Tally Colour Laser 8008

The Tally 8008 looks stunning. It stands proud in the corner of our ICT Suite offering visitors a tangible sensation of cutting edge reprographics. The best way to admire the machine however is on 'standby' for when you begin to demand of it the Tally 8008 provides a fantastic advert for other printing companies. Fortunately, the Tally came with a five year on site warranty, hence my lead for this review; "Cheaper than online dating …". ...
...has of her own husband. Tally field services is stored on the phone's of most of those with the authority to initiate a field call.

So, what makes this machine so unreliable? I wish I knew. As a school potentially we do give the machine heavy use but then it is sold as a workgroup printer and consequently we should be permitted to expect the printer to function effectively on a small network. Unfortunately, the Tally 8008 has an array ... more

The Tally 8008 looks stunning. It stands proud in the corner of our ICT Suite offering visitors a tangible sensation of cutting edge reprographics. The best way to admire the machine however is on 'standby' for when you begin to demand of it the Tally 8008 provides a fantastic advert for other printing companies. Fortunately, the Tally came with a five year on site warranty, hence my lead for this review; "Cheaper than online dating …". Our administrator has seen more of the Tally engineer in the last five years than she has of her own husband. Tally field services is stored on the phone's of most of those with the authority to initiate a field call.

So, what makes this machine so unreliable? I wish I knew. As a school potentially we do give the machine heavy use but then it is sold as a workgroup printer and consequently we should be permitted to expect the printer to function effectively on a small network. Unfortunately, the Tally 8008 has an array of consumable parts, all hideously expensive, and no means of reliably informing you how long it will be before the next part is required. My solution for this was to buy in a full complement of the most likely consumables to be required. We therefore have an entire cupboard filled with expensive printer consumables and that still only amounts to one of each item. That is, one of each of the four colours of cartridges. At £115 each this amounts to over £450 worth of ink sat on the shelf. Now, put that alongside the purchase cost of the printer and the total cost of ownership begins to look a little jaded. Added to this we also keep in stock a fuser cleaner roller and a bottle of fuser oil. This is an additional fifty pounds worth of consumables so the machine has a steady £500 stock cupboard in order to answer the day to day calls for consumables. Those in the business of managing workgroup printers may well be thinking that this makes for a reasonable management of the resource and nothing that would be out of the ordinary. However … there is more!

The Tally 8008 we own has never arrived at the end of a part life without requiring a field service callout. Example, the drum a hideously overpriced piece of rubber; the standard procedure for this is as follows:
- send a mission critical piece of work to the printer …
- hear a grinding noise and smell burning …
- respond by calling in the field services representative …
- "oooo … nasty … "says he … you're drums melting…
- field service representative calculates how much of the life of the drum has been used and then charges you a proportion of that for the new drum.

Now, so far this all sounds fair. If say, the drum failed and it was half way through its expected life then perhaps I should be expected to pay maybe half of the cost of the new drum. However, it doesn't work like this. Firstly Tally make low estimates of the life of these parts and then, when they discover that the drum has served 50% of its life, they charge you 80% of the cost of the new drum. Where, I ask, is the justice in this policy?

This is true of a range of parts, including toner cartridges which can also fail with a spectacular noise and then cost you to replace ink you haven't even used.
In short, you should purchase this printer only of all of the below is true for you:
1: You work for an organisation that requires a workgroup printer.
2: You have at least £500 spare to add to the cost of the printer to buy a spare of each of the major consumables.
3: You wish to pay through the nose for parts that fail. (Can you see this happening in any other industry? - "I'm sorry sir, you're car has spontaneously combusted within the warranty period but we estimate that the car should last for five years and consequently you have used 20% of the car's serviceable life … we'll need to make a 50% charge if you want the car replacing!")
4: You wish to start a relationship with a charming printer repair man and don't have the time or money to go through an online dating service.

Believe me when I say the Tally representative is close to having his own office in our workplace.

The specification should it still interest you is:
A4 - 31ppm black and white
A4 - 8ppm colour
USB or Ethernet connection
1200 X 600 dpi
64Mb RAM
 

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