Sharp MX-4101N , M503N , M283N review 1

I thought I'd share my frustrations with Sharp copiers.
First of all milions of options on the admin web page but no access or view of the console. There is some obscure way to connect VNC (!!!) to a copier, but so far no success.
There isn't even a graphical status of supplies !
The worst of all is that the color 4101 has the color copy button right there, perfectly positioned for any copy job. Well it's only 7c per color copy, not 1c for b&w.
I've been trying to block some users from being able to print color. So far after days of trying with Pitney Bowes and calling Sharp no go. We used to have two printers on the print server per Xerox copier. One only B&W, the other color, pointing to the same machine. The color had an AD group assigned to it and only those users could print color. This is not possible (apparently ) with Sharp so good luck trying to prevent users from printing color. In short I am NOT happy with that hardware and I would definately recommend looking at something else. Also before you commit to a copier/printer solution look at the above issues. One would be easy management through admin page, the other blocking color printing. The copiers are overcomplicated and have the feel of the 1970s, when a copy was $1.50 or something. Fyi there is 850 pages crappy manual for the color 4101. You need a year off to learn all that and still it wouldn't do the basic things. Good luck.

We have several networked MFD's (ours are mainly Xerox) and we have the default Network print settings as Black and White, double sided printing. Nobody 'accidentally' prints color. I remember that some copier/printers can be set so that the user must enter a userid to use them, which could create a record of who printed what, for billing. Might that be a possibility for you?

Fred Wagner

Thx Fred,
Yes, it was a breeze with Xerox. I don't like Xerox too much for other reasons (very expensive) but this setup was easy within the driver. Not really doable with Sharp.

User education may be part of the solution in your case.
You may also want to reconsider who really needs to print color, and who prints color because it's available and they don't get charged directly for it. If you can't solve it locally, you may need to escalate these issues to Sharp, and to the management who selected Sharp to replace Xerox.

Fred Wagner

I don't know all the hows and such in the background, but I can tell you that our company switched form Xerox to Sharp, and so far, it's been much better - that I'm aware of.

As for the color/b&w issue, we must have a pretty good fix in place for that as well. Not sure if it'll help you, but ours is set up something like this:

1. Each printer has a "black and white" instance and a "color" instance. In order to use the "color" instance, you have to put a code under Job Handling -> User Number. Without that number, you aint printing color.

2. In order to copy in color, I think we have to use such as well, however I print and copy so little that I've never tried to copy in color, so don't know for sure. I've printed in color, just not copied.

3. The "black and white" copy of the printer (same machine) works the same, but it just doesn't allow for color printing at all.

Anyway, hopefully those observations from the "front end" will help a little.

kjv1611,
Yup, that's what the Pitney Bows tech tells me every time I ask for a solution. He (they) keep saying: let's try this. Well I don't want to try, I want a step by step setup. I don't think my requirements are so "strange". They must be quite standard. We did try (grrrr) the "color user" and "black and white" user setup. Couple of issues came up. There is no error message if one prints color and nothing comes out. The job just gets dumped. So imagine the support calls. The other problem with that was that the jobs from our AS400 or whatever IBM calls it now, I think i5, get dumped as well since they are treated as Auto-color, even though they are black and white only. As for Admin Web page I just hooked up an old HP Laserjet 8150 with the 615 internal print server. The web page gives you the display of the console, exactly what's on the printer's LCD and status of all supplies. Takes you two seconds to know everything you need to know. It's amazing this can't be done with Sharps. There are basically couple of us supporting somewhere between 170 - 400 users. We don't have the time to try this or that. We need simple solutions that work. And for the money Sharp should deliver.
Thx for your reply.

Yeah, I'm sure that's frustrating. But on the users printing in color when they shouldn't... shouldn't that be covered in employee education or some such? For instance, one of you IT folks sending out an email to the whole company explaining that if you print to color, but don't have rights to, it just won't print... or else having an administrator or HR person do such.

Anyway, let us know how the situation turns out - I mean, one way or another, you'll eventually come to some end. ;p

Janit

We are having major issues with our Sharp Copier Drivers for MX6200 and MX3101 Systems. The drivers have major porblems causing exploding of spooler size. This problem has been confirmed by our vendor and also the problem is going all the way to Japan, We discoveredthis problem when we switched from Ricoh to Sharp. The problem appears when any Office 2007 Document is printed in color, that was previously constructed in Office 2003 and contained graphics content that was built in the document prior to conversion to O2K7 Format. The problem is not as severe in Office 2010. We spooled a 5Meg Document from both the Print Server and a local TCP/IP Printer using the latest drivers and the spooler explodes in size. Document takes up to 5 minutes to print. At times, more than 6 minutes on excel with graphics. If save the 2K7 back to Office 2003 format, or print from Office 2003 Historical Backup of file, the problem goes away. Also, the MX6200 is not a true multifunction system like the Ricoh's and the Konica's. You can not automatically run a copy on the MX while a print job is underway without manual interrupt. The Ricoh 2075 can do it and it's a five year old MFP. Buyer Line of the Year from BL was given to Sharp - but they are failing to live up to their advertisement and testing awards.

ONe more thing, the drier mauy not be the whole issue, the firmware in the systems may be causing the driver issues - Shapr is looking at that now, but it's taken 4 months to get them to move on the problem

I'm glad and quite surprised with all the replies. I guess next time before we commit I'd ask the management to do a pilot project. I guess Sharp would never be chosen had we done that.