experiences with the reliability of Imagen Imprint-10 laser printers and the wisdom of buying a maintenance contract. There were seven respondents in all. Four currently have no maintenance contract (although one of these was planning to buy a contract) and three currently have contracts. The people without contracts uniformly recommended not bothering to buy one, because of the overall reliability of their printers, as well as the low usage of our printer. In addition, two respondents mentioned that the few service calls they did have were inexpensive. Most of the sites (like us) for the most part just feed them and watch them run. One of these sites indicated really heavy usage but no untoward failures with his printer. On the other hand, one of the three respondents with maintenance contracts indicated heavy usage and a low degree of reliability. The other respondents with contracts indicated that their failure rate was low and that they were happy with the service they received when a call was necessary, although one respondent mentioned that consideration was being given to dropping the contract due to lack of problems with the printer. Specific problems mentioned included: readjusting/cleaning corona wires (when print quality deteriorated or a wire began to arc), replacing scratched/worn drums (due to normal wear, improper paper jams, or improper dispersant tray removal), broken belts, and bus errors, etc., that cause the interface to hang (requiring rebooting to clear). We have seen a fair number of the first and last of these happen with our own machine. My impression is that, if you really abuse your printer, you should buy a contract; otherwise it is cheaper to just pay as you need work done. Several respondents mentioned that some of their service calls result from 'user error' or 'dirty machines'. The general consensus seems to be that, if you allow only those who have been shown the proper thing to do to mess with the machine, and you do regular cleaning (PM), you get a machine that gives little trouble (assuming low to moderate usage). Alfred P.S. The figure of $600 I quoted in my original message should be ignored. It turns out that the person who arranged the purchase of our machine last year wanted a maintenance contract as well. Since there was at that time no local maintenance organization, Imagen quoted us a contract for doing it themselves. Since we are just outside Dallas, air fare and accommodations had to be added to the 'normal' maintenance fee...