HP Printers

I've personally been buying and using HP printers for over twenty years now. I fondly remember our old HP LaserJet II, IIId and 4si printers from the 80's and 90's. They each probably printed several hundred thousand pages with hardly any servicing or maintenance before eventually quitting. In 1999, we purchased our HP LaserJet 5000GN and, nine years and probably a hundred thousand pages later, it's still going strong! We kill fewer trees these days because we print so much less than we used to. The 90's vision of the "paperless" office is really approaching reality!

I'm disappointed to report that my 2 1/2 year-old HP OfficeJet 7410 inkjet's scanner unit apparently just failed. When copying or scanning, the unit will routinely make a loud grinding noise, displays a "scanner failure" error message, and hangs. So now it can print but can't scan, fax or photocopy.

Since it's out of warranty, nobody locally wants to fix it, and it's not worth shipping it for service. As my home office unit, I doubt it's even scanned or printed 1,000 pages yet and it still smells and looks like new. At $468 delivered, that means it cost me about 46 cents per page to own and operate, and that doesn't include the cost of toner and paper! I realize I can't compare a multifunction inkjet-based printer to a workhorse LaserJet, but this multifunction unit wasn't that much cheaper than those LaserJets.

I've since replaced this defective HP OfficeJet 7410 with a new HP LaserJet CM1312mfp multifunction. We'll see how long this one lasts, but I'm certain it's not going to make it to 100,000 copies or 10 years like the old workhorses...