The old rule of thumb is that HP LaserJet printers last forever. But, how long is forever?
Just wondering as I’ve got a seven year old 4000-series printer that claims to have only printed 406,000 pages. My estimate, based on our consumption of paper is 800,000 pages, and that’s sheets of paper, without regard to duplexing - actual figure is probably in the 1,000,000 - 1,200,000 page range.
At what point is it no longer worth patching the poor dear along? A replacement would cost my group somewhere north of $1800 by the time tax and shipping is paid, and the inestimable (but readily billed!) services of our LAN support team to issue a new name and IP address for the thing.
Has it had a good, long life, and it’s ready to be retired, or can I reasonably expect another year and a half of faithful, if squeaky, service for the price of some new paper feed rollers? And another year or so of service after that for another set of rollers? And so on?
What generally would be a “terminal” problem for one of these beasts where you’d just say “That’s it, it’s dead” and not even attempt to have it repaired? About 18 months ago, it did get a new fuser, and two years ago, a new duplexer…
In my experience, anything older than an LJ4 can be outclassed performance-wise by a modern (and cheaper) inkjet. Inkjets are cheap enough that they are damn-near disposable when the carts that come with the printer go dry.
LJ4 or newer: if you’ve replaced the fuser, the rollers, and the duplexer already you’re doing ok. Wipers and pads should be replaced regularly. The next things to go are the drum, the ionizer, and the electronics. The electronics are not (except for the jet direct) FRUs, so if they go junk the whole thing. If the drum isn’t scratched (with the pads and wipers doing their job) and the ionizer can still reliably charge and discharge the drum, you are fine. the drum can get kind of pricy, however.
IIRC when you replace the drum, the page count resets itself. IIRC, they’re rated to like 500,000 impressions. Depending on the type of printer you’ve got, it depends on how much your tech guy has to do (i.e. is it worth his time to spend an hour here replacing rollers, which, failing a crack in the case is the most time consuming thing that can happen - although I recall that the paper intake was hosed on one of the pritners and that was cause by our tech guy to say “that’s it” for that printer). As Alan E Sheets says, you’ll likely want to upgrade to a 4000, but that’s for performance issues. The printers, IMO do tend to last forever barring the paper jam thing. Replace away!
Inkjets may be cheap to buy but they’re expensive to run. If you’re doing any serious printing then a laser printer is usually cheaper in the long run.
I have a two nice, big Laserjet 4’s in great cosmetic shape sitting in a closet waiting to be junked because the logic on one is confused, and the other has a paper handling bellyache (after only 14K pages) . I looked into getting them professionally repaired, and the cost is absurd vs getting a new one.
Inkjets may be cheap to buy but cost much more per page due to the cost of ink cart’s.
2nd
I had an epson action laser 2 for about 8years, replces the photoconductor once and the toner many times (have no idea), I finally gave it up to an HP (1200) when the price of the toner rose to about $150 and a new photoconductor unit was needed.
3rd
My current HP has seen about 2 yrs and doing fine, I plan to continue using it till:
1 it breaks
2 Something comes around that is much better.
3 The cost of replacement parts outweights the cost of a new printer.
$1800? :eek:
Obviously that 4000 series is a little more serious than the HPs we use around the office.
I was just going to recommend steering clear of any 1100’s (HP was sued because they released them with defects that cause multiple page feed problem).
We have about twenty. :rolleyes:
We paid on average $150 per printer, per repair.
We were reimbursed $75 by HP for every printer we could prove we had to have repaired.
Sadly, if your LaserJet is a smoker, the life expectancy is shortened by about 5 years. But if it quits now, it may live for another 3 years. If your LaserJet is showing signs of yellowing paper, it may be a classic case of alcohol poisoning. Kicking the Isopropyl habit can be very tough for LaserJets, shortening their life expectancy by 6 years. If you see the problem early enough, you can change the toner and save it 100%. Who knew?
Hmm. HP just sent us a box of repair kits for out 1100s. They were basically a piece of tape on a pice of cardboard. You just jammed the thing down in the paper feeder, pulled a string, and it was fixed. Took about 15 seconds per printer.
I have an original LJ4 in storage that’s in like-new condition with IIRC about 25K pages through it. Its only shortcoming is that it only has 1MB of RAM and so the drawing engine chokes on any page containing any graphics. It’s just sitting there awaiting the trashman when I have the heart to send it to its Fate.
If you’d like to swap some parts to get one of yours going, send me an email.
I appreciate the offer but the shipping cost would probably exceed the value of the machine to me this point. If your Laserjet 4 is functional it is quite simple (and relatively cheap) to add RAM to the unit. IIRC you should be able to get it up to 18 megs or so 16 + 2 megs onboard which is enough to handle most graphics jobs. It’s a simple “open the side door and click it in” operation.
FWIW you might also consider simply using the “raster print” option (it’s a sub-menu in your windows print dialog box) when dumping large graphics. It’s slower to process the inital page, but FAR more memory efficient than using the standard default HPGL option for complex graphics. With the RAM bumped to 12 megs or over you can usually go either way (HPGL or raster) with no difficulties.
Oh and just so there’s no confusion re my memory upgrade recommendation, in that there were a ton a of “Laserjet 4” type designations. Your printer looks like this one correct?
My HP4L is still running strong. Got in in 1992, IIRC. In fact, I need to order new toner as I type. I replace the toner about once a year to 18 months.
Oh, and a few comments. I prefer toner over inkjet for lots of reasons. First of all, the quality of a laser jet is usually outstanding. Cost is much less for toner in the long run and you have to replace it far less often. Also, unlike inkjets the ink does not smear when you use a laser jet.
The big drawback, of course, is color. I covet a color laser, but cannot justify the cost yet.
[QUOTE=astro]
I appreciate the offer but the shipping cost would probably exceed the value of the machine to me this point. If your Laserjet 4 is functional it is quite simple (and relatively cheap) to add RAM to the unit. IIRC you should be able to get it up to 18 megs or so 16 + 2 megs onboard which is enough to handle most graphics jobs. It’s a simple “open the side door and click it in” operation.
FWIW you might also consider simply using the “raster print” option (it’s a sub-menu in your windows print dialog box) when dumping large graphics. It’s slower to process the inital page, but FAR more memory efficient than using the standard default HPGL option for complex graphics. With the RAM bumped to 12 megs or over you can usually go either way (HPGL or raster) with no difficulties.
[QUOTE]
Astro,
Thanks. I was thinking in terms of sending you a couple of parts to get one complete machine between us, not mailing you the the whole thing.
I haven’t looked in the manual for years, but IIRC the book said the most RAM it could take was 2MB, which probably wouldn’t be enough to work with modern pages. Hence I didn’t pursue a memory upgrade, even though I knew they existed.
It was one of the very first LJ4s (bought new in 1991) with a low serial number and I’ll bet that 2MB was the largest RAM stick available when the manuals were printed.
Progress marches on. If they were forward-thinking enough to design it with more address space and it’ll take 80MB, well then my problem’s solved.
[QUOTE=astro]
I appreciate the offer but the shipping cost would probably exceed the value of the machine to me this point. If your Laserjet 4 is functional it is quite simple (and relatively cheap) to add RAM to the unit. IIRC you should be able to get it up to 18 megs or so 16 + 2 megs onboard which is enough to handle most graphics jobs. It’s a simple “open the side door and click it in” operation.
FWIW you might also consider simply using the “raster print” option (it’s a sub-menu in your windows print dialog box) when dumping large graphics. It’s slower to process the inital page, but FAR more memory efficient than using the standard default HPGL option for complex graphics. With the RAM bumped to 12 megs or over you can usually go either way (HPGL or raster) with no difficulties.
If it’s that same machine it will have 2 megs built in and 4 SIMM slots. The max the machine can be bumped up to is 16 megs. (2 + 16) via 4x4 megs or 2x8 megs Full parity EDO SIMMS
My Father in Law has a LJ IIP which is still running. I don’t think he prints hundreds of pages a day, but he uses it to print music from his composition programs. I don’t know when he got it (we got ours first) but I think it was for a 286 vintage machine.
Ours died dead about six years ago, and my wife still mourns it.
