Help - anyone got a HP Color Laserjet 2700 printer

Old printer packed up, need a new one desperately.

Anyone got one of these, are they OK?

TIA

Ed

Take it that's a no then

[TSM]

We have 2 of the 3700 and they were nothing but problamatic. Saying that we also have a 4600 and its over 4 years old and done near to 400k pages and has been free of major problems. I would say that for the budjet low end colour printers there are better co's than HP for laser.

I've got an hp Deskjet 3940 and it's been pretty good so far... Came free with my pc...

I need something with PCL6 - so range ain't great. Plus it needs to be networked.

Keep the suggestions coming folks

[fizzwheel]

How much colour stuff are you going to be printing Ed ?

We use HP stuff at my place of work and always have done. The black and white stuff has never been a problem we been using the 4xxx model printers for years, very robust never been a problem but, I've found before that the cheaper HP laserjets like you are looking at are more trouble than they are worth. Also the colour one in our office has been a right PIA at times. Also it eats toner like its going out of fashion, they arent IMHO cheap to run.

If you could give some idea of how much budget you have, how many sheets per day colour you'll be printing it would help.

Don't worry to much about network as even if the printer you want doesnt come with the networking built in you could buy a HP Jet Direct or Intel Netport that plugs into the network and then you plug the printer into that and you can network it that way. Or if you just have 1 or 2 PC's that you want to print from you can plug the printer into the back of one of the PC's and share it out across the network that way. ( this will have a bit of overhead on the PC that the printer is attatched to though and also that PC will need to be on so that the printer can be accessed over the network ) apologies if this is teaching you to suck eggs.

If your not doing much colour printing I'd look at something else rather than a laser printer. You can get good quality results with the deskjet range of printers if you use the right paper and tweak the settings.

HTH

Hey Fizz - thanks for your post.

We have 6 users, we do a lot of colour printing - about 4K sheets a month average, in some months maybe more, up to 6K, and it's likely to increase. I don't have printed letterhead, it's generated by the PC. Colour printing is so damned expensive, plus if I do it from the PC it's so much easier to change. It's mainly letterhead with colour logo and print but we use it too for marketing material. The PCL6 requirement is set by the specialist software (Proclaim case management software manufactured by Eclipse Legal Systems of Bradford) we use and I discovered before we had the current 2550ln (which is PCL6 compliant) that it won't work properly without it. We've had the current printer for about 18 months and abused it terribly, you're right that they eat toner cartridges. I used to pay through the nose for HP stuff, now I use Lasertech - 60% of HP prices, the bloke delivers for free too. We have a backup Kyocera fax/printer which we've had to use today and it's like taking the bus rather than taking the bike. The 2550 is constantly jamming, I reckon that fixing it will cost more than a new machine.

[fizzwheel]

OK thats a fair amount of use. IMHO your going to see similar problems with any low end laser printer they just arent designed for office use. Your right its probably going to cost more to fix that printer than it is to replace it with something equivalent that in a while you'll see similar problems with.

Time to upgrade I think and get something a bit more heavy duty... personally I'll only use HP printers, everything else I've tried at work on that I've seen sold to customers in my previous employers has been quite frankly rubbish. As I said earlier the 4xxx range of HP printers we use at work have never been a problem.

Might be worth looking at this if your budget will stretch that far...

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/uk/en...-12096368.html

I've only skimmed the specs through, but it does have the onboard network socket so you'll be able to network it.I've had a read of the PDF instructions and it definately supports PCL6. Might be a little over kill right now but it looks pretty scalable so if your needs grow you can add extra trays for paper etc etc.

Might be worth talking to Viney and see if he knows better than me as he works in a printers and he might have better knowledge than I've got..

HTH

Wow that's some machine! Bit on the big side butit isn't that expensive and hell I live in hope.

Thank you Fizz

There is always someone on here who can help, it's one of the things I like about this place

[wanders off to find a supplier]

[TSM]

Have you considered a all in one unit like the Minolta Konica Bizhub C250. Got one at all our offices. It scans to email/ftp, fax from the copier or desktop, printer. Mabey an option like that is better. It usaly is cheeper in the end as HP toner is quite expensive.