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62 of 65 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
HP 1012 Outstanding Low Cost Laser Printer, July 8, 2004
I will make this short and sweet. I love the HP 1012.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
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