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I don't see many people continuing to use the same printer for more than fourteen years.

I'm still using a Laserjet 2300 which is from April 2003, you insensitive clod! I need to replace the pickup rollers again...

++ on both.

I've been getting rid of my junk on ebay using same method, all it costs me is a few minutes extra time.

I'm currently on my third laser jet, my first was a laserjet+ (second model made) that I pulled out of barn and cleaned up. a $5 pack of paper and a $12 generic toner off ebay (not like it was still warrentyed and I used it about a year. Gave it away to a local mom & pop restuarant and last time i talked to them they were still on that cartridge.

also, when you printer breaks, check here for parts and instructions

Kodak has had their printer line on the market for over a year now, they place the print head on the printer itself

Big mistake, in my opinion. The print head can get clogged with dried ink, especially if you don't use the printer too often. And you must use a special solvent to unclog them without causing damage.

AFAIK, Epson uses the same head-in-printer design, but their cartridges have annoying smart-chips that try to stop you from refilling them. I have seen third-party devices offered that can reset the chip.

Let's concede that the head-on-cartridge design is to be praised, even if it increases the cost of the cartridges. Fortunately there's a robust after-market that supplies knock-offs and recycled cartridges at lower prices. Andy you can always refill them yourself.

Just watch out for the toner issues if you're a penny pincher. I've seen a Brother printer that mentioned being out of toner before the pages started looking bad, something to do with a page counter that stopped any use beyond a certain limit. The cartridge got topped up at a second-hand place (who probably didn't know about this issue), and still complained about being empty when it was full.

http://www.fixyourownprinter.com/forums/laser/39806

When I fixed printers and faxes we used something called Rubber Rejuvenator to clean the rollers with, seemed to work pretty well for staving off replacing roller's for a few months or longer at most places we used it. I can't find a link to the exact same stuff we used anymore though I can tell you it was a spray can and that this may work as well: http://www.fixyourownprinter.com/specials/misc/all/S03

http://www.fixyourownprinter.com/

I didn't know about the recall, but I did know about www.fixyourownprinter.com, having previously repaired the worn outfeed rollers on my LaserJet 4M.

So I ordered up the 5L repair kit for my mom's machine a couple of years ago, and it's running like a champ to this day. The repair kit from fixyourownprinter is much better than the original ever was.

HP offered a fix, which was really just a couple of somewhat flimy stickers you put inside the printer to apply more pressure to the rollers. Frightening, but they did the job. Unfortunately, the kit is no longer available as the settlement has run out. But there is a better alternative. Take it from a satisfied customer.

Fixyourownprinter.com has downloadable technician manuals for just about every printer out there. If you ever have any trouble with your inkjet (ya think?), their manuals will be indispensable.

Found it on del.icio.us/popular a while back.

The Laserjet 4 is notoriously reliable. It's well built, and capable of handling even heavy workloads for most small to medium sized workgroups.

It's consumables are reasonably cheap, and are manufactured by dozens of third parties. It's design is known well enough that an entire cult of printer repair enthusiasts has gone through and documented fixes for all the common problems. (http://www.fixyourownprinter.com/ Maintenance, while not a joy, is easy enough to perform.

It's old enough that any operating system vitage newer than 1990 should have drivers. Sales of the unit were phenomenal, so spares are cheap to get. (Or free if you keep your eyes peeled.) New spares are still available from HP.

Quality while not outstanding, is more than adequate for office usage.

About the only bad thing I can say about this printer is that it's plastic yellows far to easily, even when not exposed to UV or sunlight.

Ironically, the LaserJet 4's print engine isn't even made by HP. Canon is responsible for the guts of this thing.

I got sick and tired of having to constantly spend close to $80.00 on cartridges for my ink jet printer (Epson Stylus PhotoSmart 700 or something like that). I had bought it because of a nifty (ooh - ahh) photo-quality picture insert in a magazine advertisement. I think I printed a single actual photo on that printer, and while yes, the quality was very good, the cost for consumables just wasn't worth it, and the damn thing kept clogging up (once I had to send it back while under warantee to get it fixed!). I finally got fed up...

I went to a local computer surplus reseller, and purchased a used a HP Laserjet 6P (25000 page count!) for about $100.00, and a refilled toner cartridge from a local supplier (Action Computers here in Phoenix, AZ - if you need ink products for anything made in the last 75 years, they probably have it or can get it!) - that was about 5 years ago, and I have yet to replace anything other than paper!

More recently, I have been doing a lot of looking around at local area Goodwill stores, and I have been noticing a seeming abundance of laser printers, many of them HP Laserjets (mainly 5x, 6x, and a few recent 1100's) - most of them going for under $25.00. I recently purchased a 5P for around $15.00 (IIRC), came with a toner cartridge and works perfectly, plus it too had a low page count (around 50,000).

I figure between cheap Goodwill laser printers and this site, I should have no more problems with printers in the future...

If you are keeping one of these old things alive, Moe, at fixyourownprinter is an invaluable resource, not just for the kits for common repairs that include video CDs of the installation that he sells, but for the straightforward advice he gives out in the forums even if he never sees a dime. I'm not affiliated with them, just a very happy customer of their repair kits.

My mother in law owns a Con S450, which started generating the error code (flashing orange/green) ...-o-o-o-o-o-o-g-... repeatedly.

Looking it up on the web, we found this (google cache) and this (google cache).

I'll let people make their own opinions, so that I don't accuse them ... but it seems to me applicable to this topic.

Anyhow, we don't have a fix, nor much expectation of getting one.

My mother in law owns a Con S450, which started generating the error code (flashing orange/green) ...-o-o-o-o-o-o-g-... repeatedly.

Looking it up on the web, we found this (google cache) and this (google cache).

I'll let people make their own opinions, so that I don't accuse them ... but it seems to me applicable to this topic.

Anyhow, we don't have a fix, nor much expectation of getting one.

I had my motor go out about a year ago. It took about an hour of searching the web and opening up the printer to confirm that that was the problem. Then it was another hour to put it in when the replacement motor came in. Actually - it turned out to be a 10-cent plastic piece that broke.

Anyawy, if you like the printer, it might not be that hard to fix. I got the diagnosis and replacement part from www.fixyourownprinter.com.

And I love it. Got it from a company that left it behind when they moved. 1 Formatter fan and fuser roller later, and I'm in 11x17 heaven. BTW, anyone keeping an old printer limping along needs to know about these guys. Questions in their forums are answered quickly by people who fix printers in their sleep. They also sell repair kits for common problems that include a video on a CD.

I intend to research on epinions.com and on fixyourownprinter.com. I appreciate any insight.

ObPrinterStory

I like the nostalgia happening here. Amen to the Apple printers. I worked with the gentlemen who were lead engineers for Apple's printing and imaging technologies until the return of Jobs, which smote them summarily and mightily. Bob Ogrey had one of each Apple printer ever made, in his garage and knew them each as if they had their own personality :) Wicked talented industrial designers. Bob was present on the famous tech support call where some dude called Apple tech support to ask how to remove his cat's tail from the Laserwriter. Everyone was drunk by the time that call ended. I believe that story was covered by Steven Levy either in Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution or in Insanely Great: The Life and Times of the Macintosh, the Computer That Changed Everything. Here is a similar true story.

...the Apple LaserWriter II series.

I can't find an exact release date on them after a few minutes of Googling, but they are all well over 10 years old and plenty of my clients still have a few of them around. They aren't the fastest printers, but they are built like tanks and the toner carts are fairly generic and still rather widely available.

I wanted something a little better, so in 1994 I bought a ~$1400 LaserWriter Select 360, IMHO one of the best printers Apple ever made. 600DPI, 10PPM, 16MB maximum RAM, and even an internal fax card option. My Select 360 will be 10 in February, and it shows no sign of its age.

The newer printers I work on just feel cheap and insubstantial to me, especially the inkjets. And if this DMCA crap they're pulling to keep third parties from making toner/ink carts continues, I will keep my older printer for as long as I possibly can, with the help of fixyourownprinter.com, if necessary.

~Philly

But you don't want to do the upgrade yourself. This job requires near-total disassembly of the feed mechanism.

There's a very funny video and parts kit available for this problem. It's a half-hour of unedited camcorder video of someone tearing down a LaserJet 5L and replacing the feed rollers. This includes the part where he drops one of the retaining clips on the floor, looks for it, can't find it, and gets another one from a parts drawer. It's almost worth the $29.95 just to see the video.

This might be what you are looking for.

This might be what you are looking for.

The HP 5L had a terrible feed problem because they relied on gravity to pull in the paper. They would like to suck in 8 pages at a time. I owned one that had this problem, and found a lot of users online complaining about it. It seemed to crop up after a couple thousand pages. HP told users to be sure their printers were on stable, horizontal surfaces (duh), but not much else.
I don't know if this was corrected in the 6L, but I won't be buying a gravity feed printer again.

If you want a real fix, go to www.FixYourOwnPrinter.com.

The problem, BTW, was that the compound used on the original separation pads for the 5, 6, 1100 series dried too quickly and became slick. HP has since created a longer lasting compound that they put on new pads. HP's fix is an insert that sticks onto your existing pads, the FixYourOwnPrinter fix is new pads and a new pickup roller.

I have fixed a 5L and a 6 with stuff from FixYourOwnPrinter (cost is ~$30 each). The 6 fixes a lot easier than the 5- I haven't had to fix a 1100 yet.

This might be what you are looking for.

I haven't ordered this kit(I don't have an hp printer) but I have used this site a couple of times to fix some Apple printers.

I have one of these tanks that's just about to re-enter service, replacing a dying Canon inkjet one twentieth its age. The only reason it left service was because of an ominous "50 Service Error" that kept popping up on the screen.

Now, some months later my friendly neighborhood Linux users' group pointed me to:

http://www.fixyourownprinter.com

And apparently this is a very common problem with LJII/LJIII printers and is due to a failing AC power supply. Makes sense. It's not like this thing has ever seen nice clean UPS power. ;-)

Once I scrape up $70, that LJIII will be back and printing...