The New Copier

So here's a little story of the new copier we got for the office. We have five year leases at work and mine was up. Now we have three vendors so I figured I hear what each of them could do for me. Company 1 was the one I have dealt with for 20+ years. I really love them. Company 2 is a local one and new to the lease plan. I knew nothing about them except I know they support a lot of community work. Company 3 didn't have what I needed size wise so they were out.

Company 1 was going to give me a machine similar to what I have but new. And I knew how to use it. Company 2 was going for a new machine that was same size but the features were different. And they were $1,000 cheaper each year. So over five years that's $5,000. Not a small amount of money.

So after talking to a couple of places on campus that are using company 2 I decided to go local. Hey let's support local businesses. Plus I save money. So the new machine arrived a week ago and we still aren't working properly.

First problem was copy codes. You see I need to track which groups are using the copy machine to print so I can charge them for the copies. And we just couldn't get the code button to come up on computers when you sent a document to print. After a week of going round and round it turned out to be something that used to be a default setting and now it isn't. One little click of a square and now we can count.

Second problem was the email function wasn't working. We use the copier to email scanned copies back to ourselves. But it kept saying we weren't authorized nor were we set up on the network. Which is silly since it was a the same computer line that the other copier used. Turns out someone told our IT guy the wrong port number. All that grief for one digit off.

Third is anyone with a mac can't print yet. Now that doesn't bother me since I'm a PC user, but it sort of screws up some of my workers. IT will be over yet again today to see if that can be fixed.

Then there has been the little problems. Like for some reason the copy machine kept telling me I wasn't authorized to staple. Really? It told me to talk to the administrator. I told it "I am the administrator" but it didn't listen to me. I figured out the setting issue.

Good thing about the copier is it has a keyboard so when we need to enter something it is much easier than pressing a little screen. That I usually hit the wrong letter on and have to start over.