HP Laserjet 8150N Laser Printer (Updated w/more info)
Written: Jan 28 '02 (Updated Jan 30 '02)
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Pros: This is a durable, high quality printer for heavy duty printing.
Cons: The cost is pretty high and so are the add ons.
The Bottom Line: A powerful high speed heavy workload printer. I rarely give 5 stars, but this one deserves it.
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| WildBillm's Full Review: Hewlett Packard LaserJet 8150n Laser Printer |
This is a pretty heavy (112 lb) pretty reliable printer. With a duty cycle of over 100,000 lets you know that this type of printer is definitely a work horse and is made to handle big loads. Being a unix administrator, I usually find most of the manuals and howtos of Unix functions online. These documents can be pretty hefty at times ranging anywhere form 10-15 pages to 300-600 pages. With a print speed of about 32 pages per minute, it really cuts the time to print my documents to a minimum. I just convinced my boss to add a duplexor to this printer so that we can start printing documents on both sides. This will definitely decrease the amount of paper we have been going through lately. Now documents like my "ListServ Lite Owner's Manual" at 211 pages doesn't have to be 211 printed pages. It can now be 106 and I can put it in smaller binders since the print will now on both sides. The only down side with this duplexor is it costs over $300. Since our contractor is slow at getting stuff to us, we haven't received it yet. And I ordered it over a week ago. But that is another story
DIFFERENT MODELS:
There are a few 8150 models:
hn, dn, n and the base model
Price (As of Jan-2002):
Base=$~$1900,hn=+~$3500, dn=+~$1000 n=+~$500
--The + next to the hn,dn, and n means add this to the base price
black print speeds:
hn=n/a, dn=32ppm, n=32ppm, base=32ppm
print quality:
hn=black n/a, (dn,n, and base) *FR=1200dpi quality, 600X600dpi *FR=Fast Resolution
network ready:
hn=Y, dn=Y, n=Y, Base=optional
Trays (standard/maximum):
hn=4/4, dn=3/4, n=3/4, Base=3/4
Duplex Printing (printing on both sides of paper):
hn=Y, dn=Y, n=optional, Base=optional
INSTALL
Like cake, if you know how to scroll through menus and know a little about tcp/ip (If installing on a network). The hardest part of the install was lifting it from the floor to the table. Of course this was a little easier once I found some to help lift it. Before attempting to install a network printer, you need to do a little bit of preliminary work. You need to get an ip address (that is available), subnet mask, and gateway. Since I am one of the network administrators for my company I would have to pull it out of my paper work if I didn't already know what the info was. It is important to make sure that the ip address you are using is not currently used by another computer or printer. I then had to run a category 5 ethernet cable from our computer room to the location of the printer.
Once I had all of the information at hand and the network cable connected to the printer, I went through the various menus to setup the networking capabilities of the printer. Once that was done, I went to my linux (not windows) workstation and configured a new printer with the correct ip address. I was fortunate that the drivers were already installed and I just had to select it from a drop down menu. Then I did a test print and viola! a test page printed.
PRINT QUALITY
Since the resolution on this printer is 1200 dpi, that says a lot. It means your documents will be of extremely high quality and will be very crisp and clear. A word of caution: Beware of people playing with the toner cartridge. We had someone who wanted to check the amount of toner (of a brand new cartridge) by shaking it over the printer. Some toner managed to come out of the casing and fell into the printer. Then they tried to hide it by putting the cartridge back without telling anyone. After the next few documents were sent to the printer, the spilt toner caused the paper to pick up the excess toner and the toner smeared all over the document. It was a mess. We had one of our techs get a dry paper towel to wipe off the excess toner that was spilled inside and after a few more prints the problem was solved.
PRINT SPEED
When looking at print speed, one has to determine the need for speed. Since I work for the Louisiana Supreme Court, we are constantly printing out criminal history on individuals for the state police, protective order information. The printers are constantly running around the clock. So we definitely need something that has some speed behind it. Since we are not constantly printing out manuals like some of the ones I have mentioned, we don’t need the fastest. And that is basically what we have at 32 pages per minute. Just to put things in perspective, my inkjet printer at home prints 6 pages per minute black and white and 3 pages per minute in color. Not the fastest printer out there, but it is for personal use and we don’t print a lot at home. On the other end of the spectrum, if I worked for a company that printed out forms and such where a higher volume of printing is needed, I would probably go with some like the LaserJet 9000 printer that prints 50 pages per minute.
MEMORY EXPANDABILITY
The printer comes with 32 MB of RAM. Which is actually a pretty good bit of RAM for a printer. However, if you have a lot of people printing to this printer you may want to increase the amount of RAM you have. Basically the RAM in a printer will hold X number of megabytes of data to be printed. You can however utilize a print servers print queue. Many print servers are computer based and the amount of print jobs sent to the printer is sent to the print server (computer) first. The print server checks to see if the RAM in the printer is available then the print server sends the data via a network to the printer to be printed. Once in the printers memory, the printer looks to see if there is any jobs being printed. If not, the printer memory is printed. So what does this all mean? The less memory you have in the printer, the more print jobs will be backed up on your server. This will cause more time to be wasted before print jobs. Another scenario is if you send a 500 page document with graphics to a printer with very little RAM, the whole print job will probably not be sent to the printer and your network traffic may become slower. There is also a possibility of something going wrong. So you have to weigh your options when expanding your printer RAM. This particular printer gives you some room to expand holding a maximum capacity at 160 MB- SDRAM.
PRICE (as of Jan-2002)
HP pricing $2,399.00
Comark pricing $2,189.73
Seen as low as $1749.00 at Electrified Discounters (Note:Beware of vendors you are not familar with. I am not familar with this one)
ACCESSORIES - (Prices in Jan-2002)
Print server EIO, plug-in card, USB, LocalTalk, 3 Ports
$94.08
Printer cabinet For HP Color LaserJet 4500, 4500N, and 4500DN printers, white, and metal
$284.12
Printer fuser kit
$238.85
Optional duplex unit for the HP LaserJet 8000 series. This accessory gives your printer the ability to print text on both sides of the page, without having to remove a single sheet!
$340.52
Memory: SDRAM DIMM
64mb=$526
32mb=$282 (limited supply)
16mb=$150
8mb=$86
SPECIFICATION (Taken from the manual)
High Quality
Considered HP's most fastest and most expandable printer
Product Specifications
Printer Type:
Laser A3 (297 x 420 mm)
Printer Resolution:
FastRes 1200
Paper Handling:
Input: 1,100 shts
Output: 600 shts
Monthly Duty Cycle:
100000+
Printer Languages:
PCL 6, PCL 5e, PostScript 3
OS Supported:
SunSoft Solaris 7, Microsoft Windows 95/98, Artisoft LANtastic, Apple MacOS 8.1 or later, HP-UX 11.x, Microsoft Windows 2000,NT4.0, Novell NetWare 5.x, Red Hat Linux 6.1 or later
Dimensions Weight:
Dimensions 22.3 width x 21.3 depth x 20.5 height in
Weight 112.44 lb
CONCLUSION
If you are a small business owner who is doing a lot of printing, you may want to consider using this printer because it may cost you some big bucks in the beginning, it will definitely pay off in the long run. If you do not print a lot, this printer would be an over kill for you. It is expensive, but worth it. The need for repairs is minimal from what I have seen. If you don't physically abuse this printer, you may not need to call for onsite repairs for a couple of years or even longer.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 2,189.73
Operating System: Unix
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Epinions.com ID:
WildBillm
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Member: Bill Mounsey
Location: Slidell, LA
Reviews written: 57
Trusted by: 43 members
About Me:
Unix Administrator in Louisiana. Love college basketball, football, baseball and computers.
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