Customer Reviews

HP LaserJet P1006 Printer

5 star:		(67)
4 star:		(44)
3 star:		(14)
2 star:		(14)
1 star:		(43)

 

 

I love this printer, I bought it on sale over the weekend for under $100 (couldn't resist a laser printer at that price!). I probably printed about 700 pages this weekend, one of the perks of being a Grad student I suppose.

The Positives
-Prints quickly and great font quality
-The printer is SMALL, smaller than my injet.
-Works great with XP and Vista (sorry, No Mac to test on)

The Con
-This printer won't work with my wireless print server. The reason given is that the driver doesn't support it at this time. My workaround for the time being is to share the printer from the desktop in my office since I do most of my printing from my laptop in another room.

Hopefully that driver or a firmware upgrade to the print server (whichever comes first) comes out soon! Otherwise this is an incredible laser printer for the price!

On a side note, many people in discussion forums have complained about the high cost per sheet for a laser printer (about 4 cents a page), it is still far lower than any inkjet AND the printer just came out, as far as I've seen, Laser cartridges (at least here on Amazon) tend to fall in price by a few dollars after the product has been out for 6 or more months. I don't see this changing for this printer as well.

This printer shares a similar footprint with the Laserjet 1012 and 1022. Do not be fooled! It only has a half size (relative to the others with its form factor) toner cartridge, which costs exactly the same (effectively doubling your cost per page). There are issues where the printer will not print from Microsoft Office on the Mac (but those are are driver issues which will be eventually resolved). I hate feeling cheated, and I am very displeased that HP discontinued the other (full-size toner) printer line without telling the consumer they were getting only half as much for effectively the same price. Find a Laserjet 1012 or a 1022, if you still can, and let HP know that selling half as much value, in a full value size package, for a full value size price is not acceptable.

I'm very happy with the printer so far - it's actually exceeded my expectations. I bought it one week ago to use for occasional but very important printing - I'm in law school, and when I need something printed, I need it NOW. :-)

I've used many printers in the past and always had good experiences with HPs. I also currently own the HP Color LaserJet 2605dn Printer (Q7822A#ABA) which is a $400 color laser (which has been excellent). Finally, HP is an American company, so I was specifically looking for an inexpensive HP laser printer when I bought this. I realize that I could have gone with a Brother laser for around $100 or so, but I need absolute reliability - no compromises whatsoever.

The bottom line is that it met all my expectations - small, quiet and great B&W output for documents. I don't print much graphics, so I can't comment on that aspect. By the way, I'm using it with a new MacBook Pro, and there have been no problems.

The printer exceeded my expectation with respect to the speed. It seems to print very fast - nearly as fast as a larger office HP. Just my subjective impression - I haven't timed it with a stop watch.

The only possible negative is that I didn't find an instruction manual included. Not even on the CD-ROM. It may be that I overlooked it because I was in a rush to get going. But HP has an excellent support website where one can download drivers and manuals for all models, even very old ones. Further, the set up and install of the printer has been just like every other HP printer I've used.

I got this from another online vendor for sixty bucks, and consider it a great deal. You can't beat a laser printer for that price. It's fast, turns out decent quality pages, and works with most Windows versions. I bought it partly for the price and partly because it has drivers for Windows Server 2003, which is what my print server is running. I don't know where people are getting these "no drivers" complaints - it has drivers for any version of Windows from 2000 to Vista, and most recent versions of Mac OS X.

No, it can't compete with HP's workgroup lasers, but for the price, it's great. The only caveat I'd offer is the price of toner: it comes with a "starter" cartridge that's only half the regular size, and replacements cost as much as the printer itself. Looks like the cartridges last a while, though - I've printed a fair amount with it and haven't even used up the starter cartridge.

This printer is cheap in both price and quality, but it works OK for the most part. We were having problems printing envelopes from MS Word (Tools-Letters and Mailings-Envelopes and Labels) We kept getting an error message telling us to load the envelope in the manual feed tray and then hit the OK or GO button. The envelope was loaded, but there wasn't an OK or GO button. When you hit the button on the top of the machine, the red error light stops blinking, but it also cancels the print job. The only other button is the power button and that just shuts the machine off.

There is another review about setting the printer up to print envelops before sending the print job, but that didn't work either. Here is what to do.

Since there is no OK or GO button to press, after the job is sent and you get the error message about loading an envelope in the manual feed tray, just open and close the top of the printer. This resets the machine and it accepts the envelope job and the envelope will print.

It took us a while to figure this out - that opening the lid and closing it is this machine's "GO" button. Hope this helps somebody else.

We purchased three of these for my office. The size is perfect for a user's desk, very small. The print quality is decent.

The only real problem with the P1006 is that they are unable to print from MS Office on an Intel-based Mac.

HP tech-support told me this is a known issue that can be resolved by updating to MS Office 2008 for Mac when it comes out.

This is advertised as Mac compatible. It isn't. It worked haltingly with an old G4 powerbook but barely functioned with a newer intel-based mac. The HP support people were reasonably responsive but at different points suggested the problem was with Microsoft, or the Mac OS, or, or . . anyone but HP. But trawl around the discussion groups and you will find dozens of despairing complaints from Mac users. You will also find various possible fixes, some of which work sometimes, the best of which require reasonably sophisticated programming knowledge. At this point you remind yourself of the idea of false economy, calculate how much of your time has beenw asted, and find another cheap laser printer.

The title sums it up: It won't print, even with the new "Leopard" drivers, under OS X 10.5 Leopard. Jobs do not clear the print queue when complete. Tech support has strung me along since I bought the thing in January (it is now June). Now I don't want it anymore, but I'm stuck with it, and I'm angry. If you have a Mac, buy something else.

I received this laser printer as a replacement for my HP LaserJet 1020 Printer (Q5911A#ABA) which was roughly the same size and price. The toner for the older laser jet had roughly double the page yield which is my biggest complaint about the HP P1006.

On a positive note: for the price, this printer is outstanding. It installed in under 5 minutes on both Windows XP and Windows Vista (I have it installed on two machines). It prints VERY fast and is reasonably quiet. The print quality is outstanding, even using the economy mode to save toner. For a home office or general home use, this printer can't be beat for its price. It will save the average user hundreds of dollars in ink costs.

Note to users who want to do double sided printing:
I like to print double sided to save paper and in order to consolidate some of my larger print jobs. I've noticed that double sided printing wreaks havoc on this printer... I'm not sure whether its the toner or the printer itself. In any case, after you print several pages double sided the printer fails to produce high quality prints no matter how many times you run the cleaning utility. Instead you get lots of debris and extraneous black spotting on the paper. So, I recommend you steer clear of double sided printing.

Cute printer. Very portable. But... HP has not released a driver for Mac OX 10.5 (Leopard). Wish I would have known that before ordering! HP's website has almost 100% INCORRECT information about the drivers for this printer. Had to call tech support to find out it was not usable with my system.