grimjack2's Full Review: Hewlett Packard LaserJet 6L Printer
I originally owned a HP5L printer, which I purchased for about $500 early in 1995. Back then, this was an excellent choice for a home printer. It was incredible to find a Laser printer for under $1000. Especially one that was so small, and didn't use over 1200 watts just to print a single sheet. Printing 4 pages per minute seemed like a godsend when many $1000 lasers still printed only 1 page per minute, not to mention the pitiful speed of Dot Matrix printers, which were still the most common home printers then. All the problems I had with the printer back then seemed to be acceptable based upon its price and quality. However, when I traded up for a new 6L in early 1998, I realized that nothing had been improved. Sure it is rated at 6ppm instead of 4ppm, but I almost never even get those speeds with anything other than pure text pages.
One of my biggest problems with the printer is that the drivers STINK! It is not unusual for the print drivers to be replaced by 'totally bogus WP Print drivers' for reasons that no one at Hewlett Packard or anyone on the Usenet groups can figure out. The only solution is to re-install the drivers. This has become almost second nature to me. The most annoying about doing this, however, is that the downloaded drivers are still designed to work only from floppy disk! If you are somewhat computer literate, you can run it from the hard drive in three separate folders called 'disk1', 'disk2' and 'disk3'. When it asks to put in the 2nd floppy, you can browse to the next folder. I am amazed by this every time I do it! I am also amazed by the fact that when you first install the drivers, the instructions actually say to put the floppy in the drive, and then to go to the RUN command on the Start Menu and type "A:setup.exe" in the RUN box. Come one now! Surely HP realizes that anyone can figure out how to use the MY COMPUTER icon and double click on the A: drive, and then double click on the only file with an icon.
The printer drivers also seem to have a problem deciding where the edges of the print area lie. The printer routinely fails to print out web pages from Netscape. It seems to want to print to an area larger than the printer can fit, so it spits out one piece of paper, says clear paper jam, and will then try and print the same page out over and over again. Another problem is that the printer commonly tries to take multiple sheets of paper through, regardless of temperature or paper quality. Sometimes this causes a jam, sometimes I just have two blank sheets of paper between every printed sheet. Later I have heard that all the HP vertical feeder machines have this problem, and all have now been discontinued.
Along the same line, the printer commonly jams. So commonly, that usually I instinctively print out each page separately, rather than try to print out a multiple page document and have it fail, forcing me to figure out what got printed right, and what I have to re-print. Trying to print an envelope is a problem because the printer is so warm, even on the first printing, that it commonly seals the envelope as it is passed through.
The toner cartridges can last for 3,000 pages and only cost around $60 to replace right now. I still haven’t replaced my original one yet. However, due to consistent jams, I have had to pull out the toner cartridge many times. It slides in and out very easily. For cost purposes, lasers are still much cheaper in the long run than ink jets.
Considering that many high end inkjets look almost as good as this dated print engine, also prints in color, and costs even less, makes this an extremely hard printer to recommend today. It's shape and size were originally a plus for me, and still would be, if they could gets the bugs fixed with the vertical paper feeder, and the drivers. Due to this printer’s general bad word of mouth, and now outdated design, I strongly doubt we are going to see a HP7L model.
SHIPPING INCLUDED!!! Ships with powercord only. Toner and Cable available in the supplies section of this website. (90 Day Warranty)!More at Cheap HPprinters.com
The HP LaserJet 6L printer is ideal for business users in MicrosoftWindows DOS or OS/2 environments who want the convenience and confidentiality of a ...More at GreatPrinterDeals.com
The Hewlett Packard 6L is very similar to the HP 5L, except for a slightly faster print speed. The small footprint (8.9"x12.3"x13.2") of the HP 6L mak...More at The Printer Depot
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