laser printer - which one?

[David Kelly]

On Thu, May 24, 2007 at 08:49:17PM -0700, Bill Campbell wrote:
> On Thu, May 24, 2007, David Kelly wrote:
> 
> >Have been very happy with performance and operating costs of HP  
> >4000's, 5000N, and 8100N. Couldn't find one used for what my Brother  
> >HL-5250DN cost new, so I bought the Brother. Only problem has been  
> >the HP's would print envelopes better than the Brother.
> 
> I haven't found any printer that really works well with envelopes
> (unless you count some Pitney Bowes printers that are designed
> specifically for printing high volumes of flyers, envelopes and
> brochures).

An original Apple Stylewriter 1200 was exceptional at envelopes. The
printer most closely resembled the wringer on my grandmother's classic
Maytag washer when I was a kid. Straight path, no bend, printer was
about 3" thick.

Have been feeding about 1500 envelopes per year between a pair of HP-990
and HP-970 inkjets. The older 970 is faster but doesn't fully release
the envelope on eject and will wad it up if one doesn't pull it out
before the next starts. The 990 often pauses before starting, then
spends extra time with optical sensors looking for page edges. And about
half the time pulls a #10 envelope thru cocked at an angle. I use them
anyway.

Recently the 990 feed screwed up to the point it was not usable. Took it
out to the garage and blew it out with compressed air. Didn't find any
smoking guns so I didn't have much hope, but that did the trick.

> >Have not been terribly happy with HP inkjets and my statement above  
> >is based on the apparent observation the HP inkjet crew has been  
> >designing lasers lately.
> 
> I have an HP Photosmart 7360 that I like, largely because I don't use it
> very much, and it's designed so that it can through long periods of
> inactivity without clogging the nozzles.

In the HP print driver there is an option deep in the settings for
"black only". The default setting mixes color with black to print text.
Black text looks awful if the color cartridge is empty, but perfectly
good if you select the "black only" option. One thing I'm not happy
about is that the printer flat out won't work without a color cartridge,
no matter that I'm only printing black. Had an empty color cartridge go
bad and the printer quit. Since then I've collected empties from friends
to keep around so that the printer will still run if it decides the
color cartridge must be replaced again.

-- 
David Kelly N4HHE, dkelly at HiWAAY.net
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Whom computers would destroy, they must first drive mad.