[lug] review: HP 1600

[Bear Giles]

Here's a quick review of the color laser printer.  It should be read in 
light of the earlier discussion of solid ink printers.

Name: HP 1600 (and HP 2600n).

Cost: $300 ($400) at OfficeMax.

Toner cost: ~80/cartridge, so $320/~2000 pages.  Initial cartridges are 
only half-loaded.

Description:  600dpi CMYK color laser printer.  8 ppm.  This is a dumb 
printer that requires ghostscript (or equivalent) filters.  The 1600 is 
a USB printer, the 2600n is a network printer.

Synopsis: printer was easy to install.  (Modulo the usual hassles with 
CUPS and LPRNG).  Uses foomatic foo2hp driver.  Print quality is 
acceptable for business use, but there's visible half-toning on images.  
This may be a problem with all laser printers since the toner does not 
'smudge' and blend into adjacent pixels.  Images seem a little dark 
and/or muted, but that's probably due to the use of the default color 
correction tables.  That should improve as more development effort goes 
into supporting the printer.

Printer supports a 'monochrome' mode that conserves the CMY toner.  
Printer has an 'off' switch.  (Which is good to see return!  I hate 
having to leave the printer on 24/7 since it's tucked under a table and 
too much of a pain to unplug.)

Monochrome wash test (256 steps):  there's highly visible blocking in 
(1-bit) color mode, and discernable blocking in monochrome mode.  In 
contrast my LaserJet 1200 (1200 dpi) shows no discernable blocking.  In 
2-bit mode the wash is disjointed and monochrome images are unacceptable.

Color wash test (5 steps): there's some unevenness.

Color block test (~200 different colors): with exceptions mentioned 
below, solid color blocks look good.  I don't have a reference card to 
compare the exact tone.

Benefits:
  crisp text and solid colors.
  page does not smear when wet.

Problems:
  the colors seem muted... or it may be that my monitor is set too bright.
  the 'green' test page mentioned above will cause a 'page too complex' 
error.
  i've rarely seen the same problem with other test pages.
  the "2-bit per plane" mode is broken.

The problems will probably go away as development continues.  The 
printer clearly works under Windows, so the problems must be in the driver.

Overall conclusion: it's an excellent choice if you're primarily 
interested in 'business' use.  The text is far sharper than ink jet 
printers, it won't smear when wet, and the solid colors won't show 
half-toning.  I agree with the characterization of the printer as 
sufficient for internal use (e.g., newsletters, syntax colored source 
code) and draft copies of external documents, with the final external 
documents produced by Kinkos et al.

It's a decent choice if you're primarily interested in 'personal' use.  
I'm thinking of things like printing Amazon reviews, recipes (where 
moisture will be a problem), school homework (where there can be 
multiple drafts and cost-per-page is important), etc.  You may want to 
keep an ink-jet on hand for those times when half-toning is unacceptable 
or you want brighter colors.

It's definitely not the right choice for printing photographs.  For that 
you should use specialized printers and paper... and the $1/photo at 
Walgreens starts to look cheap in comparison.

Bear