Hi Kate,

If your primary use for the plotter will be outputting GIS data/projects, my first recommendation would be to stick with ESRI's list of supported plotters. I've watched another office buy a very nice expensive plotter on the advice of a professional printer, which never functioned according to the users needs. The output was fantastic, on the rare occasions you could get output.

Once you've selected a device that is supported by ESRI, here are some other considerations to help guide you:

1- Consumables availability/cost. Check that the consumable items for the plotter you've selected are available, that you know the cost of each item and a rough idea of how often items like print heads need to be replaced.

2- Maintenance. Check to see what your maintenance options are. Are you locked into vendor support, or is there a third-party time and materials option that makes more sense.

3- Actual size. Check the shipping size of the plotter to ensure that you can get it in the building. I know that this seems obvious, but AGRC's last plotter (HP DesignJet 4000ps) came in a package so big that it wouldn't fit in the elevator. We had to unpack it and bring it up in pieces.

Hope that helps.