So last month I gloated about how I was about to enter printer’s nirvana – no leases, rentals or financing debts. With all my stuff having come off lease in the last twelve months, I had decided that I was going to kick back and relax for a while.

It didn’t last long.

For the last few months I’ve been looking at a replacement for my Xerox 700. Not that I’m getting rid of it – it is still a good machine and Xerox are still supporting it. With the right paper and right jobs it is gold and has made us a decent amount of money.

No what I am really trying to replace is my Horizon binding line. I have an old one that I picked up for a song and it’s been great but it is getting old and it takes up a lot of floor space. Ninety nine per cent of the jobs it does are short run booklets printed on our 700, which came with a basic saddlestitcher but cannot handle anything with bleed. A new Horizon is getting close to a hundred thousand dollars and good second hand ones still attract a decent price – justifiably so as all the Horizon gear is great. Problem is I don’t have the volume of the right kind of work to justify the big money and I really need the floorspace for something else.

And then I saw the new Plockmatic saddle stitched being bundled in-line with a few of the digital machines. Xerox have them on the Versant, 800 and 1000. Ricoh are bundling them with the C7501 and C9001. It’s not the dreamy Stitchliners but it is very workmanline – scoring and three edge trimming books up to 200 pages thick. It will do everything I am doing on my Horizon and more – sure it will be slower but it stitches as fast as the press can print, takes up a fraction of the space the Horizon does, and it is a third the price.

Loved it and wanted it. Only problem was Xerox would not retrofit them onto my 700. So I went to market and had a look at the Canon, Ricoh and the other Xerox machines.

I picked a couple of jobs to test on all the presses, one of which was a book with a solid grey cover that I told a designer to go away and re-design before I even tried to print the 100 copies they wanted on my 700. I tested it on an 800, 1000, iGen, Versant and Canon’s machines – they were all similar in result to the 700, with what I would call only marginal improvements on the iGen. But surprisingly the Ricoh machines made that solid grey look almost offset – best result I had ever seen on a digital for a grey.

I say surprisingly because I had never thought much of Ricoh – I was sceptical of their move into production digital, given their long time focus on the small office market. It was only their association with Heidelberg that made me consider them seriously. But I have to say that they have got some great stuff happening with their machines, and they are cheap – pound for pound the Ricoh deal was extremely competitive, especially considering the print quality.

So did I buy the Ricoh? No – I re-signed with Xerox and took a Versant (which did get the grey cover right with some tweaking). Why? Their willingness to do anything for the deal was quite appealing, and the whole- of-business package they offered suits us better than what the others put on the table.

So I am back to working for the man with a monthly lease I have got to pay, and nirvana is once again a band I listened to at school. At least I have all you buggers for company.

Baden Kirgan is the managing director of Jeffries Printing Services and Black House Comics

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