PC LOAD LETTER!

I don't think there's anyone with a inkjet or multi-function laserjet who has not felt the same way that the guys do in the 1999 movie "Office Space" about their printer. If you haven't seen that movie then I highly recommend it, there's a link to the printer scenes on youtube.com here.

Who of us has not been totally frustrated by paper jams, dried up ink, weird error messages or lost connectivity when it comes to printers? I've had a little more experience with printers than most as I used to repair them as part of my job. There's many a time I've had my hands inside the paper feed assembly of a LaserJet 8100 or cut my fingers trying to replace the swing plate assembly in a LJ 4250. But those were business printers with high print volumes, so you expect to have to expend time to maintain them. When it comes to printing at home you really aren't looking to print a lot, or at least that's how it is for our house. What I do hope for is reliability when I do need to print or scan, and good quality prints. We have a couple of printers at home, one is a quirky Deskjet 6940 which produces good prints on higher quality presentation paper, however on regular paper they are dark and murky. My wife has been able to print some images to use for decoupage art projects, but the results are mixed versus the original scan or image. Now this is not an expensive printer (they get you on the ink) but there are a couple of issues. Firstly occasionally it goes berserk. It loses connectivity and all the lights on the control panel blink very fast. It's not an error code... it's just lost it's mind. Then other times the ink cartridges just don't seem to work right. Colours seem wrong, there are streaks and fading. Now I understand if the printer stands for a long time you will have issues but this kind of thing happens even when the printer has been used recently and on new cartridges. Usually, if I spend 20 minutes with isopropyl alcohol and Q-tip, I can get the printer happy.

Our second printer is an Officejet 6300 multifunction inkjet which I was given (similar to the one above). It has some great features like an ADF, ability to scan from a web interface, scan to a folder (if you can get the software right) and faxes it too (although I've never used that feature). Print quality is acceptable, however the 6940 seems a lot better in my opinion even thought they are roughly using the same inks and print technology (the 6940 can take a photo black cartridge). Now what I can't stand about this unit is just how flaky it is. Here is a list of issues:

1) Regularly loses all network settings even though it's on a UPS battery backup unit.
2) It fails to pick up paper.
3) Often it fails to boot, locking up during the initialization phase.
4) It will report paper jams when there aren't any.
5) It will repeatedly report a cartridge error during the boot process, requiring several power cycles before it gets itself together.

The other night was the last straw when I power failed the unit 6 times to be able to scan a single sheet of paper. Of course because the printer showed the cartridge error the scanner function was also disabled. I'd had enough it's finally time for a replacement. As fate would have it I had been asked at work to look up some entry level printers for a work colleague. He was going to go with a B&W (maybe a Brother) but I found myself overlapping into entry level colour printers too. I usually find myself pulling in a bunch of information from the manufacturers site, and then go looking for real world reviews on Amazon.com or maybe Staples.com. I've found that over the last couple of years the amount of feedback available for hardware has become an invaluable tool to what choices I make. While a single 5 star rating might not be that objective, when 165 people give an average of 4.5 out of 5 then I'm thinking that's looking promising. I always read a selection of the negative reviews just to see if anything stands out as a major flaw.

My experience with HP printers over the last 10 years has been mixed. They have produced some great printers and some total dogs, even in the business space (P3015). HP seriously cut back production a few years ago and the quality seemed to suffer, now they seem back on track again. During the past few years I've managed to salvage some printers which have been too costly to repair for the customer. In fact I have a colour LaserJet 3500 at my office desk which is pieced together from a couple of broken machines. All it needs is some careful handling, as the door mechanism is extremely complex and it appears people were always breaking clips or damaging the transfer assembly. To avoid unhappy customers I usually recommend that they purchase an HP Exchange CarePack (extended replacement warranty) with their new printer so that they can guarantee a replacement onsite next day if their unit fails. It's definitely worked out well for a several of our customers, with units failing at the 18 to 24 month period after the original one year warranty had expired. So with the mixed history what I was looking for was a printer which got generous thumbs up from it's owners (because they are the harshest critics) and it appeared the LaserJet M251nw was the winner.

I'm surprised that HP has this printer listed at $329 when the street price is closer to $180. With some additional coupons I managed to get the unit for under $160, although I know HP will get the money back in toner. I'd like this unit to last some time as printer technology doesn't appear to have got that much better in the past few years. It still seems to sit around 600x600 dots per inch (dpi) with additional clever "ImageREt" technologies adding additional qualities to the print output. So I'm also going to pick up a 4 year CarePack Exchange warranty for this printer which retails for $110. The idea of having a reliable and warrantied printer up until 2018 sounds nice.

So far I've only managed to print about 10 pages, but the colour output looks crisp and bright. Setup wasn't as easy as I hoped, particularly the HP Web Apps (which I doubt I will use). I've only dipped my toe into the features and I'd like to pick up some good laser paper for testing. So let's end this blog entry here and I'll tell you more about the printer itself in a later review, I need a few days to try it out and make sure I've given it a run for it's money.