A Good Printer for a Small Business.

For as many conveniences as the digital world has brought us, inevitably we still require printed materials. Whether it’s a memo, an invoice, a letter from a relative, or a tax statement, it’s often useful to have a “hard copy”. In business, these printed records are often used and referred to in order to validate, track and record the way we do business. Small businesses are no exception from the paperwork load; in fact they often have more paperwork because they tend to use traditional resources.

THE CASE FOR LASER

So, if you have a small business, and you recognize the need to be able to print documents, what do you use? Ink jet or laser? Advertising seems to be delivering a tremendous push towards ink jet printers in the consumer and small business markets. They would have you believe that you can receive laser-like quality with very low cost. Although there are appropriate times to purchase ink jet printers, if you are a small business owner, and are considering a network printer for six or fewer people, the proper laser printer will deliver high quality at a more affordable price than ink jet.

Photo and text printing are two very different beasts. If you’re looking for a photo printer, then this review is not for you. However, if most of your printing needs are text documents then a printer like the Hewlett Packard LaserJet 2300d may work well for you. I’ve used this printer for about a year at my office, and have printed thousands of pages. In all that time I’ve used a single cartridge and I’ve yet to have one page jam! I found those results to be very encouraging considering the painful experiences I’ve had in the past with some Lexmark printers.

OLD FAITHFUL?

Three key factors in choosing a printer are reliability, ease of operation, and print quality. As I mentioned above, in the thousand of prints I’ve run, I haven’t had a single jam, even when running print jobs with irregularly sized paper, and paper with varied thickness. Neither have I experienced smearing or smudging of the toner. The printer processes even the most delicate and bright paper without creasing, tearing, or bending corners.

SMOOTH OPERATOR

Operation is easy and intuitive. Although I’ve never consulted the instruction manual, I’ve used advanced duplexing capabilities. The user interface consists of a small 3”x3/4” backlit LCD display. Every printer operation can be controlled through an array of only six color-coded buttons. My favorite is the red “cancel” button. Numerous times I’ve sent a document to print and then realized it was incomplete or too long. A single button (if you have the reflexes) can cancel the print job, saving time and resources. Other buttons are the “pause/resume”, “menu” and scroll buttons. There is also a blue help button, but it seems redundant because it just tells you to press the menu button. What a weird design.

The menu allows you to retrieve previous print jobs, choose paper type, run diagnostics, service the printer, and get general statistical information. This is my favorite part! For example, I know that I average 7% coverage of a piece of legal sized paper over the thousands of prints I’ve made. In addition to an exact count of how many pages I’ve printed, I can also view how many pages of each type of paper, envelope, or stationary I’ve printed. An excellent feature to help with office supply ordering and forecasting! Among the other statistics is an estimate of how many pages I have remaining based on toner consumption. Ironically, obtaining all of this statistical and diagnostic information requires you to……yeup, print it!

The 2300d has a main tray that holds 250 pages of legal paper that is flush with the bottom of the printer. Putting the printer on anything other than a flat, smooth surface will cause it to be difficult to pull the tray out. You’ll also need to reserve about 14 inches in front to pull said tray out to load it. The front of the printer has a pull down door for manual loads, with an adjustable paper feed for various sizes (when the door is open, the printer pulls from that feed tray by default). Small diagrams indicate which way to face paper and envelopes which is a bonus and eliminates the half dozen or so test prints in order to get the orientation correct. There is an additional upright paper tray that folds out of the back on a small angle that I rarely use.

QUALITY

The 2300d has 48 MB of memory, and provides two additional DIMM slots for additional memory. It is post-script enabled, so fonts are smooth and easily read, no matter the size. Lines and objects are sharp and neat. To me it has always seemed that printing with laser presents a level of quality and hints at a professionalism that is very difficult to achieve with all except the most expensive ink jet printers.

THE BOTTOM LINE

At approximately a cent per printed page, (replacement cartridges vary between $50 and $70) the 2300d offers affordable printing, low maintenance, dependability, and excellent quality for the modest investment of $550-$650.

Well, there is nothing drier than a review on a printer, so if you’ve stuck through it so far, kudos to you.