26 Jan
2008
26 Jan
'08
1:38 p.m.
At 10:19 AM +0000 1/26/08, Stroller wrote:
My father & I have about half-a-dozen Laserjet
4000s which fail to pick the paper properly. The
problem can easily be isolated to the rubber
"pick up" roller at the front of the tray -
measured with a micrometer a good one is a
hair's breadth larger in diameter than one that
is worn.
I'm responsible for the Unix Printing and
Plotting at work, so I know the problem. We had
this with either a 4100n or a 4200n that a lab
was running cardstock through. What I see die a
*LOT* and what can't be cheap to replace are the
blasted NIC's for the various types of HP
hardware. If I have a dead piece of HP
printing/plotting, that's a good first bet.
the manual feed pickup, too - and these printers
have a resale value of only ?35.
I should see what these go for in the US... I'd
like to upgrade my 5mp to something with built in
ethernet and a duplexer.
I'm inclined to think that in a few years time
our current consumerist practices of throwing
away hardware rather than repairing it will
begin once again to look foolish, but in the
meantime what's one to do?
HP dropped support on a *LOT* of plotters in
2006, they did this without any warning. In fact
I'd placed a service call on one and had them out
*after* the drop date, without anyone saying
anything to me. I'm responsible for a lot of
plotters, HP wants us to replace almost all of
them and refuses to work on them. IDIOTS! As a
result I found a third party repair outfit that
responds faster to any problems I have and costs
less than 1/3 what HP was charging.
I've done a good job of convincing management so
far that HP can go to H***, and that we're not
buying the exact same plotter just to be
"supported" by HP. Still at least HP can provide
me with usable plotter paper, unlike a certain
company....
And before anyone asks why I'm not repairing
these things on my own, I did in the past, but I
no longer have time. Printing and plotting isn't
my real job, and my real job keeps me way to busy
these days.
Zane
--
| Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator |
| healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast |
| MONK::HEALYZH (DECnet) | Classic Computer Collector |
+----------------------------------+----------------------------+
| Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, |
| PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. |
| http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ |