[Simon]

OK, I'm trying to buy an inexpensive HP LaserJet in Europe and it's a real PITA to find information on the HP pages. Some don't offer real tech specs, some printers don't show up, etc.

I was hoping people here can maybe help me get some order into this mess. The models I'm looking at are the 1010, 1012, 1015. Here some questions:

- Are all these models sold in Europe or are some only sold in the US? Are they still being sold or are some already "old"?

- They all seem to have USB interfaces. Which are Mac compatible? Are they compatible with Panther right out of the box or do I need to install a driver? Is this driver on a CD or do I ned to d/l it? Is the driver OK? Stable?

- How many PPM? How many DPI? How much memory? Real world speed?

- Do they auto-wake and auto-sleep? Or do you need to manually turn on and off?

- Loud? Quiet?

- Good quality? Problems? Complaints?

Thanks in advance for your help.

[Simon]

Ah com'on guys, can nobody tell me what the deal is with these printers?

Or at least a page that offers such info sicne HP's don't...

Pretty please...

[Back up 15 and punt]

You can download the PDF specifications for these printers from the following websites.

1010

http://www.hp-expo.com/uk/eng/consum...et/q2460a.html

1012

http://www.hp-expo.com/at/ger/consum...et/q2461a.html

The downloadable spec for the 1015 is not available but all of these printers should be available in Europe.

[RooneyX]

Just want to say I've been using bubblejet for years because I didn't know how good lasers were. Well, I just bought my first laser, the HP 1300, and am totoally shocked at how fast and reliable they are. I'll never touch bubblejets again.

[Simon]

Thanks for those links Backup!

Now, what I really don't understand is why HP says only the 1015 works with OS X. It's the one that has PCL5, the others claim to be "host-based". Whatever.

But actually, if I search for the 1010 and want to download drivers, there is an OS X option and if I select it HP offers the LaserJet 1150/1010 Series driver.

So what's the deal? Does the 1010 and 1012 work with OS X Panther or is it just the 1015?

[Back up 15 and punt]

Originally posted by Simon:
Thanks for those links Backup!

Now, what I really don't understand is why HP says only the 1015 works with OS X. It's the one that has PCL5, the others claim to be "host-based". Whatever.

But actually, if I search for the 1010 and want to download drivers, there is an OS X option and if I select it HP offers the LaserJet 1150/1010 Series driver.

So what's the deal? Does the 1010 and 1012 work with OS X Panther or is it just the 1015?

All of these printers should work with OS X. The potential problem you could run into with almost any vendor is the simple fact that product life cycles are so short now that you might find that some of the drivers could either be buggy or simply incomplete. The literature on all of these printers states that they are compatible with OS X. But not necessarily panther.

[Simon]

Thanks for the reply.

Actually HP only states that the 1015 works with OS X and they claim the 1010 and the 1012 only work with Windows. But I know a guy that has a 1012 and he swears it's printing from Jaguar. So I guess it works.

Now, I have come across a rather good offer for two other HP LaserJets. Namely the 1150 and the 1300.

Any comparisons? Should I rather go with the 10xx since they're new or could I also take the 1150? The 1300 has PS emulation, but I don't know how much that's worth in everyday life. Of course I'd expect that to make it take more load off my Mac and put it on the printer, but I'm not sure.

HP claims the 1300 and 1150 to be much faster than the 10xx series. Is that true?

Does anybody here own a 1150 or a 1300 and care to give me some insight? Panther compatibility? Anyone?

A quick run down of the models in question and their price here:

1010 - 12ppm - 600dpi - 8MB - price: 213
1012 - 14ppm - 1200dpi - 8MB - price: 263
1015 - 14ppm - 1200dpi - 16MB - price: 319
1150 - 17ppm - 1200dpi - 8MB - price: 359
1300 - 19ppm - 1200dpi - 16MB - price: 412 (has Postscript!)

I would really appreciate any help here. Thanks.

[RooneyX]

See above, Simon. The 1300 is damn fast and works much better with OSX than all my previous Epson inkjets. Not one printing error.

[Back up 15 and punt]

I have always had better luck using a postscript laser rather than many of the inkjets that people depend upon for their every day work. If people print more than 20 pages a day than you best look at a laser rather than a inkjet. The cost of an inkjet will eat you a live.

[Simon]

Originally posted by RooneyX:
See above, Simon. The 1300 is damn fast and works much better with OSX than all my previous Epson inkjets. Not one printing error.

Yeah, thanks for the info on the 1300.

Now, the question is, is it worth paying 130% just for Postscript and additional speed or should I just go with the 1015?

The guy I know that has a 1012 already says it's damn fast and since all I plan on doing is printing papers with mainly text (and smaller eps figures) I'm wondering if I should really spend the extra cash.

What about memory and resolution? If the calculation is being done on my Mac ("host-based" as HP calls it), what do I care about how much memory my printer has? It's on a dedicated USB2 that's fast enough.

And where do I need more than 600dpi? If the printer can do only 256 shades of grey, why should I care about having a 1200dpi resolution. I know there are cheap ink jets that claim they have 2400 dpi, but as far as I'm concerned it's just bullsh!t (except maybe on photo paper) since any laser printer page of text looks better - and that even holds true for an old 300dpi Apple Laser II vs. a modern HP 1200dpi ink jet. So what's the real deal here?

I'm starting to wonder if I shouldn't just go for the cheapest (the 1010) since they all seem to perform great anyway...

[RooneyX]

For me the speed is important when printing 100 page plus screenplays. It depends on what you're printing. I don't use Postscript but if you do or are thinking about it then why not?

[mr breaker]

Originally posted by Simon:
1010 - 12ppm - 600dpi - 8MB - price: 213
1012 - 14ppm - 1200dpi - 8MB - price: 263
1015 - 14ppm - 1200dpi - 16MB - price: 319
1150 - 17ppm - 1200dpi - 8MB - price: 359
1300 - 19ppm - 1200dpi - 16MB - price: 412 (has Postscript!)

Are any of these Rendezvous equipped? Are these printers/drivers compatible with 10.3?


I'm looking for a laser printer for a small office.

[Simon]

Originally posted by mr breaker:
Are these printers/drivers compatible with 10.3?

I have successfully used a 1012 with Panther. I just installed the drivers that were on the included CD and the printer worked perfectly. The quality was fine and the speed was awesome.

I am thinking about getting a 1010 just because it's cheap and seems to do a great job.

[mr breaker]

double post

[mr breaker]

Anyone know if the 1012 is Rendezvous enabled?

[chabig]

Simon,

Thanks for that information. I have a friend who just bought one and can't get it to work. I downloaded the driver and will install it tomorrow. MacAddict had rave reviews for the 1012 so I figured it must work.

Chris

[Simon]

Originally posted by chabig:
Thanks for that information.

np

I have a friend who just bought one and can't get it to work. I downloaded the driver and will install it tomorrow.

For the sake of completeness I would like to add that I used the CD that came with the 1012 to install the drivers on my Panther PowerBook. I don't know how up-to-date they were and how any newer drivers work (if there are any actually).

I popped in the CD, did a custom install of the OS X drivers, openened the printer utility, selected the 1012 and it worked. If this won't work for your friend try first deleting any older HP printer drivers, deleting the printers from the printer utility list and/or deleting com.apple.print.* files. There are people who have reported rather strange stuff going on with HP printer drivers - but of course I don't know how messed up their systems were in the first place...

[andreas_g4]

I just bought a hp laserjet 1010. Cheap, easy to install, works perfekt.

[Simon]

Originally posted by andreas_g4:
I just bought a hp laserjet 1010. Cheap, easy to install, works perfekt.

Thanks for your report. The thread must have been buried very deep by now.

How did you get it to work? Was it supported by OS X right away? Through which protocol? Did you use the included CD? Or did you download a driver?

I find your report rather interesting, because I have never seen HP state that the 1010 works with OS X. It says Windows only on the box, it says so on hp's site as well. I have never seen them acknowledge that it works under OS X. They claim only the 1015 works with OS X which is baloney (since I have seen a 1012 work under OS X as well).

So, why don't they advertise the 1010 as Mac OS X compatible?

[Graymalkin]

Here's my experience with an HP 1012 I bought recently. When I share it on my network other Macs can see it with no problem. I prints beautifully from evry program I've tried thus far.

[Simon]

Graymalkin, thanks for your link.

I would like to ask you the same I asked andreas_g4 since I couldn't find it in your other thread:

How did you get it to work? Was it supported by Panther right away? Through which protocol? Did you use the included CD? Or did you download a driver?

[Simon]

Since all the reports on the 1010, 1012 and 1015 are positive, the question arises which one to get.

Does adding 8MB RAM to the original 8MB really help on a non-postscript printer? Will I really feel going from the advertised 12ppm to the advertised 15ppm? Will I really see a difference between the 600 dpi model and the 1200 dpi model?

Are these things really worth it or is best to just go with the 1010 because it works fine and it's the cheapest? Opinions?

[andreas_g4]

Originally posted by Simon:
Graymalkin, thanks for your link.

I would like to ask you the same I asked andreas_g4 since I couldn't find it in your other thread:

How did you get it to work? Was it supported by Panther right away? Through which protocol? Did you use the included CD? Or did you download a driver?

No, I had no built-in support. However, I downloaded the driver here. It takes some time (about two minutes) for the print center to recognize the new driver but after that everything is fine.

[Graymalkin]

I had a nice reply to this the other night but MacNN decided there were too many connections. In summary:

The 1012's driver is the same as the 1010 and 1015. The quality is excellent and the driver off the CD works but there's a newer one on HP's website. The latest driver I know of is 1.1.3. I haven't managed to get Rendezvous sharing working but regular Print Sharing in the Sharing panel works great. I've been able to share my Canon S400 and LaserJet 1012 without a problem.

If you can find the 1012 for a decent price it would be a bit nicer of a printer than the 1010. However if the 1010 is the cheapest of the 10xx series you can find it will work fine for you. The output is crisp and prints quickly. The printers are also really small which makes them easy to fit on your desk or wherever it is you keep your printer. The main difference between the 1015 and 1012 is extra RAM and IEEE-1284 (Parallel) connectivity.

I wouldn't suggest the LaserJet 1300 unless you're going to be using it for a large group of users printing over a network. You can either connect it to your network using a dedicated print server or grab an ethernet module for it. The ethernet module will raise the up front cost trmendously and using a dedicated print server you could afford two smaller LJ's to hook up to it.

[Simon]

andreas_g4 and Graymalkin, thanks for your excellent reports.

[Simon]

This discussion is already rather old, but I haven't had time to deal with the printer issue up to now. And, lately my g/f has started again to nag me about the darn printer. So I'm gonna buy the HP LaserJet 1010 tonight since it's so cheap and seems to print text clearly and quickly which is what she mainly needs.

I'll report back on my initial experience as soon as I find some time to install the printer.

[Graymalkin]

I love this thread, as it gets older it gets more and morei nformation! I recently picked up an AirPort Express to replace a WAP that was starting to get a little futzy on me. I've using the AP Express to bridge my wired and wireless networks together and thus far it is working beautifully. I decided to plug my printer into the AP Express to see how wel the print sharing works on it.

It is totally awesome!

I've got my 1012 shared to all of the computers on my network. No longer do I need my Powerbook on and plugged into it to let another system print. The printing is pretty much the same speed as a direct USB connection to the printer. The printer is found easily in Print Setup Utility via Rendézvous and uses the normal HP driver for it. I'm really happy with the AP Express and now even moreso now that I've got my printer shared on the network.

[Simon]

Good news first: HP's LaserJet 1010 works perfectly with Mac OS X 10.3 Panther.

Here's some more detail. My g/f friend brought it home after work yesterday. Despite HP mentioning only Win support on the box, no Mac compatibility info on their site and sales people warning my g/f that it will not work with any Mac at all, it works as good as any printer has ever worked for me. Actually, it's even better.

• It ships in a box stating Windows only, but it comes with the same CD and manuals that come with the 1012 and 1015 (the 1015 'officially' offers Mac support).

• It is connected to the Mac through a (not included) USB cable. The Mac will identify it as a 12Mbps device.

• It isn't supported out of the box by a clean Panther install, but the installer on the CD or on HP's website installs very quickly and works right away. The installer doesn't litter the entire system. With some shell commands I described here I was able to verify that the installer only installs the directory laserjet/ in /Library/Printers/hp/ and the ppd file in /private/etc/cups/ppd/. There is no more junk installed, the installer doesn't require a reboot and it took less than a minute for it to install the drivers and me to select the new printer in the print utility in the 'USB' section. A minute later my first 100 page test document was coming out of the printer.

• The Mac OS X driver works perfectly fine with Panther even though HP only mentions compatibility with 10.1. and 10.2. The driver supports all the printers functions, standby mode and it seems to work stable and w/o writing tons of garbage to the system and console log files.

• The printer is silent when it is in standby. Even in a quiet room I can hear no difference between standby and turned off. When it starts printing you can hear it well, but it is by no means loud and as soon as it's done, it goes into standby immediately and turns quiet again.

• You don't need to turn it on and off the whole time manually. There is a standby mode from where the printer 'turns on' automatically as soon as the print queue has a new job for it. The consumption is 2W when idle. There is one LED showing standby and ready.

• The printer is fast. My test document (a scientific paper, pdf format, mainly text, some figures, tables and diagrams) actually came out with the advertised 12 ppm. After your job gets sent to the queue it takes a couple of seconds for the LED on the printer to start blinking. Once it blinks, the printer starts feeding the first sheet almost immediately and from there on it feeds and outputs continuously. It is really fast. Especially when you consider it's host-based (no PS), has no real dedicated logic and has only 8MB RAM.

• Print quality is fine with me. Of course it only does shades of gray and b/w, but it does it fine. It's crisp and it has no smears or fuzziness. Even in toner saving mode it still offers a much better output than any inkjet I've seen outputting draft. Of course it's only a b/w 600dpi printer, but as long as you're not doing photo printing, I can't imagine that this printer won't be perfectly fine for home or small office use.

• It has a manual feed that takes envelopes etc. You can select this tray in the printing dialog box.

• It's really cheap. Here in Europe I paid about $147 including VAT. There was no other laser printer at this price point available that offered anything near the HP's features or quality.

• It's small and doesn't take up much space. Unless you want to catch the paper when it comes out, you will fold down a paper holder which adds slightly to the width of the device. The paper feeder sticks out about two inches from the otherwise box-like printer.

• I have read on the web that it's even AirPort Extreme and AirPort Express compatible. You attach it to the access point via USB and OS X sees it in the printer utility section 'Rendezvous' and makes use of all functionality (assuming the 1010 driver mentioned above is installed). I can't confirm this myself however, because I haven't tried (yet).

To sum up: if you're looking for a simple printer, with good quality and speed, but you don't want to spend a lot of money the HP LaserJet 1010 is a really good deal. Despite the advertisement it works just perfectly with OS X Panther.

[tooki]

Originally posted by Simon:
[B]• It is connected to the Mac via USB, but it only takes USB1, i.e. 12Mbps, which is enough for the printer, but it should not be on the same USB bus as 480Mbps devices because it could slow them down.

Not true, USB devices can be mixed and matched without speed penalty. All USB 2 Macs as well as all the USB 2 cards that work on Macs use controllers that automatically route the port on the computer to a low or high-speed controller as needed. So if you plug a USB 1 device into the computer, it gets routed to a USB 1 controller.If you plug a USB 2 device into the computer, it gets routed to a USB 2 controller. If you plug a USB 2 hub into the computer, and plug a USB 1 device into the hub, all the USB 2 devices work at USB 2 speed, and the USB 1 device works at USB 1 speed. Everything on the hub is then routed to the USB 2 controller in the Mac.

Yes, ideally you keep USB 1 devices off on their own port, since the Mac has more USB 1 controllers inside. But in practice, it really doesn't matter.

tooki

[Simon]

Tooki, thanks for the free education.

I thought I remembered that

Code:
USB port
|- USB2 hub
 |- USB1 device
 |- USB2 device

would slow the USB2 device down to the lower 12Mbps speed. But, you're right, it won't. I will correct my original post.

The real point I wanted to make is that my USB2 capable PowerBook identifies the printer as a 12Mbps device.

[-Q-]

Originally posted by Simon:
Tooki, thanks for the free education.

I thought I remembered that

Code:
USB port
|- USB2 hub
 |- USB1 device
 |- USB2 device

would slow the USB2 device down to the lower 12Mbps speed. But, you're right, it won't. I will correct my original post.

The real point I wanted to make is that my USB2 capable PowerBook identifies the printer as a 12Mbps device.

Interesting. My HP 1012 is identified as a USB 2 device. That must be one of the things they changed with the model number.

But this is a great, great printer for a home. I'm working on a small tutorial on how to use this printer with the Belking Wireless Print Server, so I'll post that in a day or so when it's done (minor pain to set up, but works well overall once set up).

[Skip Breakfast]

Just adding...

I have the 1012 and have never been happier with a printer.

[iMacfan]

Hello,

I bought the 1010 just over a year abo, and I'm pretty impressed. Fast, good value, quietish, looks good and I'm still on the first toner pack (note that this ships with a full toner cartridge, instead of the starter ones with most cheap lasers). The only bad thing is the driver. Don't get me wrong, it installs fine and works without a hitch, but HP never got round to accessing the clean and toner level functions. That's why they don't shout Mac support from the hilltops. Anyhow, I much prefer an excellent printer with a no-frills driver, instead of a bad printer with an all singing, all dancing, yet buggy driver.

David

[Simon]

So, just because my experience with the LaserJet 1010 has been so good I was thinking about buying an Airport Express and to share the printer to all my Macs at home wirelessly.

Has anybody done this with a LaserJet 1010 (or 1012,1015) yet? Any experience reports here?

[iMacfan]

Yes, my 1010 works over AX without a hitch.

David

[Simon]

Originally posted by iMacfan:
Yes, my 1010 works over AX without a hitch.

David

Great. Thanks David for your confirmation. I think I'll go and buy an AP Express just for the fun of it.

[Graymalkin]

Check out my earlier post, I hooked my LJ 1012 up to my AirPort Express and it works flawlessly. I'm incredibly happy with the setup because now I can share my printer with multiple machines without needing it attached to a powered on computer. Before I was using my Powerbook to share the 1012, now I just use the APE.

[Simon]

Thanks Graymalkin, I saw your post. I was just wondering if this would work equally well on a 1010. I guess it will. Great!