Thoughts on HP LaserJet P2015DN printer

[Darryl Lict]

I managed to break my trusty HP 2200DN by causing a paper jam by putting a birdfeeder on top of it. It was a nasty paper jam and I must have damaged something when I attempted to free it. The HP LaserJet P2015DN looks like a pretty good replacement for it. Does anyone have any opinion on this printer?

[Valgard]

The 2015DN is our new standard desktop printer at work and so far they are chugging along quite well, no problems to report. Speed is quite good (they are as fast as the LJ8150 that used to be our standard workhorse network printer).

[Quartz]

Lovely little box, perfect for the small office.

[Galena]

We have one of these at work, but the version without network capabilities. It seems to eat ink cartridges, but that could also be the near constant double sided printing of pdfs that my colleagues enjoy. And yes, sending 10 pdfs to the printer at a time will crash it. BTW - if you want to use it while running Linux on a Mac, I will not help you with the drivers!

(In regards to the ink - we get about 3500 pages per cartridge. Is that good or bad? I have no other frame of reference.)

On editing: I just realized I forgot to give an opinion on the actual printer, and not the printer habits around our office. I'm pretty happy with it and it runs well, but I suspect it would run much better under different circumstances!

[Darryl Lict]

Thanks for the replies, I'll probably go for it. NewEgg will ship it for free, plus toss in a third party cartridge to boot!

Originally Posted by Galena

We have one of these at work, but the version without network capabilities. It seems to eat ink cartridges, but that could also be the near constant double sided printing of pdfs that my colleagues enjoy. And yes, sending 10 pdfs to the printer at a time will crash it. BTW - if you want to use it while running Linux on a Mac, I will not help you with the drivers!

(In regards to the ink - we get about 3500 pages per cartridge. Is that good or bad? I have no other frame of reference.)[/i]

I won't be much pushing it's limits, and I can always get some more memory in the future. It's just for home, and the pages per cartridge sound fine to me. I've had nothing but LaserJets for laser printers my entire life and I'm enamored with them.

[Valgard]

Originally Posted by Galena

We have one of these at work, but the version without network capabilities. It seems to eat ink cartridges, but that could also be the near constant double sided printing of pdfs that my colleagues enjoy. And yes, sending 10 pdfs to the printer at a time will crash it. BTW - if you want to use it while running Linux on a Mac, I will not help you with the drivers!

(In regards to the ink - we get about 3500 pages per cartridge. Is that good or bad? I have no other frame of reference.)

On editing: I just realized I forgot to give an opinion on the actual printer, and not the printer habits around our office. I'm pretty happy with it and it runs well, but I suspect it would run much better under different circumstances!

Spend a few bucks to max out the RAM (it'll handle multiple documents much better). Also use the PostScript driver when sending PDFs, it generally produces smaller spool files, faster. You can also disable Advanced Printing Features (under Printer Properties-Advanced tab) if you seem to be getting massive spool files (massive as in orders of magnitude larger than the original document was) - there's a known issue with the charming name of "EMF Bloat" which results in exploding spool file sizes when printing certain documents with lots of raster graphics, which often includes PDFs (anything with scanned images in it).

[Quartz]

Originally Posted by Galena

(In regards to the ink - we get about 3500 pages per cartridge. Is that good or bad? I have no other frame of reference.)

Be sure to use the larger toner cartridges - the ones with the X at the end. They're more expensive to purchase but cheaper per page. The printer ships with the A cartridge and many people simply replace like with like, resulting in more profit for HP and higher print costs.

[Quartz]

I forgot - don't buy your extra memory from HP, they charge a fortune, and they're standard DDR2 144 pin modules which you should be able to pull from an old PC.

[Galena]

Thanks for the tips, Quartz and Valgard. "EMF Bloat" indeed. It sounds like that's exactly what's happening. I'll try your suggestion tomorrow.

Next time we order cartridges, I'll make sure to get the X version. I think we looked at that last time, but found a deal where we got an extra box of paper if we ordered two As. I'm second guessing how good of a deal that actually was. I'm curious if anyone has experience with the off-brand cartridges? How reliable are they? I've seen some that are soooo much cheaper.

[Valgard]

Originally Posted by Galena

Thanks for the tips, Quartz and Valgard. "EMF Bloat" indeed. It sounds like that's exactly what's happening. I'll try your suggestion tomorrow.

Next time we order cartridges, I'll make sure to get the X version. I think we looked at that last time, but found a deal where we got an extra box of paper if we ordered two As. I'm second guessing how good of a deal that actually was. I'm curious if anyone has experience with the off-brand cartridges? How reliable are they? I've seen some that are soooo much cheaper.

Yeah, that's the technical name that MS and HP have for it. I love explaining that to the powers that be at work. If you have any questions about that kind of problem let me know.

We also use remanufactured toner. I know that HP says you'll get lower yields, lower print quality and more crud floating about inside the printer but it seems to be working fine for us (I've got about 400 printers, local and network, in our SF office) and the cost savings are considerable.

[NinetyWt]

I just wanted to tell you that when I look at the model number "P2015DN" - my brain reads that as the word "POISON".