89 out of 90 people found this review helpful.
HP Laserjet 4100dtn Laser Printer
Date of Review: May 25, 2002
The Bottom Line: I would recommend this printer to any company looking for a high speed laser, but doesn't have a lot of space to put a big printer.
I have acquired most of my knowledge of printers from working for a computer and printer repair company for the past 8 years. We specialize in HP and Epson printers as well as most other brands of printers. I try to pass on some of that knowledge along with specific details of the printer I am reviewing. In this review I will focus my attention to the newest printer I have had the pleasure to use and it is the HP LaserJet 4100dtn.
The printer
The HP LaserJet 4100dtn printer is an amazing little printer that has so much to offer. It can be a workhorse workgroup printer used by several users as well as a stand alone printer in a busy doctors office. The HP 4100 series was designed to merge the two medium size laser printers in HP's busy stable of printers. By merging the HP 4000 series and the 8000 series printers, HP supercharged the 4000 series and eliminated the need for the 8000 series.
Size
When I first saw the HP 4100dtn in the office I thought the owner just bought new HP 4050 Laserjet printers. I soon found at a closer examination, that I was wrong they just looked a lot alike. The HP 4100dtn is small enough to be placed on the end of a desk and not take up the entire desk. It is much larger that a personal laser printer such as the HP 1200, but considerably smaller than the HP 8100 Laserjet. The printer is taller than your average laser printer and that is due to the extra 500 sheet paper tray that was added to the standard one 500 sheet paper tray that you would find on the HP Laserjet 4100. The additional paper tray increases the paper capacity of the HP 4100dtn to 1100 sheets of paper. With this additional paper tray you can program the printer to continue to pull paper from the third tray after the second tray is empty. This will allow you to print larger jobs without having to refill the paper tray.
The other thing that affects the overall size of this printer is the built-in duplex unit. With this unit installed in the printer we are able to print on both sides of the paper without having to reload the paper into the paper trays. One draw back to this double sided printing is that it reduces the speed of the printing. The actual dimensions of this printer is 23.7" X 27.44" X 28.62" so you will need to considers these dimensions when you decide where exactly you are going to place it.
Speed
The speed of the HP 4100dtn has to be the single most important upgrade HP made to this printer. The original HP 4000 series printers had a maximum print speed of 17 ppm (pages per minute). The HP 4100dtn has a maximum print speed of 25 ppm (pages per minutes) in single sided mode. If using the duplex mode your print speed will be seriously reduced. But, imagine if you had to manually reload the paper if you didn't have the automatic duplexing feature. Since I am in sales now, I use my printer to print many letters and presentations for clients. I love the speed and convenience of the automatic duplexing feature.
Print Quality
The print quality rating of is measured in DPI or dots per inch, which means simply how many dots can be squeezed into the smallest space. The closer you put the dot to the next dot will decrease the jagged look to characters of print. It will make the letters you print so much more crisp. For anyone that remembers the first laser printers, they would look so jagged on the edge of characters. That made it almost impossible to be used for those important letters for most businesses. As laser printers evolved so did quality of print or resolution of the print. Manufacturers started squeezing those dots closer together and the print quality started to get a lot more crisp. Today, the laser printer has achieved the 1200x1200 dpi range and the print quality is truly awesome. Even though this printer cannot print color, you would be amazed at the quality of black and white graphics comes out of this printer.
Consumable
The HP 4100dtn uses a toner cartridge to create the image, this toner is a dry material, unlike inkjet printers that use a liquid ink to create the image. The toner is a dry material and it is mixed with a material that has a magnetic properties. Using the magnetic properties the toner is transferred to the page and then it is carried through a unit that uses pressure and heat to fuse the toner to the page creating the final image. The toner is contained within a closed cartridge and this cartridge contains enough toner to create up to 10,000 images. Now that number is based on a single sided page with only 5% of the page covered by toner. So your actual page count will depend on a whole lot of variables. These toner cartridges just like inkjet cartridges are not cheap, the cartridges from HP are costing $140.00. You maybe able to find them cheaper on the web, but I would recommend you stay away from the refilled cartridges or non-HP cartridges. Just from experience, you may save money in the short term. In the long run you will not get the same result from a refill or non-HP cartridge.
Setup and Connectivity
Setting up the HP Laserjet 4100dtn printer is a snap, it comes standard with HP Jetdirect 610n. The HP Jetdirect 610n is a print server for 10/100 fast ethernet connection for your LAN (local area network). All the drivers are located on the CD that is included in the box with the printer. If you are setting the printer up on a single PC you can connect the printer to your PC using a standard parallel cable which is not included in the box. The CD holds the drivers for the following Operating Systems; Window 3.1x, Win9x, Win ME, Win 2000, Win NT, Win XP, Mac OS, HP-unix and Linux. The printer has a LCD display on the front for operator to easily setup all needed functions. It will also display error messages in the event there is a problem.
Likes and Dislikes
I really like the fact that I can print anything I want while talking on the phone, most laser printers are very quiet. I also like that I can print up to 1000 sheets of paper continuously. The downside of the printer to be the price tag, at a hefty $1600.00 starting price it is not for the faint at heart. But, it is well worth the money if you can fit it inside your companies budget.
Now for the dry part of the review, the technical specifications and optional features.
The HP Laserjet 4100dtn
250 MHz Processor
25 pages per minute
1200 dpi print quality
Monochrome print (Black and White)
150,000 duty cycle
2 paper trays
1100 sheet input - Standard that includes a 100 sheet manual feed tray
1600 sheet capacity
Letter, Legal, and Envelope size paper
3x5 to 8.5 x 14 paper size
32MB of memory
Max. memory is 256 MB
Parallel port (with supplied cable)
HP Jetdirect 610n print server.
2 EIO slots for expansion
Duplex unit (2-sided printing)
Light gray exterior
Optional features
500 sheet paper tray
Upgrade memory modules (100 pin DIMM SDRAM), 8MB, 16MB, 32MB, 64MB, 128MB
Fast infrared port
In conclusion, I would recommend this printer to anyone that needs a high speed laser printer.
