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

Samsung Laser Printers

[Gulthek]

Definitely check out the Samsung ML-1750 (and the cheaper ML-1710 although I believe that is not a PCL printer). I have the 1750 and it plays well with Linux, OS X, and Windows. I have printed off thousands of pages and it has never smeared, and only had two or three paper jams.

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 4000

[vasqzr]

Buy a LaserJet 4000 or 4050. If you want a faster one get a 4100.

They're cheap, last a long time, and they don't require much maintenance.

You can find them on eBay for $400 with very low page counts ( 100,000 pages)

They do PCL and Postscript. Get one with a JetDirect card so you can plug it in your LAN and you'll be all set. Works great with Linux, Mac, Windows...

Samsung.

[m0rph3us0]

Seriously, I've gotten Samsung's Linux drivers to work in OpenBSD with out emulation. Their printers work like a charm with cups + ghostscript. Even works with Windows via Samba. Something like this: Samsung ML-2250 is what I would recommend because it supports PCL6 and has memory upgradable using standard SODIMM laptop ram. The GDI printers work great too they just offload too much work on to the CPU.

OId HP for me

[Ridgelift]

I bought a LaserJet 5m and duplexer off eBay for less than $200. The older LaserJet's are built like tanks, and with the design of the toner cartridges, they really don't wear out.

600dpi, Postscript, built-in network adapter, compatible with Linux. Just because newer printers print at higher resolutions with more pages per minute doesn't necessarily make them better in my view.

Hardware problems

[Robbat2]

"First, an HP LaserJet 1100, which continually misfed papers and smeared toner"

Misfed paper is a sign of a few possible things:
- incorrect paper weight or thickness.
- dirty pick-up mechanism.

By far, incorrect paper turns up far too often. If the paper is too thin or light, it's likely to slip. If the paper is too thick or heavy, it's likely to stick. Also make sure you load the paper into the printer the correct way up! Look at the ream of paper when you buy it, and on one end there will be an arrow indicating what side you should be printing on.

For the smeared toner, try to find out where in the printer it's smearing. Primarily, is it between the drum and the fuser, or after the fuser. If it's the former, then clean that part of the printer throughly! If it's after the fuser, then your fuser is malfunctioning (unfortunetly fusers often cost a lot of money to replace).

I'm the proud owner of a LaserJet 4L that's more than 10 years old. I've gone thru 7 toner units, and had a single hardware failure - the power supply, and it worked perfectly fine after that was replaced.

However it wasn't keeping up with the demand for printing, so I also got an HP LaserJet 2100TN.

consumer reports

[legLess]

For a while now the Brother HL-1440 has been Consumer Report's higest-rated laser printer. My business partner has one, and had no trouble setting it up with CUPS under Red Hat. It's fast, not too loud, good quality, and less than $200.

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