Equitrac, Hard work and expensive.

I dont like my women to be hard work and expensive so i dont expect software to be either ;) (actually right now i would take any woman...its a sorry state of affairs for another more emo blog)

I managed to find a fairly nice salesman (they do exist!) who worked for a Ricoh / Sharp copier dealer and he told me in a very honest and open way that the reason so many copier dealers (such as themselves) push Equitrac is not because it is the daddy of all print/copy solutions but simply they make the most money on it.
Now I admire honesty but that money has to come from my (already limited) budget

The good:
Well known brand (market leader I expect)
Great support from Ricoh, Ricoh is a massive company.
Integration with lots of other systems such as accounting and document management systems.

So let’s see what I didn’t like about Equitrac, well to start with I couldn’t instantly get a rough idea of costs nor could I download a demo/trial of the software to have a look on my own without being bothered by some sales rep.

It’s expensive, not unusual to run into 10's of thousands of pounds.
Looks dated, they need to go to UI design classes
Difficult to install,
complicated licensing and pricing (to make you spend more money)
high maintenance
From what I gather it requires high skill levels to manage and its terminology Is confusing for “noobs”
Engineers need to do a week long course to learn how it works and keep it running, now if it takes a week for an expert to learn how long will it take me? I want to install and configure everything within hours not days and never touch It again 

So apart from the cost and the silly licensing structure (adding to the costs) it is a good product but you can (i hope) get better for less money.
I can see why a lot of people go for Equitrac but I personally like to research everything and I found this lacking but most market leaders are probably why people go and buy an iPhone as its the safe option yet HTC have some great phones coming out.