A New Printer?
My HP LaserJet 2200dn seems to have given up the ghost. It is reporting media-jam-error even though there’s no apparent media-jam. I suspect a broken sensor of some kind. At this point my options are to take it in for repair or replace it. It’s a tad more than five years old; and while I’ve seen printers last longer than this, not all do. So two questions:
- Does anyone know a reliable HP repair shop in or around Irvine?
- If I do replace it, what should I get?
Here’s what I’m looking for in a printer:
- 8 page per minute or faster
- Duplex printing
- Black and white
- Tabloid size printing would be really nice but is not essential
- PostScript or a reasonable clone thereof
- Networkable
- Linux, Mac, and Windows support
- About $0.02 per page
- No DRM bogosity expiring the cartridges before they’re used up, or preventing the use of 3rd party cartridges
- Very low power consumption when not printing
Given those criteria, what’s my cheapest option? And would it be cheaper to just buy a new printer rather than repair the old one? The Brother HL-5250DN is only about $250 and might do the trick.
April 14th, 2008 at 11:46 AM
I bought the Brother 5170DN (which Amazon says is the predecessor to the 5250) a couple years ago and love it. Works great with Macs and PCs. Supports Bonjour autodiscovery. Double sided printing is the best thing since sliced bread. I haven’t tried refilling the toner, but I’ve read that other have done it with no problems.
The only problem I’ve had is that occasionally (maybe once a month) it disappears from my network. Turning the printer off then back on, or unplugging and replugging in the old 10mb hub it’s currently hooked up to clears the problem right up. Don’t know if its a printer or network issue.
April 14th, 2008 at 8:36 PM
I have a 5250DN; I’m intensely glad that I bought it. It’s a thing of beauty and a joy for— well, for as long as it lasts, which I can’t predict. Perfect support in CUPS, very easy to set up on a Mac. No clue about Windows. As for other issues; I don’t know that it does 8ppm, because I’ve never timed it, but it feels pretty snappy. Network and duplex were requirements for me; I really like that it defaults to duplex (every other printer I’ve ever set up had to be configured into it, and would forget from time to time). Doesn’t do tabloid, I don’t think; does go very low power on idle (and apparently this is what makes it drop off the network … that’s happened to me twice (I almost never use my printer): once it woke up from the Go button, once I ended up power-cycling, though I don’t know that that’s the only thing that would’ve worked). Silent when idle; very quiet when printing. Low-ish capacity, but you can buy more trays to stack it on (which would make it higher profile, as well; it’s surprisingly (to me) small). Reasonable toner cartridge cost. I was also tempted by the color laser (network, duplexing) from Brother ($400 plus), but can’t really justify it.
FWIW, I ended up buying mine after trying to save money on buying toner for an older lexmark looked as though it was going to cost me on the order of $250. I got annoyed at the idea of spending as much on repair as a new machine would cost.
Amy!
April 15th, 2008 at 9:35 AM
Thanks. I went ahead and bought the Brother 5250dn. The determining factor was that I could buy it off the shelf at Office Depot, rather than waiting for it to be delivered. We’ll see how it goes.
It is shockingly cheaper than the HP 2200 printer I bought five years ago, roughly 20% of that one’s cost. Up till now the cheap printers I’ve seen have all been non-networked, non-duplexing, non-PostScript inkjets. However, I sometimes print entire books so I want something a little sturdier in my printer, even if it’s just or my home office.
Usually business class features like networking and duplexing don’t come down to quite this price point. At this rate maybe five years from now $50 will buy a tabloid sized, color, duplexing, wireless PostScript printer. :-)