THE BREADBIN DADDY IS CHEAPER THAN YOU THINK (HP Color Laserjet 2500)

Member Name: mdstone

Product:	HP Color Laserjet 2500
Date:	17/02/05 (4370 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Cheap, Good Quality, Very Fast

Disadvantages: Heavy, Bulky

Prices for laserJet colour printers have come down a lot recently and this is evident with the new HP 2500 series printers. HP have recently replaced the 2500 models with the 2550 series is based around the 2550L, which is the standard model priced at £316, the 2550Ln, which is the same specification, but with a built-in JetDirect network card at a price of around £387 and the 2550n, which offers more printing capacity and costs around £445. If you are interested in this printer solely for home use and do not have a network set-up, then the 2550L would be the better option, as this does not have network capability and is ideal for just connecting directly to a PC through USB or Firewire.

Specifications & Look
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Again there seems to be a familiar 'bread-bin look’ to this printer, but this is the daddy of them all. The main reason for this is that the dimensions (w x d x h) are 482 x 452 x 325 mm so it does stand quite large on your desk. The printer weighs 21.8kg according to the specifications list but it doesn't specify whether this is as standalone without the print cartridges and drum installed (as it becomes noticeably heavier once the cartridges and drum are inserted).
All 2550 series printers have 64MB memory, 264MHz processors, a 125 sheet paper tray, PCL 6 and postscript level 3 emulation, one-door access to all printing supplies, support for glossy and transparency media, hi-speed USB 2.0 and IEEE 1284-B connections (Parallel connection). They also have three colour print cartridges (Cyan, Magenta and Yellow) and one black cartridge, which will allow up to 2000 and 5000 pages respectively.
Normally the sides of this printer are a grey colour with a black cover down the middle with a series of buttons that perform different operations.
There are a total of 4 buttons on the printer, one of which is the power button on the bottom left with the others being on the top right-hand-side of the printer. There is a green ‘go’ button that sets the printer into a ‘ready’ state, a brown coloured ‘cancel job’ button for terminating jobs and a ‘rotate carousel’ button that is used when installing cartridges (see below).
There are also a series of LED’s next to these buttons, which indicate the current state of the printer. There are colour coded LED’s to show which cartridges are running low (the light comes on) and empty or missing (the light flashes). This will also blink if a non-HP cartridge is installed and the ‘attention’ LED will flash.
The imaging drum light will again come on if it is running low or flash if a non-HP drum is installed or a drum has not been installed at all. The LED next to the ‘go’ button will indicate if the printer is online, whereas the attention LED will flash if there is a problem (consult the user manual for troubleshooting).

Initial set-up and installation
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When you first open the box you will see the printer itself, a box containing the ink cartridges, the drum unit, set of leads (power and USB), software drivers and manual. The main rule with the printer installation is to remove anything orange from the printer and its parts. As there are lots of moveable parts they are normally secured using cardboard and plastic orange bits that can be either twisted or pull out of position. When you remove the printer from the box and lay it on your desk, the first thing you will need to do is remove all the orange tape. This is mostly found on the paper tray, the back of the printer and the front cover. Once this has been done, don’t forget to remove the paper tray and twist off the orange prong that prevents the paper tray springs from moving, line up the paper size and re-insert the tray.
Next you will need to remove the drum unit from its packaging and open the front printer cover. This will only go in one way so you just need to line up the arrows correctly and push it down into place (the green handle for removing it should be on top in front of you).
Now you can open the ink cartridge box and remove all the orange plastic bits from the cartridges and pull out the ring on the side of each, which will remove the ink ribbon. If you open the front cover of the printer you will be able to see the ink carousel towards the back. On the right-hand-side there will be a letter that corresponds to each ink cartridge and by default the first one should be ‘K’, which is the black ink cartridge. To install the cartridge you need to pinch together the two green buttons on the cartridge and drop this into place making sure you line up the arrows correctly (again this will only go in one way).
Once you have done this you can now connect the power cable to the printer and turn it on by pressing the power button on the bottom left of the printer.
Once you have waited for the green LED light to come on and the printer to do its checks and make a noise for about a minute, you can press the carousel button to rotate the print cartridge carousel so that it brings the next print cartridge into the top position. The corresponding cartridge LED that is in position will flash two or three times so that you know what cartridge to install. However, you can prevent inserting the wrong one, as you still have to match up the letter on the carousel with the letter on the cartridge (Usually ‘C’ for Cyan, ‘M’ for Magenta and ‘Y’ for yellow, which is straight forward really). Each time you insert the correct ink cartridge you will need to close the front cover and press the carousel button to rotate to the next cartridge. Once you have installed all 4 cartridges and the green LED shows on the printer, you are ready to go.

Features
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One of the most stunning features of this printer is the fact that it can print colour sheets at 4ppm (pages per minute) and black sheets at 20ppm. As this is very fast you may think that the quality may suffer as a result, but this is certainly not the case. The printer provides 2400 dpi (dots per inch – measure of sharpness) colour and laser-class quality through a multilevel printing process and is also capable of 600dpi text and graphics.
Included with the 2550n model is a 250 sheet optional tray (tray 2), which can be used as an upgrade on the 2550L and 2550Ln models. This is easily installed by placing the printer on top of the additional tray unit as it acts as a base for the printer. You simply line up the screws with the holes on the printer (will fit first time if lined up correctly) and carefully drop it into place. It is then just a matter of setting up the printer properties of the printer to account for the new tray. This can be done using the printer software, which has the option of adding in a new tray and setting the default paper source. There is also the option of adding a 3rd tray (tray 3), which is a 500 sheet tray, but this can only be done if tray 2 is installed and you cannot have two 500 sheet trays installed at the same time.
There is also an extra memory DIMM slot on the printer so that you can increase the memory in order to improve performance. As I have not done this I cannot tell you how much the performance actually increases, but I would imagine that print jobs would be processed a bit quicker, allowing for faster prints.

Software & Drivers
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The green disc that comes with the printer contains the drivers/software and manual for the printer. Although the printer comes with a paper manual, there is an additional one on the disk that is in PDF format and installation notes in html format.
To install the printer software you simply insert the CD into your CD-ROM drive and it should auto-run into the setup (if it does not you can access the disc contents from Windows Explorer by clicking on your CD-ROM drive). From here you can follow the onscreen instructions and customise what features/tools you wish to install.
For those running a non-Microsoft Operating System such as Linux or Apple Mac, you may need to acquire additional drivers from the HP website (if there are any), as the driver disc only supports Windows Operating Systems.

* Installation by network (see Configuring the JetDirect card below for initial setup)

If you have set up the printer with an IP address then you need to select the TCP/IP option from the drop down menu and type in the IP address that you gave to the printer. Follow the onscreen instructions and then click the ‘print test page’ option to test your printer connection is working.

* Installation by USB/Firewire

If you connect the printer through USB or Firewire and are running Windows XP, then it should detect the new hardware automatically and prompt you to find a location for the drivers. XP is not likely to have these drivers built in to the operating system so you will need to insert your driver disc and set the search location to the drive letter of your CD-ROM drive (‘D’ in most cases). Again, follow the onscreen instructions and print a test page to test it is working.

One of the tools that you should find installed is the HP LaserJet toolbox component. This software provides printer and job status information such as jobs waiting to print, toner and paper levels, consumable and supplies reorder information and the ability to view the control panel. This toolbox can also be configured to appear when attention is needed at the printer.

It is recommended that only the driver for this printer be installed on a central server in a business environment and not the entire software tools.

Configuring the JetDirect card (for advanced users)
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Configuring the printer for network access is a lot easier than it looks. Firstly you will need to print a configuration page from the printer by holding down the ‘carousel’ and ‘go’ button simultaneously. All the details needed, will be listed on the configuration page including the default IP address, subnet, gateway and Mac address.
Before you start you will need to ensure that you have connected the printer to a live Cat5 RJ-45 port on your network and check that there is a connection (indicated by an LED on the printer network card).
There are now 2 different ways of configuring the printer for network access, which are just as easy as one another. The first is if you have HP JetDirect administrator software (this sometimes comes as a package with certain printers), where you can simply load it up once installed (probes the network for HP devices) and type the Mac address of the network card into the search box for new devices. This will search your entire network for new devices (should take seconds on a home network) that match that Mac address. As Mac addresses are unique, you will only find one match. Once you have located the device you can easily configure the device with the options that are listed. One of these options will allow you to set the IP address of the device, which also needs to be unique and preferably set to a static one not DHCP.
The second way of configuring the printer is to type the default IP address of the printer (which you got from the configuration page), into your web browser (ensuring that you do not have the ‘use proxy server’ option ticked in Internet Explorer in a business environment). If you are successful you should be presented with a HP configuration page for the printer. From here you can do all that the JetDirect Administrator software does for this printer and configure almost anything.
For home networks that are running with IP address in the default range of 192.168.0.1 and above should stick to a similar address and those setting up the printer on a business network, follow your IP distribution guidelines to configure the most appropriate IP address (which may well be based upon the location of the printer).
To test that the printer is working for network access, go to ‘Start’ à ‘Run’ and type ‘cmd’. From the command prompt, type ‘ping IP’ (where IP is the IP address you configured it with, e.g. 192.168.0.1) and press enter. You should get a ping response to show that data has been sent and a reply from that address to acknowledge this.

Overview
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All in all this is a top quality printer, which comes at an affordable price for businesses. Its durability should not have you replacing the cartridges every few weeks and although they are expensive to replace, they have a very good money/performance ratio. Definitely a recommended buy, but only if you are likely to use this on a daily basis. Something cheaper may be a better option if you only print now and again.

Thanks everyone for reading.

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