KeepItPrinting.com

[SVT_underpressure]

Has anyone bought or installed one lately...I would like to know if the "newer" ones are getting better or worse than the earlier version??

Thank you for your time and opinions.

[KIPDOCTOR]

From what I hear on the street, the answer is no.
I talk to a lot of people in the biz and this is what I am hearing.

Upgrade nightmares: We all know how many upgrades and fixes there have been for this model, I have stories of guys doing the upgrades and then the machines instantly error out and KIP can't help them. Now they have a machine that does not work but has been upgraded.

Lost sales: I have heard from a couple of long time KIP dealers that have placed 9000 units in long time repeat customers offices that actually got fed up with all the issues and told them to get this piece of $hit out of here. They ended up replacing with OCE or Xerox ( ironically a rebadged 8000 replaced a 9000).

Support troubles: What can we say about KIP support that we all don't already know?

I still have yet to work on one these units although we have been R&D'ing the developer units pretty hard lately. We are not real impressed with what we see there. Due to the poor design we are contemplating NOT adding these units to our refreshing service line.

Conversely, I do know of a few dealers that have sold a couple of these that are having no issues, although when asked they do admit that the units were placed in offices that don't run the machines very hard at all.
(Great, so the 9000 is a good low volume machine. Just what we needed.)

Anyone else? Please add your experiences.

I think this thread is very important, so I going to make it a sticky. Thanks for starting it.
_________________
What we have gained in technology, we have lost in humanity.

[AJG]

SVT_underpressure wrote:

Has anyone bought or installed one lately...I would like to know if the "newer" ones are getting better or worse than the earlier version?? Thank you for your time and opinions.

Well, I guess on the plus side, they couldn't get any worse. Maybe it'll be better from here on out..........nahhhhhhhhh....

[slyman]

I have 2 of those machine, one is doing 100k/150k sqf per month (total of 1.2million sqf) and the other one 75k/100k per month (total of 650ksqf).

Yes, before the upgrade kit, the machine was a piece of sh! but after, everything is good and the machine work fine.

2 things, first, DO NOT ACTIVATE THE AUTO DENSITY SENSOR !!! I have very less problem without this automatic correction. Orever, the machine is a little bit dirtiest because of that but NOT on the copies, only inside.

Second, install the web roller option if you want to "improve" your fixing unit life, this will cost you less in long time.

Instead of those problem, the machine have the same problem as the Kip8000.

Another thing, this kind of machine need only one or 2 peoples to administrate it, if there is more and more people, you will have more and more problems.

On my side, the customer is happy with it...more than the Xerox machine they had !!!

[gath99]

We have two 9000's in our shop. Biggest problem we have is with the developer units. One machine has 953,000 sq ft. The other has 1,880,000 sq ft on it. Only other problem we've ran into was a DC power supply board failing on the machine with close to 2 million sq ft.

[gath99]

gath99 wrote:

We have two 9000's in our shop. Biggest problem we have is with the developer units. One machine has 953,000 sq ft. The other has 1,880,000 sq ft on it. Only other problem we've ran into was a DC power supply board failing on the machine with close to 2 million sq ft.

I just remembered after reading another thread that we have replaced the fuser(heat) rollers atleast 2 times in each machine.

[KIPDOCTOR]

gath99 wrote:

gath99 wrote: We have two 9000's in our shop. Biggest problem we have is with the developer units. One machine has 953,000 sq ft. The other has 1,880,000 sq ft on it. Only other problem we've ran into was a DC power supply board failing on the machine with close to 2 million sq ft. I just remembered after reading another thread that we have replaced the fuser(heat) rollers atleast 2 times in each machine.

That is way too many fuser rollers for that low mileage. Your cost of operation must be close to that of the old 9010 machine. I would be asking why at this point.
_________________
What we have gained in technology, we have lost in humanity.

[gath99]

Yeah.....I didn't realize at the time that the PM for the machine was shown in linear feet. I was thinking I was getting half life out of the fuser roller.......

[SVT_underpressure]

Would anyone know if the latest "new" Kip 9000 is being delivered with ALL the upgrades installed from the factory?
Could really use your help on this one.

[CHILLIN]

Hardware yes, software probably not.

[caltech]

We have 3 9000's in the field, 2 in Repro Shops and 1 is an end user. 1 of the repro machines was one of the 1st out, almost 2 years old now. It has over 4 mil on it. This customer has 2 8000's and knows the 9000 isn't as good but now after all the upgrades the realiability has calmed down some. The only real issue now is it does run dirty, we have to clean the LED about twice a month. The other Repro machine is just over a year old now and has about 1.5 mil with the same issues. The in house machine replaced a Xerox 721p that Xerox could not keep running, so these guys love it. I may look at adding the fuser web next year to see how it does on the rollers.

[KIPDOCTOR]

It is truly unfortunate that this thread even has to exist.
One has to wonder if the guys at KIP have run out of bullets yet from shooting themselves in the foot.

Rumor has it that a total product wide revamp is in the process.

Now I am truly scared.
_________________
What we have gained in technology, we have lost in humanity.

[bogey0]

Only have 1 of these in the field so far. After the initial problems with the dev unit, it seems to be doing ok. It's a decent machine that prob could have used a little more R&D beforehand, but nothing that would make me hesitate to recommend it to a customer over an Oce. When the 8000 first hit the street, it took us some time to figure out the maintenance routines. Maybe I'll have a different opinion when I get a better feel for parts mortality, but as of now, I'm not ready to give up on the 9000.

Bobby

[SVT_underpressure]

Well...the latest I have heard is that the "newest" 9000's are indead arriving with "all" the hardware upgrades installed. Thats a good a thing!
Now maybe we can have a fighting chance to keep the customers happy and not run ourselves into the ground doing it.

Question:..."why did they put the machine in the market place before it was thoroughly debugged?"

...If this had been a new car I had purchased and had the same amount of problems, I guarantee I would have labeled it as a Lemon and would have told everyone one I know not to purchase one.

[slyman]

To answer you SVT...I already heard (in copier manufact ) that some machine as a marketing dead line and have to be ready for the road at some date. The competition is so strong so every manufacturer wants to be the "first" one with some feature.

Like I said, 15 years ago, a copier manufacturer supply us a brand new machine with 2 big box with modification inside the box because it was on a dead line marketing date...!

To come back with the Kip9000, it's only a update of the Kip8000 and I thing they try to improve the quality but the initial idea was not the good one with that dev unit.

I heard some good info about the new Kip9900, let see like the Kip9000 what it will be on the field....