[SOLVED] HP Boat Anchors

chappyfl

Honorable
Jun 29, 2016
2
0
10,510
Ok, for the better part of a decade I have been fighting with two HP 1100 laserjets that my wife uses in her office... lets call them reports and checks. both have a built in wifi radio and I hate them. Never had any trouble installing them on the various networks that have come and gone over this time as I changed hardware here at the farm but they just never stayed happy. Finally after a few years of them just not being reliable and many, many hours of tinkering and reading I just disabled the radios and used an old imac running win 7 as a print server via a usb connection. Worked great, no hassles and flawless print jobs for almost two years. The other day the old imac started blue screening and after reaffirming the HP's hatred of normal operation using their internal wifi radios I decided to just drop a hard line into the room they live in and add another switch to my unifi system. But, since neither of them have a network port I am getting rid of them.... which brings me to the actual question....

What is the most reliable small office black and white laser printer? Someone said they prefer Brother but I honestly have no idea... looking for a solid network laser printer with an internal rj45 i can plug into the new switch. I have always used HP and had decent luck except these two in this instance....
 
Solution
Ok, for the better part of a decade I have been fighting with two HP 1100 laserjets that my wife uses in her office... lets call them reports and checks. both have a built in wifi radio and I hate them. Never had any trouble installing them on the various networks that have come and gone over this time as I changed hardware here at the farm but they just never stayed happy. Finally after a few years of them just not being reliable and many, many hours of tinkering and reading I just disabled the radios and used an old imac running win 7 as a print server via a usb connection. Worked great, no hassles and flawless print jobs for almost two years. The other day the old imac started blue screening and after reaffirming the HP's hatred...

4745454b

Titan
Moderator
I literally just bought a laser printer for my home. Wife wants to copy her art drawings and the daughter is in school. What i bought us way more than i wanted or even need. But check out the cannon mf642cdw. The 642 is the same as the 644 as far as i can tell. But the 644 is sold out everywhere. I got the 642 from bestbuy, i think it's the same thing with a different model so they don't have to price match. If you don't need to copy/scan function or the ADF there are the MF4xx models. But my 642/644 has an rj Jack in the back. Along with front panel usb port for printing from thumb drives.

There is an odd issue where the default tray to print from is the manual feed instead of drawer one. But you can change that in the printer options. Otherwise so far the printer has been excellent. Even supports printing from your phone. Both apple and Android.
 
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Ok, for the better part of a decade I have been fighting with two HP 1100 laserjets that my wife uses in her office... lets call them reports and checks. both have a built in wifi radio and I hate them. Never had any trouble installing them on the various networks that have come and gone over this time as I changed hardware here at the farm but they just never stayed happy. Finally after a few years of them just not being reliable and many, many hours of tinkering and reading I just disabled the radios and used an old imac running win 7 as a print server via a usb connection. Worked great, no hassles and flawless print jobs for almost two years. The other day the old imac started blue screening and after reaffirming the HP's hatred of normal operation using their internal wifi radios I decided to just drop a hard line into the room they live in and add another switch to my unifi system. But, since neither of them have a network port I am getting rid of them.... which brings me to the actual question....

What is the most reliable small office black and white laser printer? Someone said they prefer Brother but I honestly have no idea... looking for a solid network laser printer with an internal rj45 i can plug into the new switch. I have always used HP and had decent luck except these two in this instance....

HP 1100 are about 20 years old, they did not have WiFi, in fact I don't think they even had USB but used a parallel port. Getting 20-10 years of printer working for pretty much the cheapest model laser HP made is pretty good.

The cheap HP lasers are pretty reliable, the enterprise ones are very reliable. The laser printers from the big brands are close in quality and reliability. Just pick any of them and you should be fine. Biggest thing people look at is toner cost so you can check around for that.
 
Solution