Finding a Reliable Laser Printer?

SpottedKuh asks: "Perhaps the days of sturdy laser printers are over, or perhaps it is just my bad luck. I've recently been the proud owner of two paperweights: First, an HP LaserJet 1100, which continually misfed papers and smeared toner. After selling that printer, I foolishly purchased a LaserJet 1012, not realizing just how poorly it played with my BSD systems. Naturally, I've learned my lesson about checking LinuxPrinting.org; but, more than that, I'm gun-shy about purchasing yet another printer to replace my current LaserJet. I look at one of my friends who has had a LaserJet 4P for probably around ten years, and it's still going strong. Are the days of such quality gone, or am I just looking in the wrong places?" "Though compatibility with *nix is a must, it is not all that I want. I want a printer that will be sturdy and reliable, with few toner smears and jams. Also, if I'm going to be dropping all this money again, a duplexing printer is a must! I've heard that there are a lot of design problems with the LaserJet 1320, mainly regarding the manual feed mechanism. Maybe the LaserJet 1*** printers just aren't well-built? So I'm thinking of purchasing a LaserJet 2420d; but, I haven't been able to find many reviews of that printer.

Can the Slashdot community provide me with feedback regarding the printers I have mentioned, or any other reliable duplexing laser for in my home office?"

Comments

This is just sad

[fm6]

HP used to be the source for quality hardware. No longer.

Reliable HP printers

[Anna Merikin]

Do NOT include the 1100 series, nor the cheap 4L, 5L, or 6L. I have no knowledge of the 1320, but the previously mentioned are all junk with respect to their page-pickers. HP had a free fix, but I guess it was only temporary, and the offer ended years ago.

The 1200 was good (PS for Linux/BSD/MAC). For those who only may need 600 dpi, the 4, 5, 6 M/P series printers are still available in good condition used....

After owning a 4L, 6L and 1100, I will stick with the 1200 I have now at all costs.

Re:Samsung Laser Printers

[rusty0101]

I concur on the ML-1750. However it does not have a duplexer.

I am planing on replacing my Epson Stylus Color 640 with a Samsung CLP-550, which does both color (obviously) and duplexing. I am not sure I will be using it to replace my 1750 until I am sure that it will run at full speed in black mode under Linux. Most of the reports I have been reading on LinuxPrinters.com have indicated that under Linux it only prints at the Color speed. I am not sure if setting it up as a postscript black printer would improve that. It will be some time before I give it a try however. I have a few bills to get taken care of first.

In any case my 1750 has been exceptionally reliable through three toner cartridges. The only time I have encountered a paper jams is when I was printing to the back side of something I have already printed. (Manually duplexing) I am reasonably sure that part of that issue is just the fact that the paper humidity has changed by being passed through the fuser already.

-Rusty

HP LaserJet 1320 isn't that bad!

[MooseGuy529]

I have an HP* LaserJet 1320 myself, and it works quite nicely. The print is extremely crisp, and the duplexing works great. Grayscale graphics are a little "splotchy" (very slight variations in tone), but that's not what you get a laser printer for. The feed from the paper tray works fine--it's only jammed one page, and that was because I accidentally grabbed it after it came out halfway for duplexing and it went back in crooked. I have tried the manual feed (which is what I hear is screwed up on it) and it does have a little trouble with whole sheets*, but it works well with envelopes. The Mac OS X driver works identically with Linux, since they both run CUPS or you can use hpijs. All in all, I'd say it's a great printer, unless you do a lot of full-page manual feed stuff (like transparencies, but I doubt Slashdot users still use overhead projectors).

I am quite frustrated, as are other owners, that in a $400 printer, they include neither a USB nor a serial cable, and give you only a regular-size toner cartridge--I really can't see how it saves them that much money. But this isn't unique to HP; all printer makers have been skimping on stuff for a while. At least they didn't skimp on the actual printer itself.

* HP: I wonder if Carly made HP lowercase because they aren't her initials.

* Manual feed: I jammed the front-door-closed limit switch with a pen cap and figured out what the problem is. It's three things:

• The little guides on the side slant inward in the middle, making it harder to keep paper straight.
• The paper-detect switch is about 1 cm earlier in the paper path than the rollers it triggers.
• The rollers do not run continuously but just jerk forward about 60 degrees (maybe 0.5cm) when the paper is first detected. This means two things: First, since the paper-detect switch is 1cm away, you have to move the paper forward that 1cm in the fraction of a second before it tries to feed the paper, otherwise it misses it. Second, this means it doesn't always grab the paper firmly enough to hold it.

If you shove the paper in straight and quickly, it will work fine. If you dawdle and put it in slowly (perhaps trying to align it) the printer will not grip it.

Re:consumer reports

[UserChrisCanter4]

I have recently seen the HL-1440 advertised for $120 at Office Depot/Max, etc. I have one, and I've got to completely second that claim. In addition to being extremely reliable, Brother seems to be actively resisting the urge to gouge on consumer-line laser toner.

As laser printers have gotten cheaper, "razor blading" on the consumer-line units has become more and more common. My brother made the unfortunate decision to purchase one of Samsung's consumer-level units. It's a very reliable printer, but Samsung ships it with a 1,000 page toner and has an MSRP of $79.99 on a 3,000 page toner. Comparatively, the HL-1440 ships with the normal 3,000 page toner, and replacement units carry an MSRP of $49.99 (and can be found for $35).

Professional Postscript Network Printer

[Tux2000]

Try to buy a professional printer. Not those with a big bright "professional" label, tools with such labels aren't "professional". Look at the vendor web pages what printers they offer for business ("enterprise") use. They may be ugly, big and expensive, but they offer better quality and longer a lifespan than those toys sold for SOHO use.

Search for a printer with Postscript support. It makes life easy with any OS (*BSD, Linux, MacOS, MacOS X, and even DOS and Windows can print on Postscript printers), and at the same time you can be sure that the printer has a real CPU and not just a chip that does nothing more interfacing the printer's hardware to a Windows-only "GDI" driver. Make sure the printer has some RAM, 8 MBytes is the absolute minimum, better try to get 32 MBytes.

The printer should have a build-in (ethernet) print server, or at least an external print server from the same manufacturer. I've seen HP printers refusing to do more than the absolute minimum work (unidirectional printing without any status reporting) until they have been connected to an HP print server. The reason for the print server: Ethernet does not die, it justs becomes faster. Parallel ports become more and more rare these days, many laptops already omit them. USB will some day be as obsolete as ISA is today. USB limits you to 2m printer cable, a parallel port may work with up to 5m, but ethernet gives you 100m. Plus you can share the printer with as many computers as you like, without the need to power up a dedicated computer for printing. And as a nice extra: With a WLAN access point or WLAN router, you can even print wireless.

My Hardware: HP Laserjet 1200N, a LJ1200 with 16 MB RAM plus an external ethernet to USB print server in the box. Yes, it's a SOHO toy (with Postscript support), and I would prefer a LJ 4000/4050/4100, but I got it for free. I've printed 1500 pages without any problems, from Windows, Linux and MacOS 9.

Tux2000

Re:HP LaserJet 4000

[afidel]

Remember that the 4500 Color series printers are not single pass, so you have to multiply the page count by 4 to get an accurate duty rating vs a typical black and white engine. So your 4500 has the equivilant of 800K pages, which while not unheard of (LJ4's went over 1 million pages routinely), is still rather high. Add to that the fact that they are WAY more mechanically complex with about 10x the moving parts and you can understand why they seem a lot more worn out at an "early" stage. Personally I think if anything major breaks on a 4500 is better to just get a new printer because it would take hours and hours to do any major work like replacing the carousel drive gear.