A great office or small business printer (HP Laserjet 2300)

Member Name: richard_richard

Product:	HP Laserjet 2300
Date:	17/04/04 (574 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Speed, Print quality, Ease of use

Disadvantages: None really!

This 2300 model was recently purchased by the company I work for as an upgrade for an older HP Laserjet 6P model that had finally conked out!

The Hewlett Packard 2300 is a standard black and white laser printer with a good set of features. It currently retails for around £399-£450 depending on the supplier you choose.


Specifications
This is a modern, fast mono laser printer. The specs are pretty impressive. It has a maximum resolution of 1200 x 1200 dpi. The printer will whiz out copies at up to 25 pages per minute, pretty speedy! You get 32mb of memory on board which is more than adequate for most offices, although this can be upgraded to a meaty 288Mb if you wish. There is a 266Mhz processor sitting inside this printer to ensure a fast response to print requests. (To me it doesn?t seem that long ago since we were using PCs with this processor speed!)

A new addition on this line of printers is an added control panel LCD screen. This gives a two line display and allows you to use the features of the printer in a more user friendly way.


In Use
This printer was pretty easy to set up on our network. As with all HP printers a CD is supplied which provides you with the drivers you need to run the printer on a PC or Server.

Once the printer is up and running, the speed of response is the first thing that grabs your attention. It only takes a few seconds for the printer to respond to a print request, and this is obviously due to the powerful processor inside the 2300 directing operations.

The speed of print media output is also very impressive. With this printer able to run up to speeds of 25 pages per minute, those long documents certainly take less time to churn out that with our older HP models!

Another thing that grabs the attention is the crispness of the print. This is down to the 1200 x 1200 dpi print quality, which is pretty much double what we have been using in the past. (The Hewlet
t Packard 6P model we have been using has a 600 x 600 dpi resolution).

The LCD screen this printer possesses is a very handy addition! The two line display allows you to quickly access the printer?s features through a series of logically laid out menus. It is also much easier to troubleshoot problems with the printer as error messages will be displayed on the screen, rather than the sequence of flashing lights that you get with many of the older HP models.

This 2300 model has a printer tray that can hold up to 380 sheets of standard laser/copier paper. On the front of the printer is a fold down paper feeder which can be used for higher quality media or envelopes. This printer can also accept more unusual media such as transparencies, but these must be suitable for the specific printer or you really wreck the machine! (Yes a member of staff did this by putting OHP transparencies through one of our printers!)

Another good feature is that the printer does not require much warm up time (unlike the maddening warm up time of the HP 4500 colour laser printer, see my Ciao review on this!) and so will be ready for printing very soon after being switched on in the morning.


Conclusion
Well I don?t have any gripes about this Hewlett Packard model! I would recommend this printer to anyone looking for a fast black and white laser printer. The speed and quality of printing is both impressive, as is the response time to print requests. The LCD screen is also another nice feature that makes solving printer problems much less of a headache.

I would imagine that as this printer is mono only it is more suited to an office environment rather than home use. However, if you have a home business this might well be the sort of printer you are after.

Thanks for reading!

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