The HP 2100 Base Printer: Great For Minimum Office Needs

When it comes to HP printers and their model numbers, it can seem sort of like the Franco American spaghetti product of ABC’s and 123’s. That’s because the company makes a base line of printers and then adds different features to those printers to effect a “difference” between them, as minor as that difference may be.

That is the reason why you may see printers with the same numeric designator but then different alphabet letters behind the printer model number. What do these alphabets mean? Well, in most cases it indicates the absence of addition of a paper tray or perhaps an addition or omission of a network interface card.

Basically though, all of the printers underneath the original base “number” are exactly alike when it comes to print drivers and so forth. In other words, technically those printers are the “same” using the same print drivers.

Such is the case with the HP 2100 series or printers. There are six different printers in the HP 2100 series. These are the HP LaserJet 2100, the HP LaserJet 2100 M, the HP LaserJet 2100 TN, HP LaserJet 2100 se, and the HP LaserJet 2100 xi.

Unfortunately for us, when our purchasing department decides to purchase printers, they pay no attention to what “brand” they are getting but usually just send out an order out for a series. That means we never know exactly what we are getting until things are delivered leaving us with a great menagerie of printers to install for different offices.

HP LaserJet 2100

The HP LaserJet 2100 printer is the base model of the HP 2100 series. The features of this printer include a standard with a 100-sheet multi-purpose Tray 1 that folds out for use from the main printer section, a 250-sheet Tray 2, and 4 MB of memory. The printer prints about 10 pages a minute in black and white laser format.

This printer is better suited for a smaller office with lower paper production and limited paper size capacity. Currently we have about three of these printers installed in lower grade clerk’s workstations that print only about a maximum of perhaps 30 sheets of paper a day. These print jobs consist mainly of Word Perfect documents and envelopes.

With that capability and limitation of diversity the HP 2100 printer works well for these clerks. We have yet to have a service call on this particular model for over a year now and they have absolutely no complaints about the printer at all.

Printing on the HP 2100 printer is clear and precise. This printer prints at 1200 x 1200 dots per inch text and graphics with 163 levels of gray. The end result is a flawless print that is readily usable for business level correspondence.

The first paper tray is very flexible and can hold a wide variety of paper sizes, textures, and densities including the following: letterhead, envelopes, labels, transparencies, custom-sized media, postcards, and heavy paper. We have used this printer for most of these paper types and the end results are always crisp and clear. In the past I had a concern about putting labels inside of one of these printers because of other bad experiences I had with previous HP printers. However, the HP 2100 prints absolutely flawless in this manner and never jams.

What I Don’t Like About the HP 2100 Printer

There’s really one thing that I don’t like about the HP 2100 Printer and I suppose because it is uniform across model numbers you could say that I don’t like this about the series in general. That one thing that I don’t like about this particular printer is that when you are using tray 1 that the end “printed” media feeds out of the back of the printer instead of out of the front flat tray. This causes you to have to pull the printer away from the back of the workstation back area and may cause some space problems.

In one instance we have the printer sitting on the edge of the surface of the workstation now because we have to keep the back tray open for printing postcards and this can be rather annoying because it wastes desktop space.

Recommendation

Naturally I like most HP printers that I have come in contact with. Every year we get more and more of these printers and I am pleased to say that their lifespan is absolutely incredible. In most instances we still have printers working of the HP variety for over eight years or more, and still the quality of the print of these printers just is phenomenal even with routine maintenance repairs.

However, the 2100 series of printers is probably my favorite of all because of their light weight, incredible performance, backward compatibility, and ease of use.

Therefore, I suggest for lower end work requirements such as I have mentioned before that you will probably be very pleased with the overall price and performance of the HP 2100 printer. It’s a great printer, very flexible and can overall improve the performance of your office’s production with its reliability.

Specifications of the HP 2100 Printer include the following:
Print speed - Up to 10 pages-per-minute
Paper input bin capacity - Tray 1: 100 sheets of 20 lb Bond (80 g/m2) paper, or 10 envelopes, Tray 2: 250 sheets of 20 lb Bond (80 g/m2) paper
Base memory - 4 MB of RAM
Upgrade memory expansion - Three DIMM slots are available for 4, 8, or 16 MB RAM DIMMs (for a maximum of 52 MB).
Print resolution - 1200 dpi for the best print quality,600 dpi for complex graphics or faster output
Duty cycle - Up to 15,000 pages per month
Height/Width – 9 X 16 inches
Weight – 11 ½ pounds