- Crisp, 1,200 dpi effective resolution
- Up to 15 ppm; instant-on fuser, first pages out in 10 seconds
- Compact design, perfect for small workspaces
- 150-sheet input tray, 10-sheet priority input tray
- USB interface, PC and Mac compatible; 1-year warranty
There are painful issues when buying low cost lasers beyond the cost of replacement toner.
The laser drum has a limited life span and will eventually fail, possibly do to the corrosive effects of heat and humidly over a period of six months to a year. In many lasers this is a separate assembly which has a rated life span of about 20,000 pages. That is great if you print all those pages within that time period but some users are finding that the drum fails regardless of per page use because of the above. They may print two thousand pages in one year and still have to purchase a new drum when the printing begins to fail. The pain is that a drum costs almost as much as a discounted laser printer does in the first place. This is a rip because these drums are not much more substantial than an empty coke can. Truly this is a case of "selling you the razor and hoping to make money when you need the blades". Look at all the Amazon reviews of other lasers where people have had them for more than six months. Do you begin to feel their pain?
The HP apparently does not have a separate drum assembly. When you replace the cartridge you are replacing this also. That is probably why their cartridges appear to cost slightly more per copy than the other low cost lasers that I looked at. HP states their cartridge is guaranteed to be good for at least six months after it has been opened and that an unopened cartridge has a shelf life of two years in the plastic package.
What HP doesn''t want you or I to know is that they are rather conservative with the supply of toner and that the toner is designed to wear out long before the cartridge and drum does in the home environment of limited usage. If you really plan to print with the HP 1012, you may use that laser cartridge up long before six months is out. You may be interested in knowing that you can save two thirds the cost of a new cartridge by melting a hole in the used one and pouring in new toner designed for the HP 1012. You plug the hole and drop the little guy back in the printer and print away. Some people are reported to be able to do this up to four times before the little cartridge gives out completely and you must buy a new one. Anyone who can refill a salt shaker can be taught how to refill the HP 1012.
This tactic drops the true cost per page way down compared to those other printers I looked at. To calculate their true cost per page you have to figure in buying a new drum or amortizing the total cost of the printer and pages printed until you must throw it away. Almost all of them can be refilled in a similar manner to the HP or you can pick up remanufactured toner cartridges for them. Do a web search for "HP 1012" laser "toner refill" using GOOGLE and you will eventually figure out how it is done. You can buy both the toner and a little twelve dollar tool kit to melt the hole from various sources on the net.
Everyone else in these Amazon reviews have already hit on the other key reasons I grabbed an HP from one of Amazon''s affiliates.
ADDITIONAL 1012 PROS
1 The printer has no fan and is super quiet.
2 The 1012 uses only two watts in standby, you could leave it on 24X7 and it will draw as much as an instant on monitor or TV in standby.
3 When printing it draws less than 300 watts, the others I looked at almost cause brownouts as they draw so much current while printing.
4 The toner save feature works very well, I find it suitable for most of my print outs.
5 It is so small it will fit almost anywhere. I placed mine behind my LCD montior screen in the area where there once was old huge CRT monitor body.
CONS
1 Printing on 3x5 cards is slower than normal printing, from hitting the command to send to the printer and the first card actually coming out. I suspect there is some driver issue causing this.
It is not irritating but noticeable when you are used to get the first page in eight to ten seconds.
My inkjets take far longer and they don''t print on 3X5 cards correctly.
2 Turning the 1012 off while printing will cause a paper jam and the HP 1012 lights will flash indicating a problem when you turn it back on. You have to take out the toner cartridge being careful not to expose the drum to light; I covered mine with the black plastic bag it came in. Then you must pull the jammed sheet of paper carefully forward thru the exposed assembly.
This only happened to me once when I realized I had submitted a long WORD document of several hundred pages when I only wanted two pages excerpted out of it. I panicked before thinking because this printer is so fast and it was churning out all these pages when I only wanted two! The correct way to cancel a print job is open the Win XP printers'' folder and click on CANCEL to stop the current job.
I don''t work for anyone in the computer industry. I have owned a number of HP printers over the years and still do. They always seem to be well built. The last inkjet I bought was an EPSON. I truely loath this printer with its constand clogs and super expensive ink which is wasted in head cleaning.
I am trying to find someone I don''t like to give this to.
Vic
Buy HP LaserJet 1012 Printer Now
I ordered the printer on Christmas Eve 2004 from Amazon, and it arrived about 3 weeks later on a Friday. I reckon the holidays must have delayed the shipment. I have seen it selling for a little less elsewhere, but taking into consideration that shipping was free and I didn''t have to pay sales tax in California, it was the best deal.I have a Powerbook running Mac OS-X 10.3.8 and I had the printer working in about 15-20 minutes after opening the box. There is no USB cable or a manual. A PDF manual is supplied in the CD-ROM along with the print driver. Just make sure you purchase a USB cable. I got an inexpensive Belkin USB cable from Amazon.
The supplied HP print driver is version 1.1.3 and it prints the pages in reverse order by default. The printer puts out the pages face down, so you have to rearrange the pages in the proper order every time. I am a writer and I print out over 100 pages at a time, so that can be a big problem. I searched for a newer version of the print driver on the HP website, but they only had version 1.1.3 for download. I emailed Tech Support at HP on a Saturday and received a reply from them on Monday. They informed me that Version 4 of the print driver can be downloaded via an FTP address, which they emailed me. I don''t know why they didn''t make the latest print driver available on the HP website in the first place. I downloaded Version 4 and everything has been smooth sailing ever since. I have to commend HP Tech Support for their timely response and effectively solving my problem.
Regarding the speed of the HP 1012.... It puts out the first page in less than 10 seconds. It is very quiet, because it doesn''t have a fan. I have heard that the printer slows down after 50-plus pages while doing my research prior to purchasing it. Honestly, that concerned me. However, I was pleasantly surprised when I printed a manuscript that was 106 pages long. My printer never slowed down! Although the printer did get rather warm without a fan, it kept putting out the pages at the same consistent pace. I''ve printed 100-plus page manuscripts several times now with the same results. Even then, if you are doing extensive printing jobs, expect it to slow down. Otherwise, you might be better off getting a different printer that can handle the volume.
I bought the printer for printing text and the results are sharp and clear. I considered the Samsung 1710 and 1740 and a couple of Brother printers in the same price range. I soon learned that Samsung stopped supporting Mac OS-X. While less expensive, Brother printers require a separate toner and drum, thus making the operating costs higher in the long run. The HP 1012 has the toner and drum combined together in one cartridge, so there are no expensive drum replacements. I''ve heard some people complain about the $69 price for the HP 1012 toner cartridge. You won''t see me complaining, because I will not be paying $150 for a separate drum replacement. Besides, I''ve seen a new HP 1012 toner cartridge selling substantially less than $69 on the web.
For my requirements, the HP 1012 was my only choice and the best choice. I''ve had the HP 1012 for 3 months now, and I''ve purposely waited this long to write this review so I can fully evaluate it. Aside from initial print driver issues, it has performed flawlessly printing everything from pages to envelopes. Feel free to contact me if you need print driver Version 4. I rate it 4 and a half stars. It would be 5 stars if it wasn''t for the print driver issue.
Read Best Reviews of HP LaserJet 1012 Printer Here
I bought this laser printer when I realized I will need to print out dozens of pdf research papers. Laser printers can churn out black and white prints much faster than ink jets. As a low end laser printer, I was surprised at how good the quality of its print outs are. The printer is quiet and compact. Toner cartridges cost around 70 bucks for 2000 pages, which is a bit more expensive versus that from other brand names. But I am very satisfied with my purchase. A great laser printer to have at home for printing out forms, documents and homeworks! I''d give it a 4.5 if i could, but its more 4 than 5 because it prints a bit slow and is a bit on the expensive side versus other budget printers.P.S. I also own a Konica Minolta 1350W, I find the LaserJet 1012 a much better product.
Want HP LaserJet 1012 Printer Discount?
I purchased this printer a year ago for use in my home office, and for my fiance to print drafts of her masters paper on. I had an inkjet printer that worked fine, but the cost per page was quite high, so I went shopping for a laser printer.I chose the 1012 based in part on positive reader reviews on Macintouch.com. I ordered it from Amazon (free/slow shipping) and it arrived just a couple days later -lovely! It''s been trouble free ever since. It has only 8 MB of memory, but this has proven to be more than adequate for printing full page bitmaps, so it does not turn out to be a handicap.
The toner cartridge is the one achilles heel of this device. It is designed for approx 3000 page service duty, about half a typical HP toner cartridge yield, but costs about as much as others, about $70 retail. (Your Milage May Vary: I''ve gotten at least 3500 pages so far, but I have a spare tone cartridge ready to swap in). I suspect this is how HP hopes to make money on such an inexpensive laser printer. But, if you do the math, the cost per page for your first 3000 sheets, including paper and the printer, is under seven cents per page, compared to 25 cents or more for inkjet prints. After this, the ongoing cost is only $0.025/page -yes, two and a half cents. This assumes you get only what HP predicts, and not significantly better, as I have experienced. If your budget allows a more expensive printer which gets more pages per cart, you may want to, but for those of us on a budget, this is still a great deal, with the HP reliability we have come to expect.
As noted by other reviewers, heavy duty cycle causes the printer to slow down. I don''t consider this a big flaw -it has no trouble turning out sixty page drafts on demand, at its full rated speed. And it''s ultra-fast first page out is great!
I have printed undersized stock and heavy stock with no real issues. When printing on card stock, the printer slows down and prints five to ten sheets per minute. I assume that the heavy cardstock somehow causes it to heat up and slow down. I''ve also printed sheets down to post card sized (about 4"x6") and it handles the paper fine. (The manual says the minimum sheet size is 3.5"x5".)
A tip for Mac Users: this printer works fine with Panther out of the box, but install HP''s drivers anyway to access some extra printer settings, such as Economode, low/high rez printing, and explicit support for the manual feed ("bypass") paper path.
PROS: fast first page out, low cost of operation, HP reliability, plug-and-play with Airport Express
CONS: higher cost of toner than professional-grade printers, slows down to cool off during very heavy print jobs
SUMMARY: If you need to print hundreds of pages at a shot, get a professional grade printer such as the HP 4050. However, if you are a SOHO user and rarely need to print more than fifty or sixty pages at a time, I feel that this printer is an excellent choice with a low cost-per-page.
What nonsense. The printer is misrepresented. If you only print a couple of pages at a time, then this is fine. But if you print out program code or book or article manuscripts, this is a BIG problem.
