Monster Printer
Written: Aug 23 '00
|
Product Rating:
|
|
| Ease of Use: |
 |
|
| Paper Handling: |
|
|
|
Pros: Fast, great color and print quality
Cons: You will never be able to move it again
|
|
|
| Keanusbutt's Full Review: Hewlett Packard Color LaserJet 4500 Printer |
This is a printer for serious printing. If you’re not doing serious printing, the price will definitely deter you (I paid $3,172 plus an extra $680 extended warranty for 3 years with Unisys). If the price doesn’t deter you, the size will. This massive cube weighs in at a superhealthy 130 lbs. (Don’t ask your 105 lb. office clerk to unpack and lift it for you.) I had the delivery guy (looked to be Peruvian, about 150 lbs., 5’7”) unpack it and lift it up onto a table for me, and we’re pretty sure it gave him a hernia. Take a piece of advice from me: write down the serial number off the back of the printer before you ease it into place, because you may never see the back of the printer again. Its dimensions are 15.4"H x 19.7"W x 22.4"D. It’s a good choice for a large office, or even a small office if you do a lot of color printing. Otherwise, get a different printer.
The 4500 has two built-in paper trays. The main tray holds 250 sheets of paper, the second tray holds 150. There is an automatic envelope feed that holds up to 10 envelopes. The maximum monthly usage is 35,000 pages. I probably approach about half that. The print and color quality is superb. It requires four color cartridges, your basic black, cyan, magenta and yellow. Each cartridge will set you back about $90 at a major office supply store. I’ve only had to replace the black cartridge once over a six month period. It also requires something called a drum kit, also about $90, which you will need to replace every 3-4 months with heavy usage.
The specs say it prints 4 pages per minute for color, and 16 pages per minute for black and white, with a 40 second delay before the printing of the first of your output. This is generally accurate. As we all know, however, print speed also depends on the memory size of your document. So if you’re printing a complicated PowerPoint slide, in color, with builds, autoshapes, different fonts, etc., it’s going to take a lot longer. Still, for that kind of print project, this is the best printer.
I’ve been using this printer for about 6 months and haven’t had any problems with it. It’s had a paper jam only twice during that time. The only drawback with this printer is that it goes into quiet mode if you don’t use it for awhile (maybe 20-30 minutes?), and it takes 3-4 minutes to grind back to life, during which time it is doing things like calibrating, checking, executing, whirring, and snorting. But you can prevent this from happening by pressing the GO button every once in awhile.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 3,172
Operating System: Windows
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
Keanusbutt
|
|
Location: Chicago, Illinois
Reviews written: 2
Trusted by: 1 member
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.