jeff! help me! =) anyone else as well!

hey Jeff,
you seem extremely knowledgable and very kind so I was hoping you could help me out and share some more of your knowledge with me. I have a client who is wanting me to send out standard sized mass post cards for them (need to start off with 40-50k a month capability). I am new at this mass printing and was hoping you could provide some great advice on
1) equipemnt needed (i was looking at a DC 242 but not sure if im way off track or not)
2) software needed (this company wants to send me the, what i beleive is called, variable data (adressee of purchaser along with personal message etc) and i would like my printer(s) to automatocally print once orders are recieved.
3)also I need to be able to have postage printed
4) do i need to buy sheets or already cut cards to have printed? will the printer cut them?

THANKS JEFF!!! huge help mate! and to anyone else who can be helpful thanks to you too! -Nick

 

Others here have far more diverse experience than me, and far more experience with mailing and postcards so hopefully someone else will jump in.

No printer in this ballpark (price/size) will slit or cut them for you inline that I'm aware of. I'm honestly not sure how you would best cut the prints and keep the sorting in order. Look at the minimum size paper the printer you're considering will handle vs. the postcards you want to print. Most will want to print on bigger sheets because most will be on a click contract which charges per sheet (not to mention the unprintable margins of the page, etc.) So you'd want software to sort and build a job that would generate sheets that when cut would yield nice neat sorted stacks of cards - I don't have advice as to the best software for this job though.