We have a department thats printing to an ageing HP Laserjet 8150dtn printer that keeps playing up. What I need to know, and HPs website is crap is which model is the current offering that replaced the 8150 when it was discontinued?.

Any idea what's wrong with it manny.. it just so happens we are printer repair specialist!

Whats the total page count of the printer, it might just be worth getting it serviced rather than a whole new machine and when you say playing up what are the symptoms?

We have a maintenance contract, and lots of stuff inside has been replaced including the formatter board, input units, rollers, fusers, practically the whole machine except the chassis.

The printer is a key one, and can really do without being broken down at all. At the moment when it breaks we canibilise another departments printer to get this one back up again. Page count is well past 2 million, and rising on this formatter board.

The IT manager has decided that a replacement maybe better, hence the model number question.

right you are, sounds like its well at the end of its life!

Not sure what the direct replacement is, you really should base it on your expected duty cycle, which has probably changed since it was bought?

Have you considered a pay per click MFP type contract instead? Most companies seem to be heading that way. Colour Photocopiers, Konica Minolta Bizhub, Ricoh Aficio, Digital Duplicators, Photocopier Hire, Kent, London

The 8150 does 32ppm and has a duty cycle of 150,000 pages per month

We looked at Ricoh before, and have several per page based contract copiers in the building but they want to stick with HP for departmental printing. I think I have it worked out, the 9000 series appears to be the entry level A3/A4 model, and the 5200 series for A4 only.

Sounds about right! I was going to say the 9050

How old is it?

What term is left on the contract? Is it from HP direct ? or a dealer?

For the same kind of money you could easily get a true MFD machine of similar speed , size etc with the added benefits of colour , finishing options , scan to mail/file etc etc , as well as being , on average , 5X cheaper per print than the HP.

Like -

Canon iRC3580i Office Colour Printer - Canon UK

IMHO

If it's always running the tektronix phasers (forget who owns them these days) and modern replacements have a high reliability, can do B&W and colour, can be filled with in without taking the printer off line and unless they are going cold all the time have a very low cost per page.

If it's going to get used hard make sure the printer can cope with a high duty cycle.

I'd have to say that OKI and Kyocera printers have been better for offices imho. Kyocera particularly push their cheap running costs.