I’ve always been a fan of HP laser printers because they were rugged, cheap per page, and the ink didn’t dry up if the machine was idle for a few weeks. Even though I don’t print that much, and arguably an ink jet would be more appropriate for the amount of printing that I do, I grew up with laser printers and like what I perceive as the bulletproof reliability.
Speaking of bulletproof reliability, my lightly used HP 2605dn ran out of color ink. So I spent $215 on genuine HP toner cartridges at Amazon.com and reloaded the 2605. Now it won’t print red. I called HP tech support and reached a very pleasant woman in Costa Rica. She said “do ‘calibrate color’ three times and then do ‘cleaning mode’ three times; four is better”. I did as she suggested and… the printer prints black, but no red, just as before. Putting the old cartridge back in doesn’t result in even a hint of red, so I don’t think that there is any problem with the new cartridge.
(The broken HP 2605dn was made in China; the made-in-Japan HP laserprinter that I bought in the late 1990s is still working in the home of a neighbor to whom I gave it. HP’s specifications claimed that the 2605dn could print up to 35,000 pages per month. If so, its life expectancy would be about two weeks, since mine died after printing 14,166 pages, a capital cost of 5 cents/page.)
Anyone have a straightforward idea for fixing the machine?
Failing an easy repair, anyone have a suggestion for a good home color laserprinter? It can’t be more than 20″ wide, 14″ deep, or 16″ tall. I want it to have an Ethernet interface (CAT 5). I’d rather buy something other than HP, now that I have a $700 doorstop (what I paid for the 2605dn) and about $300 in genuine(ly useless) HP toner cartridges.
[Perhaps this can be combined with tsunami relief if we can find a printer that is made in Japan.]
[Update: In the spirit of research, John Morgan and I (i.e., John Morgan), spent an evening carrying out the procedure described in http://www.reeves-hall.net/tech-gadgets/fixing-washed-out-colour-on-hp-color-laserjet-2605/ . After about two hours of clock time, we had the printer back together. The good news was that it printed in full color onto pages inserted into the one-sheet-at-a-time feeder. The bad news is that it would no longer grab pages from the paper tray, stopping with a perpetual “paper jam tray 2”. We put in another hour of monkeying with the connectors and then it more or less randomly started to work again. It turns out that the mechanical reassembly of the case can cause the machine to fail to feed paper from the tray. If we (i.e., John) had to do this again, it could probably be done in closer to one hour, but that’s pretty painful for a task that needs to be done every 10 days or so if printing at the rated duty cycle.]
Phil,
We’ve been using the Brother HL-3070CW: http://www.amazon.com/Brother-HL-3070CW-Compact-Wireless-Networking/dp/B002ONCDH4/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1300498300&sr=8-1-fkmr0
It’s been perfect. Wired and wireless. Pretty heavy use from our kids printing out their photos/drawings/comic book scans, etc We’ve been using the b&w variant as well. Inexpensive (compared to when we’re using inkjets) and very small.
Marc
Well you may like them for their durability, but I find it’s a flaw.
I have an HP Laser Printer, 300 DPI, from 1995 and it’s still running just fine. It works so well I cannot justify the price of a newer, glitzier, more functional, probably buggier, with WebOS, laser printer.
Look, I expect my products to last 5-10 years or else I consider them cheap junk, but this is just obnoxious.
Jerry: My HP printer from the 1990s is also still running just fine! Unfortunately I gave it away in favor of this now-broken much-newer 2605 (actually I think I gave it away in favor of an intermediate Samsung or something that printed rather fuzzily).
I don’t have a color printer, but I like my Brother B&W laser printer a lot. It does double sided, and talks to the network and hardly ever jams.
One good thing Brother does is separate the cartridge from the drum, so the cartridges cost less. My first drum didn’t last as long as it should have, but the second one is still going 4 years later, with fairly heavy use.
You should give inkjets another try, just skip the insanely expensive factory ink. Do a search for CIS or “continuous ink system” on eBay. For the same price as one round of factory cartridges, you get easily 20x the ink plus the widget. I’ve had one on an Epson Atisan 800 for over two years and it’s been rock solid. If you manage to blow through that much ink, the refill is about half the price of the ink + widget.
No changing of cartridges–just press the reset button on the cartridge whenever the print monitor software says the ink is out.
I like the Brother MFC-9120CN. It does not do automatic duplex but the manual duplex (built into the driver) is much faster anyway. It scans to networked PCs and the software installs perfectly in Windows and Macs. I have a HP2600n (still working since 2005 but the cartridges are getting low) and I got the Brother rather than spend so much for the HP cartridges (also the added functionality). I refuse to pay as much for the cartridges as a new printer. The Brother is $379.84 at Amazon and with Prime you get free 2-day shipping.
I also have a HP2100n where used to print everything that where I did not want color used the HP2600n only when I wanted color. The HP2100n is much older.
There is a place in Billerica that can try to fix your HP. A-Cal Office Machines at
751 Middlesex Turnpike, Billerica MA, 01821 will inspect it for $30 and probably tell that it will cost more than a new one..
+1 for the Brother. The toner cartridges are reasonably priced also.
I’m with you on the Ink-jet vs laser debate.
I’ve owned probably 5 ink jets in my time and they *always* have something dry up at some point. (usually when you most need them :/)
For the record, I’m a fairly light printer so I can go weeks between color prints but I want them to work when I need them and eventually, ink jets lead to disappointment.
My xerox color lasers have been flawless.
They’re networked, go to a low-power sleep when I’m not printing and always look sharp.
As sharp as the sharpest ink jet when it’s brand new? Perhaps not to the professional eye but if I summed my satisfaction over a year of ownership the lasers win.
Oh, and the laser does 30+ ppm…ink jet not even close.
Not at all a fan of inkjets and I only print maybe 50 pages a month during the school year. I have friends enjoying their $80 ink jets. One such person was thrilled with a Lexmark for its speed. It was slow, jerky and annoyingly noisy compared to my HP 2025n. Decibel wise, they may be similar, but the laser is a nice smooth rhythmic sound, the inkjet sounded like it was having cacophonic muscle spasms. That friend had replaced his last inkjet because the ink dried up and multiple cleaning techniques and new cartridges failed.
I vowed to never go through that kind of thing again. I just want something that works at 3am when my term paper is due at 6am. My 2025n has done so for 2 years now, and at $324 from amazon, shipped free with Amazon Prime, I don’t care if it only lasts 5 years.
Ink jets seem to have more innovative features that I’ve never cared about, like the ability to print from a cell phone from any location, cf/sd card slots. Wireless printing would be good as I haven’t had time to wire my townhouse with Ethernet and thus had to purchase a wireless bridge.
Google “laser printer repair boston”? Shame to toss out a printer that probably just needs to spend 15 minutes with a skilled technician.
buy a used one from craigslist. not worth buying them new.
A used 2605dn from craigslist so you can use your new cartridge in it
@dc, What’s your logic for buying a used printer? I can justify buying a used computer but hardly a used printer. Why? For used computer, you can replace almost any bad parts, but for a used printer, you can only replace the ink! What’s more, if you find issues with the used printer after buying a fresh ink, you are stuck with the ink if you can’t use it on another printer that will take the same type of cartridge.
Evan: I called A-Cal, recommended by Tom, above. The printer’s 15 minutes of fame with a technician would cost $175 plus whatever parts they have to buy. Plus I have to drive to and from Billerica. The Brother, a design that is five years newer, is less than $300 delivered from Amazon and includes full toner cartridges.
philg –
I highly recommend Brother Printers. I just got a $70 wireless laser B/W version. I had used a $300 color wireless version for the past few years and was very satisfied. My graphic designer friend and another active user of the same printer said its colors were comparable to the multi thousand dollar monstrosity they had back at work.
You can buy cheap toner for Staples with coupons 😉
Anything from HP in the last ten or so years is probably junk. I averaged five and a half (5.5) pages each out of two of their inkjets. I figured the first one had to be a lemon. HA HA HA.
Now I’ve got an Epson RX580 scanner/printer and it ain’t bad. Eats ink too fast, and it refuses to print b/w when the colored ink is low (WTF?), but by modern home electronics standards, it’s magnificent: That is to say, it’s minimally functional.
I’m sure they no longer make that model, and have moved on to making only broken products.
HP laser printers have Canon OEM components under the hood. (Similarly, Canon laser printers have HP parts under the hood).
So just buy a Canon; other than the plastic box the hardware will bet he same and generally their software is superior to HPs.
No-one’s mentioned Konica Minolta.
If you get on a mailing list, e.g. by ordering sample prints, they promo almost every other week. Even without that, bang for buck they’re far ahead of the rest IMO. My 4695MF runs like my 90s Laserjets did. Similarly tank like build. In your price range.
This may be true of others now, but they fuse toner at 400degC rather than the 800 or so which is usual, so it’s much smoother on stock in general and which hasn’t been conditioned in the same (ideally controlled) atmosphere. Mine runs in far less than ideal conditions, and is good from cold for a few pages, or for a long run.
Usable color gamut on these is pretty decent also. Even the workgroup multifunction i have calibrates well, and frankly impresses anyone not used to expert prints from big Epsons. KM will send you v4 profiles if that matters in decision making.
Incidentally, i’m the UK, i bought the promo through a dealer. I’ve not got a suport contract, but been very happy indeed with service. When i say i’m in the UK, this is where i keep saying the only ruder thing to do to someone, other than cold call them for a sale, is to ask to buy something from them. We don’t know how to do commerce, so i think something is working at the KM corporate level.
Been through the other options. Multi month decision process, including trips out of town (out of London) for demos. Because i’ve felt (ha! just felt?) conned by the rest, at much higher price points.
Gripes?
Acrobat cocks up with the ADF though you didn’t say you needed multifuntion. (solution, locking down scan to network, grr .. but you have to lock down these things anyway)
Documentation is pretty painful.
Letter envelope feed suffers way too much skew, so using larger envelopes. (A4/letter folded in half instead of in three).
The model i have is really BIG (but again it’s multifunction)
Panel controls are nice and simple mostly, then go all counterintuitive not offering confirmation or even clear indication, for settings on things like paper tray selection, which is something i’d expect a clear confirm for.
Tedius driver installs.
Painful website for finding documentation. But whose website is usable?
No full bleed. But that’s not usual at this price point.
. . .
Observations from just over a year of light to medium use, including some very long runs e.g. 500 pages duplex of magazine galleys in a batch. No hiccups.
I’ve not checked it with Linux drivers.
Hope of some help,
best,
– j
Just to be clear, i’m not trying to say the printer i have is desktop. Far from it!
Build quality is however consistent for their smaller models.
The printers say made in China.
*however* a quick trip to the stock cupboard reveals:
TONER MADE IN JAPAN !
– – – – – – – – – – —
(cart assembled in China)
i could have guessed that, because their toner manufacturing is extremely advancedm but i’ve got the cardboard box for a high capacity K cart on my knee right now . .
think about it, over lifetime, you’ll buy a lot more toner in value than the printer!
OK,
one last point, KM, or rather historically Minolta, largely does not use outside OEM components. (you can assume displays and keypad assemblies are bought in however)
That was the logic of the merger. Konica supplied the sales network. Minolta the tech and color knowledge.
Pity they had to ditch the camera division, but that was a mercy killing if the appaling, dismissive and downright rude treatment i received was to go by, and i had a cupboard of Minolta backs and glass in regular use. Sadly they went downhill since the Mind Of Minolta, Tashima, died. Another story . .
The problem you are having with the 2605 is a common one. It seems the mirrors that reflect the laser gets dusty. The one for magenta is on the bottom and is situated such that it collects all the dust. Over time, it will stop printing magenta all together. I own the 2605 and have to clean off the dust once a year.
Just google “2605 magenta fading” and you will find instructions on how to clean it. Takes about an hour.
I have an HP LaserJet 4ML PostScript laser that I bought in 1994. It’s still going strong – 17 years and counting. Only a parallel interface unfortunately.
Currently using a Dell 1235cn as my main printer. Its a color laser with networking. I think its made by Samsung.
Has it for a year so far and no problems. My print volume is no more than a few hundred pages a month.