HP LaserJet 4m plus

...on my old Canon this HP model certainly cranks out the work.

This is not a machine designed for the domestic duties I subject it to, it is designed as an office machine - and nowadays is fairly redundant with all the new models that have been released. It has a 250 page feeder tray and a front loading manual (semi-auto) drop down feeder chute as well... getting paper in and out is not really a concern. The particular machine I have ...
...in a government office... although all indications are that it has been well maintained. I took it to a colleague to have the little switch replaced (which incidently was a part costing about 7 pounds) and he commented that he had seldom seen a fuser unit in such good condition in a machine of this age and experience.

There is a full range of adjustments that can be made via the soft touch buttons near the LED display that will allow ... more

Another correspondent has been pretty damning about this printer and I don't mean to come galloping in on my white charger... but I will....

I managed to pick up one of these at auction just recently and apart from one small repair that was required (a little flag switch at the rear of the rpinter above the fuser unit) it has been a real trooper.

As has been written elsewhere there is nothing petite about the dimensions of this behemoth, it is a very large printer with a very large footprint - it would be wearing size 17 cross trainers if it were an athlete!! It is fully 45 cms wide and 45 cms deep and towers 30 cms above the work surface. It certainly makes a change from the old Canon BJC 4200 that I've just about driven to its death... and along with it's hippopotomonstrosequipedalian dimensions it also weighs a tonne - well not quite but it is bloody heavy!!

OK, so now we know this is a big printer, for a man-size print printing job that you can slam down fast... ooops slipped into writing copy for Solo lemon drink...

I read somewhere that this printer takes time to print the first page - I've only found that when it has gone into standby mode or has just been switched on.. if I'm doing a batch of printing and the machine is all fired up I've found that it churns through the work at a cracking pace... I think this is becaause it has a good 4mb of on board memory - compared to the interminable wait on my old Canon this HP model certainly cranks out the work.

This is not a machine designed for the domestic duties I subject it to, it is designed as an office machine - and nowadays is fairly redundant with all the new models that have been released. It has a 250 page feeder tray and a front loading manual (semi-auto) drop down feeder chute as well... getting paper in and out is not really a concern. The particular machine I have is second hand and has spent a fairly busy life in a government office... although all indications are that it has been well maintained. I took it to a colleague to have the little switch replaced (which incidently was a part costing about 7 pounds) and he commented that he had seldom seen a fuser unit in such good condition in a machine of this age and experience.

There is a full range of adjustments that can be made via the soft touch buttons near the LED display that will allow you to over-ride the driver software and hard set such things as Economy Mode, Paper Tray, Resolution and a range of other tweakable functions. The software driver that comes with Windows 98 seems to deal with the printer very well - although experience has shown that original manufacturers driver software will generally get the best from printers (and other peripherals)... I quickly checked the Hewlett Packard site to see if the drivers were still available but the search started to get a little bewildering - they really have made a huge number of printers over the years!!

Another complaint I read was that it is a black and white printer - I had a colour printer for over 4 years and seldom had need to print in colour - so I now take any colour print jobs to a local Xerox Colour Laser printer (that costs over 5,000 pounds to buy) and pay a few pennies to have a really good - near photographic quality - colour printout produced. Realistically, I think most colour printing in homes is fairly gratuitous - as a school teacher I get some very flash looking colour printouts submitted that have nothing to commend them by way of content - students seem to have fallen into the Hollywood filmmakers mentality of form over substance... This machine is a black and white workhorse and if that's all you need it will serve you well. dditionally the toner cartridges are refillable and needn't be replaced until the print drum sarts to show signs of wear - which for most domestic users is going to take quite some time. To give an indication of my usage - I get through about 12 reems of photocopy paper a year - I guess I print somewhere between 8,000 and 12,000 pages a year. This machine can handle that in a month!!

The print quality is very good and by adjusting the graphics controls in the driver settings I've been able to get some very good reproduction of images... although it can be a bit contrasty at times. Additionally the ECONOMY MODE makes for very affordable printing - I estimate 1 - 2p per page of average text.

I've been really happy with my purchase - another of my bargain auction purchases and set me back about 80 quid. If you can manage to find one of these at auction, garage sale or car boot sale and can ascertain that it's in good condition and the price is right then snap it up... it should serve you many years.

(HINT: A good way to learn about secondhand hardware is to go into computing shops and ask them to inspect their secondhand stock - ask them what you should be looking for - they'll tell you)

UPDATE
******

Just went into my local office supplies to price a new toner cartridge for this little beauty and discovered tis the cheapest and sturdiest recharged cartridge they stock. An added bonus in my book is that these cartridges are sturdy, reliable and put the cost per page at about 1.3p - a reconditioned cartridge will print about 6,000 pages and costs about 50 quid. 

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