OT: Best New Laser Printer to Buy

The LaserJet 1200n would appear to meet your criteria, but I don't know if they still sell them. I've printed documentation with manual double sided printing, and my wife, who is a graphics designer ran quite a bit of stuff through it while she was in school. The Ethernet connection is a additional small Ethernet-USB brick, but it works well. We get

3000+ pages from a cartridge, supposedly up to 20 ppm. We use it from both Linux and Mac OS X.

Yes, but HP is like everything else out of idiot silicon valley anymore, It's not a question of whether they will work in five years, it's a question of whether Wal-Mart is going to sell them in 5 years.

About 2000 I bought a Samsung ML 4500 for USD 199. It's still going strong, and on its second cartridge (the first was the original underfilled one). I estimate that it has processed about a box of paper. For two sided printing you have to be careful, especially let the paper cool before refeeding it. I interpose the fineprint (fineprint.com) module, so I can make arbitrary booklets, paper sizes, etc.

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Chuck F (cbfalconer at maineline dot net)

Hello,

I bought a HP Laserjet 1320 about 1 1/2 half year ago and in fact it was the best buy I every made. I supports postscript and therefore is an excellent choice for Unix operating systems. The windows drivers are also great and I have also used them for advanced technical drawings (autocad, ...). Regarding the cartridges I am very happy with it but have to admit that I did not count the number of pages I have printed.

I have not tried the 1320TN series but they should be network ready and therefore should be a good choice. Maybe you can get one on Ebay because I think they have been EOLd by HP.

Kind regards, Christian

PS: I had the same problems with a Laserjet 1100 and the reason for the printing problems where some manufacturing errors from HP. Sadly I missed the time frame when the replacement parts where available and so I had to buy a new one.

Hello David,

I went to a Brother Multi Function Center (MFC7820N) that is hooked to the LAN. Works great so far but manual double sided printing would be a pain. Also, it "forgets" its IP address once in a while but a power cycle fixes this. I really like printers on the LAN since they can be accessed by anyone.

Ask Jim Thompson on sci.electronics.design. He bought an HP workhorse that can do automatic double-sided printing and is reasonable in toner costs. Probably more reasonable than the Brother I have here. IIRC Jim bought the HP1320.

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Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com

For the HP5L out here I got the improvement kit. IIRC it was some kind of drying or aging of a part at the bottom of the paper stack (not any rollers). At least that's where the new part had to be glued onto via a hard cardboard push. The main problem with those printers was that they pulled in several sheets without that fix and this caused the jams in my case.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com

Yeah, that's my concern exactly. The problem is, I want to pick a workhorse where parts will be available for 15 years.

Frankly, my LJ4 is just fine and I'd keep it forever if that were possible. It doesn't print as fast as a more modern printer (its little 1992 CPU probably can't work as fast as the new ones), but it is just fine.

And the "just fine" argument could be made if I find a replacement workhorse. I can't imagine that printers in 15 years will be better than they are today in any meaningful way. Once you add color and if it sits directly on a network ... what else could you do to add value? (nothing that I can see).

Problem is knowing production volumes, meaningful measures of quality, and what the parts chain will do. I don't know how to predict that.

P.S.--According to

there are still some parts available for the 1100 series. The chain looks fairly complete.

For example:

Dave.

I have had such good experiences with HP printers that I don't bother look anywhere else these days. Even the non-workhorse printers (cheapo inkjets etc) are well built. So my feeling is that if the HP website advertises a printer as a workhorse, then it is really a workhorse.

I just got a new Laserjet 1320d at my workplace. I haven't had it long, so it is hard to really comment on its longevity, but so far it looks really nice.

And even my super cheapo HP inkjet at home has no problem with Latex, ghostscript, etc. So that isn't even an issue.

Finally, if you are using unix, the HP drivers, like hpijs, are really outstanding. You really don't need a printer that has postscript natively built in. Just make sure that it is not "windows only."

I've got an HP 2200D that I've had for about 3 years and it's on its

2nd cartridge. It has auto duplexing and has worked without a hitch through at about 4000 pages. IIRC it was on sale at Staples at the time for about $495. A month or so later, toner carts were on sale and I got two for about $50 each. I still have one left untouched in the garage.

With lower-cost laser printers now at less than $200, it may be appropriate to simply buy two or three and toner when it's on sale, then just hope each printer lasts 4 or five years.

Mark Borgerson

It's been replaced by the 1320n (which includes a duplexer). IIRC the network interface on the 1320n is internal. I've got a non-n 1320, and it's worked flawlessly for about two years now (I'm a pretty low volume user, I'm still on the original toner cartridge). Warm-up is about 15 seconds, and it's comletely silent when it's idle.

Whatever you pick, get something that does postscript in the printer.

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Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  Yow! Those people
                                  at               look exactly like Donnie
                               visi.com            and Marie Osmond!!

Also, I've looked at the places online that sell drill-and-fill kits (more precisely these days, melt-fill-and-plug kits). That also looks enticing to save money.

If you are not set on HP, then take a look at Kyocera-Mita. Their ceramic drum technology is much better than the offerings of other manufacturers. Although their toner cartridges are slightly more expensive than similar HP ones, one gets 3 to 4 times as many prints from a cartridge. If you get one with KPDL (Their version of postscript) and PCL emulation you should not have any trouble driving it from any application. Network interfaces with all the usual network printer protocol support is not a problem either.

Regards Anton Erasmus

Is that really beneficial these days? It made a lot of sense years ago when: (a) there was not a freely-available postscript interpreter available that also had good fonts, and (b) host CPU time and memory were precious and you didn't want print jobs hogging your CPU, and (c) links between printers and computers were slow (RS232 or parallel) and transferring large volumes of raster data would have been impractical and slow, and (d) documents were not usually that complex and it was unlikely the printer's postscript interpreter would run out of memory.

But these days, are *any* of the above true? I think they have all changed. Ghostscript has good fonts now, host CPU time is practically free (and the host CPU is likely to be much more powerful than the printer's, unlike in the past), the printer may be linked with USB 2.0 or 100 megabit ethernet which is plenty of bandwidth for transferring lots of raster data, and documents are often complicated enough that it's handy to be able to use the desktop machine's vast memory to process them.

Because of all this, while I would have insisted on postscript capability in a printer years ago, these days I think it might be better not to use it even if it's there.

- Logan

The laser printer I use at work is a Brother something or other, that uses Ghostscript to rasterize and yes, I still have occasional problems with it rendering things properly. You're correct, though, it's much better than it used to be.

I find I still have less trouble with postscript printers -- even when they're not Postscript(tm) (the 1320 is actually a Postscript clone).

--
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  Is the EIGHTIES
                                  at               when they had ART DECO
                               visi.com            and GERALD McBOING-BOING
                                                   lunch boxes??

Definitely yes.

My HP history:

1991: bought used Laserjet II with 2MB memory expansion for 3500 DEM 1998: sold Laserjet II and bought new Laserjet 6mp 2006: sold Laserjet 6mp and bought used Laserjet 5000DTN (A3/11x17" paper, additional tray, duplex, network card)

I have never had any serious trouble with any of them. I'd avoid low-end models with the 2000 series the lowest end to choose - better something from the 4000 or 5000/8000 series (if you need large paper formats).

Mit freundlichen Grüßen

Frank-Christian Krügel

KPDL is Kyocera PDL, not Postscript.

January 2006 I purchased a Brother HL-5250DN over the counter at Staples for $250. It has been a very satisfactory printer altho it feels to be light weight. Ethernet, USB, PDL, and BRscript (Postscript 3 clone), duplex printing, and 30 ppm (duplex is slower).

Comes with a TN-550 toner which is said to be good for 3500 pages. Half the sheets I print have a full page gray scale graphic, toner light came on at 1700 pages. So I occasionally shook the cartridge but never saw a difference in the quality of output.

Printed 2800 pages one day before Christmas. About 100 pages into that job the toner light came on again and the printer stopped. I didn't fight it, simply installed the TN-580 (rated 7000 pages) that had knowing the time was coming ($70).

It doesn't handle envelopes well. Irons wrinkles into the envelope.

First page from low power standby in about 10 seconds. Printer powers up hard and causes my APC UPSs to kick in for a moment. No, I do not run the printer off a UPS. Can point web browser at printer and browse or fiddle while the printer stays cold.

Online sources routinely sell this printer for under $200. Shortly after I got mine, many bundled an extra paper tray that would hold a full ream of paper. Stock tray holds 300 sheets. Have not seen the big tray of late, not even as an extra cost option.

Gets its IP address from dhcpd off my FreeBSD machine. Macintosh has no problems finding it via Bonjour. Have not had any problems with it forgetting its IP address since upgrading the printer's network firmware. Currently has version 1.08 of the Network firmware, 1.07 of the Printer Firmware. I don't know why they are separate, that is what the printer status page says.

Aftermarket toner kits are finally available. Haven't tried one, but now have a cartridge that needs to be reloaded.

Drum is separate from toner. Is rated for 25,000 pages and costs $125 online. If one needs a drum purchase of an entirely new printer does not cost much more and includes a roughly $40 value TN-550 toner cartridge too.

I have fond memories of an HP5000N with duplex and several trays. In

1999 argued with the boss that an HP2100 was not a suitable match as the single printer for his $20,000 computer and company-wide network purchase. That engineering needed 11x17 and the HP5000N for $2,000 was the least cost solution.

It needed a toner cartridge every 10,000 letter pages at about $140. Wasn't always available from the local toner reloaders, and we had quality problems with some of the reloads.

Often I prefer B&W photography over color. For some reason I really liked how that HP5000N printed grayscale photos.

When I left 4 years later that printer had 180,000 pages, still going strong, and was long overdue for a maintenance cleaning.

Mine wants the TN350 cartridge which I believe is between $40-50. But only rated for 2500 pages.

Never had much luck with envelopes in any printer. Except my old Deskjet but the ink can fuzz up if enveloped get wet.

It sure does power up hard. Probably to make their Marketing happy with a nice low number for the seconds from turn on to first page. The light dim when it comes on.

Let us know what the result is if you decide to try that. I am many months away from exhausting this cartridge.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com