The HP LaserJet 1012 - set it and forget it.

My father is in need of a easy to use printer to replace his resource guzzling, paper jamming inkjet printer. As with all technical device, prior to handing it over to my father, I usually do a test run with it just to make sure he won't run into any snags. Sounds like I'm a nice guys eh? Most of you know that it has nothing to do with nice; I'd rather not have the late night calls to fix the thing.

In addition to the HP LaserJet 1012, I have owned the Samsung ML-1250 and Brother HL-1440.

At $150, price was par with the older Brother HL-1440 and less than the $200 Samsung ML-1250 (which is also an older samsung model). One of the reasons the HP LaserJet 1012 is priced less is because it uses a kind of software driver that uses some processing power by the computer your printing from. I don't notice any slow down on my 1.4 ghz computer from printing, but could if someone has a older computer model. Also because of this host processing driver, which means HP needs to spend significant resources to create drivers (no PCL), Linux is not supported.

Setup was easy, a matter of installing the toner, installing the software drivers, plugging in a usb a/b cable from computer to printer, plugging in the power cord from power source to printer.

The first thing I noticed was the fast printing - and it has nothing to do with ppm (pages per minute). This is exactly what I needed - I typically print something quick and then run. The HP 1012 Laser printer is extremely fast at printing from standby mode - a mere second or two. Also there is not a sound from the printer before or after the print. With the samsung ml-1250, I could hear a fan and loud audible churning 30 seconds before printing a page. This noise would persist 1minute after the print was done. The Brother was similar, however the print time was faster than the samsung and only seconds slower than the HP. The HP LaserJet 1012 does all this so well because of a Instant-ON diffuser. The HP printer draws much less power during standby (2 watts) vs Samsung ml-1250(less than 10 watts) vs Brother HL-1440 (6 watts).

The quality of the prints is excellent - clean and crisp. One of the drawbacks of the HP 1012 is that the printer's memory is not upgradable from 8megs that it comes with. However, I don't think that will be a problem for most home users and has not been one for me.

I have tried the HP LaserJet 1012 on a USB 2.0 and a USB 1.1 compatible computer. Both usb ports worked flawlessly and print speed were similar. One computer is a AMD Athlon 1600xp (usb 2.0) and the other is my PentiumIII 750mhz Laptop (usb 1.1). In addition, I have tried hooking up the HP printer to a USB Print Server to share the printer amongst two computers, and have had no problem with that setup either.

The HP software installing also has a easy printer program which monitors for problems and allows you to configure advanced printer settings such as print quality.

Another feature I really like about the HP 1012 is the paper handling - it's easily located in the front and has manual feeds for most paper types (like envelopes). The samsung design placed the paper holder in the back, which I felt was harder to get at.

When the printer is not in use, it easily shrinks to about the same size as a small inkjet printer - impressive. Looks good too with black and grey which match the current trend of computers.

The toner is replacable and unlike the Brother hl-1440, there is no additional drum to replace.

I'm very happy with the HP 1012, and the only dilema is I want to keep it for myself.