Trial

We conducted an interview with one of the students who bought the HP LaserJet 1010 that we recommended. She shared with us her installation process and her hands on experiences with her new laser printer. Below is the summarized interview.

Installation Procedure and observation afterwhich

She installed the printer on her notebook computer. First, she removed all the tapes holding the various trays and she put in the toner cartridge. The rest of installation was straightforward. She just installed the driver CD, plugged in the power and USB cable and it is ready for use.

..Easy to use and high efficiency of printouts..

She tried printing her lecture notes to GEK1511 on computer hardware (27 pages in total). She took down the time it took from the moment she click the "Print" button. It only took a total of 2mins and 20seconds to print out all the notes! Needless to say, she was quite impressed. An equivalent printout on an inkjet printer would take much longer. Printing notes was never easier or faster! As this is the first laser printer she owned, she was very impressed by the print quality and speed.

..quality of the print was outstanding, text and diagrams looked crisp and have very clear edges..

A small little experiment out of curiosity

The quality of the print was outstanding, text and diagrams looked crisp and have very clear edges. Definitely better than any inkjet printouts she had seen. A friend of hers told her that laser printer printouts are "waterproof" as in they do not smudge when water drips on them. She did a little experiment to prove it. Indeed, the laser printouts retain the print without smudging when she dipped it in water. She did a similar test with an inkjet printout and the color starts to bleed soon. This is due to the way laser printers work. They do not "spray" ink onto the paper like inkjet printers do. Instead they make use of a toner - a special black powder that "melts" at high temperatures to imprint the image on the paper.

A common complain regarding laser printers is the amount of noise it generates when printing. Surprisingly, the HP LaserJet 1010 was relatively silent throughout the printing process.

..the HP LaserJet 1010 was relatively silent..

She then talked about the printer driver and options. Among the printer driver options, there is one that enables multiple pages to be printed into one page. This is a useful function and saves paper, which is good for large output volume. There is also an option for "EconoMode" where the printer will minimize toner usage without sacrificing too much image quality. Constant usage of "EconoMode" may increase the toner cartridge to more than 2000 pages as stated in the manual. Having said that, she did noticed that such printout appeared slightly faint when compared to the normal ones not set to "EconoMode". "This is just an extra tip to better cater for the needs of individual students thus entirely up to individual's preferences and priorities", she told us.

..perfect only if that HP could have included a more comprehensive user manual..

Last but not the least, she wished that HP could have included a more comprehensive user manual. The user manual provided was simply a large piece of paper with the basic setting up instructions, not very useful in her opinion.

After using the HP LaserJet 1010 for a few weeks, she expressed total satisfaction with her purchase. Although the startup cost is slightly higher ($280 compared to say $180 for a good inkjet). She knows that she would be recuperating the costs as she prints.