I own a commercial cleaning company and graphic design on the side for small companies. I am/was cleaning a restaurant with 4 other locations and the company sold last month and the new owners just informed me a week ago at the end of March they don't need my services anymore they are going in house so now I am going to be out of work.

I need to start drumming up new business and was thinking about buying a re-manufactured color printer to print my own fliers, brochures, half page mailers, sales letters and other office documents (contracts,sales letters etc.). I have 2, 000.00 to spend on a machine. I have seen on eBay/internet companies that sell off lease Printers with warranties, remaufactured with low print counts and they advertise as low as 995.00 out the door.

The ones I mostly see are Sharp, Ricoh, and Bizhub machines many different model numbers. Monday I called a few of these companies explained what I was trying to do, how many copies per month, paper weights and sizes and they told me for what I wanted to do they could sell me a unit for around 5,000.00 that would do what I wanted to do but not less than that....

I also clean a office and garage twice per month and the owner of this company has all Sharp MX copiers and he told me Sharp machines are great and hardly ever break down and they have 4 of these machines. 2 of these machines are in a dirty garage and the man said look at the two in the garage we use them constantly every day and they are practically covered in dirt and dust and we have not had any problems with them for for the past 2 years.

I figured I would ask you guys since you work on these machines. Which are good units? I like the look of most of them but that doesn't count for reliability and performance.

Here is what I will be printing and quantity's per month, 8.5x 11, 8.5 x 14, 24lb-28lb, some card stocks for business cards and mailers (53 lb, 66 lb and 110 lb card stocks), and 11 x 17 prints for brochures. Printing around 1000 to 2000 total per month.

Some of the models I asked these companies about are below and they sell them for between 995- 2,000.

Sharp MX 2640n, 2615, 4101n.

Bizhub c224, c227, c360

Will the machines above be able to handle the prints I am doing? Which ones above are better for what I am doing or do you have a better printer recommendation?



Thanks in advance and thank you for your help! Shannon