This Workhorse Serves Networks Well (HP Laserjet 2200dn)

Member Name: anonymili

Product:	HP Laserjet 2200dn
Date:	25/06/06 (375 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A fast and reliable network printer

Disadvantages: Quite costly for a small business or home use

The HP Laserjet 2200dn is a versatile laser printer which I’ve been using for over 2 years at work. It’s from the HP Laserjet 2200d series and this one is specifically designed for network users. I’ve never had cause for complaint with its print quality and it’s never needed a service in the time that I’ve used it. It was brand new when I first started using it, the installation process was very simple - pretty much plug it all in and insert the driver CD into the PC and follow the on screen instructions.

The HP Laserjet 2200dn is for use with Windows 3.1x, 95, 98, 2000, Millennium, NT 4.0 and XP. It can also be used with Mac 7.5.5 and above.


# MY USAGE #

I use the HP Laserjet 2200dn at work on a daily basis. It’s shared with a colleague and gets a lot of use every day, between 200-300 pages a day (sometimes double that) including letters, detailed spreadsheets and reports as well as graphic heavy documents. The target audience (as per the marketing blurb) is “For business professionals and small workgroups in any sized office, seeking reliable and efficient document management solutions, the HP Laserjet 2200 delivers superior performance, increased productivity and exceptional versatility” which I would say describes our office use of it to a tee.

As well as being shared with a colleague who sits in the same office as me, it can be accessed by any number of the 20 other PC’s on our floor of the building, which is not often necessary due to other printers being available located closer to the PCs, but it is useful, for example, if the toner runs out on another printer or there’s a printer breakdown and an engineer has to be called (although I would add that in the time I’ve been using these printers at this office, we’ve not had to call out an engineer once). The toner cartridge running out has happened several times though as some people ignore the warning displayed on the screen that says “toner low” until it actually runs out!

This Laserjet delivers excellent laser performance as well as providing advanced printing solutions by adaptable connectivity and flexibility. It prints up to 18 pages per minute and I’ve only experienced paper jams twice in over 2 years when someone had a) put in creased paper and b) someone had left a folder on top which stopped the paper from being able to come out freely.

The best use for this printer would be an office environment with a network of users. We have up to 4 or 5 people connected to this printer and it meets our demands with ease.

The 2200dn has flexible paper handling with an in-built duplex unit, with a standard and separate multi-purpose paper tray for special media like letterheads, labels, transparencies and envelopes.


# TECHNICAL BLURB #

With this printer it’s easy to print professional documents with “consistently crisp text and sharp graphics at true 1200 x 1200 dpi resolution”. It prints up to 19ppm (pages per minutes) of letter size paper or 18ppm of A4 paper (which is what we tend to use as standard in the UK) which is fairly fast for a printer of its size and spec. It comes with 8 MB of standard memory and it can be expanded up to 72 MB.

It has a built in duplexer (which means it can automatically print on both sides of the paper) which to me is a brilliant feature, easy to use and saves a lot of paper and hassle with the photocopier!

The built in paper tray holds up to 250 sheets of paper and an extra tray with extender (which can be conveniently folded away) for easy loading of letterheads or other pre-printed paper. The extender tray can hold up to 100 sheets of paper. There is also a rear output tray with extender

The printer comes with a print server card (HP Jetdirect EIO - J4169A) for connecting to a 10/100 Base TX network which is already installed for you when you but the printer.

The warranty and customer care information is listed on the CD that comes with the printer.

The printer is supplied with all the necessary cables you’d need to connect it up and use straight away. It only needs to be connected to one PC (the print server) and away you go. The network is quite easy to set up. All necessary instructions are included in the CD that’s supplied.

NB: It is a good idea to turn the printer off from the power when adding or removing cables.


# WHAT’S THE FOOTPRINT? #

For those of you who need to know the dimensions of the HP Laserjet 2200dn, they are: 10 inches (255 mm) in height, 16 inches (405 mm) wide, 17.1 inches (435 mm) long/deep and weighs in at 29 lbs (14 kg).


# WHAT’S THE DAMAGE? #

You can pick up one of these printers for about £350 from ameiva.co.uk or for £460 from laserjet.co.uk. Then again, if buying this for your office, you might have to use your preferred supplier who may be able to negotiate a better price for you.


# TONER CARTRIDGES #

It’s recommended by HP that only original toner cartridges are used for their printers (but then again all printer manufacturers say that). As this is an office printer we tend to stick to originals anyway, it’s not worth the risk of it breaking down in case the remanufactured cartridges are faulty. We use the printer too much to risk it being out of action whilst waiting for it to be repaired.

An original cartridge - HP C4096A (96A) - for the HP Laserjet 2200dn will cost between £66.99 (from inkprices.com) to £85.00 depending on where you buy it from. You might have a special deal with your office stationers, which means you could get the toner much cheaper. The original toners give you an average of 5000 printed pages. You can also the toners directly from HP for around £65 (all prices I’ve quoted are including VAT).

The price for a HP compatible toner for this printer is about £32 from ukdvdr.co.uk with an average life of 5000 pages.


# CONCLUSION #

All in all I’d recommend this for office use with network needs. It’s fast, it’s reliable and not very noisy (compared to other printers I’ve used). I’ve no complaints about it at all - I was hard pushed to think about any disadvantages.


To find out more about HP products you could have a look at their website at www.hp.co.uk

Summary: A good workhorse of a printer which will serve your network needs effectively

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