After nearly twenty years, my old Hewlett Packard 4L Laserjet printer finally bought the farm. The venerable old printer started misfeeding the paper last night causing jams and errors. I tried troubleshooting it for a while but it stubbornly refused to cooperate. So I disconnected it from the network and loaded it up to go to the HAZMAT recycle center on Friday. I have a bunch of other HAZMAT items boxed up so the timing is right.
Image: HP 4L – Click to enlarge
Even before showing signs of failure, it started getting hard to find toner cartridges for the old printer. Fortunately, one on-line source came through a couple of years ago when I ordered a couple of toner cartridges. I used one up and the last one we had started to exhibit signs of going out of toner.
The last time I installed the printer on the new laptop, I had a difficult time locating an on-line source for a proper printer driver. I guess the signs were all there that the time has come for a new printer.
We will be in the market for a new printer when the new house in Arizona is complete. In California, we’re going to scout out and buy a cheapie printer to use until we finally get the house on the market.
I highly recommend a Brother. I have an HL-1440 laser that’s going on 8 years now, with minimum maintenance. Inexpensive, and rock solid!
Wow ! Almost twenty years ? That was a darned good printer !
HP Laserjets are darned near bullet-proof, at least the earlier ones. I’ve seen them run for 10 years in a heavy use environment, and other than regular cleaning and service, *nothing* breaks.
Some years ago I worked for Canon, and all of Canon’s laser printers of that era have identical ‘engines’ for the print mechanism. Many of the ones I worked on were in public libraries, and had HUNDREDS of thousands of prints on them. Change the drum once in a while, keep the loose toner cleaned out of them (it’s abrasive), replace/rebuild the fuser occasionally, and keep the optics clean, and they’re the Energizer Bunny of printers!
For now, we’re thinking about an inexpensive unit for California.
In Arizona we’re going to do the research and find a reliable one that uses inexpensive toner cartridges.
It was a damn good printer. Hopefully, we’ll get another damn good one. 😉
Prepare to be very disappointed. Most of the modern laserjet printers on the market are crap. I have bought almost 30 printers for our office in the past five years and I am disgusted with the poor quality and the cost of toner. We use them far below their rated capacity and they still fall apart. Ricoh was the worst as far as design and reliability. The only printer we had that was virtually bullet proof was the HP 5. We got rid of it 5 years ago while it was still working and the legal secretaries still miss it. Even so, the new HP’s are garbage.
What models were you buying? If you go to a Best Buy or Wally-Mart, you won’t be able to get the heavy-duty models HP makes.
We don’t know which yet. We will probably buy direct from a manufacturer, but we have until next year to decide.
For the California house, it doesn’t have to be much. Just something to crank out B&W letter size papers.
drjim – I never buy printers from brick&mortar. I purchase from state contracts. Several years ago I bought 20 office grade HPs. Half of them are crap. So many problems after only a year in service. They should do 35K pages monthly and fall apart under a third of that usage. Very frustrating.
We still have an HP 4L. Works fine and we just buy toner and refill the cartridges. Great printer!!! Have had it almost 20 years also.