| Product: |
HP Laserjet 5 |
| Date: |
17/10/07 (187 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Reliable, quick
Disadvantages: Bulky, accessories are expensive
The HP Laserjet 5 is now a somewhat dated printer, but is still seen in many offices throughout the country (and no doubt throughout the world).
Like many similar printers in the famous Laserjet range, the HP Laserjet 5 is a tad on the bulky size- an imposing white cube sitting perched on the end desk of the office like a watching gremlin, occasionally humming into life to quickly spew out some nicely-warmed printouts.
That said, the powers that be within the company have decided that it was well worth the money- and it's not often that they make decisions that go *that* way. Why do they think so? For the same reasons as I do, I would expect. It's not particularly noisy, it prints quickly and doesn't get paper stuck in its multitude of internal workings unless someone does something silly with it.
The printer is quite heavy- the specification states that it weighs 17 kilos, and believe me, when you're installing it and lifting it onto the desk it certainly feels like it. It's not the weight so much that makes it difficult to lug around (no, really!), rather it's the dimensions, which are roughly cuboid and which somehow contrive to make it difficult to grab hold of and move about. That said, once the printer is in its correct place and all the cables are sorted out, it's big enough and ugly enough to stay exactly where it was placed. There have been a couple of occasions where some lightweight inkjet printers were pulled off the desk by someone pulling a cable- you'd have to yank the cable pretty hard to move this beast off its perch!
The Laserjet 5 features the PCL6 printing language, which it uses to communicate with network devices such as your PC etc. This is an updated version of the PCL5 series and is generally more stable, and works without any issues on Windows 2000 / 2003 networks.
The printer was easy to install on the network- all it required was a TCP port, IP address etc. and it was working within minutes. The other useful thing is of course the good driver support for HP devices in virtually all versions of Windows. I believe this printer will in fact work for such ancient incarnations of Windows such as Windows for Workgroups 3.11 (not that that is much use to most people these days). The drivers for HP Laserjet 5 printers can be installed pretty much automatically, especially if you're connecting to it over the network from a PC.
Page printing is fairly quick at 12 pages per minute. There are faster printers around, but generally this speed is sufficient for most purposes.
The toner (this is the powder that's transferred onto the paper when printing takes place) and the fuser unit (the device that basically engraves the toner onto the paper) are quite durable and long- lasting. Like most laser printer accessories, they're not especially cheap, but then again it's not that often that you have to buy them.
The Laserjet 5 will accept envelopes and overhead transparency sheets as well as normal paper, and will also use paper sizes such as Letter, Legal etc. which are "sort of A4 but slightly different" as many people like to describe them. It will also print A5. Note that unlike some laser printers it doesn't print A3 paer. It's bulky, but not *quite* bulky enough for that particular task!
Like most printers it can be quite sensitive about the temperature of its environment (much like its owners, then). Avoid placing it in areas where it will get cold (e.g the server room) or hot (the vast majority of office have air conditioning these days so that shouldn't become a problem... unless your air conditioning breaks at the height of summer, of course).
You should be able to pick one up for under a couple of hundred pounds these days- considerably less if you're lucky.
IN SUMMARY:
Overall, it's a good, dependable printer like many in the HP range. Driver support is excellent (if you have problems, you can always download from or consult with the HP website). It's a good corporate monochrome laser printer and provided you look after it (not that it needs too much looking after) it will serve you well and prove a sound investment.
If you run a home office and space is at a premium, you may however want to think twice about getting a printer of this size (not ot mention the other thing to watch out for- the cost of the accessories such as toner). You'd probably be better off getting a small inkjet printer, particularly if you don't do vast volumes of printing.
Summary: Recommended for medium to large offices which require high volume output.
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