Art-ology

Taking a quick look at the HP LaserJet 2500 printer quickly reveals a workhorse unit from Hewlett-Packard that is sure to please most any networked workgroup needing quality print along with low-cost HP C9700a black toner. That last is important, because many businesses are looking to control costs where they can, and a printer that’s cheap to operate is sure to be attractive. Additionally, the 2500 can operate with Mac or PC computers.

What’s perhaps most surprising about this particular networked workgroup printer is that it lists for only $330. At present, a number of online retailers are also discounting it to a price much less than that. When one considers, again, that the 2500 is delivering good performance for a low price, it’s easy to see why a business might want to consider this printer when it’s replacement time.

Physical dimensions of the 2500 come in at 19″ x 18″ x 20″ in height. It also is fairly light in weight, coming in at only 65 pounds. For the IT specialist who has to connect it and also perform maintenance on it, moving it around and such, this is bound to come as good news. Hewlett-Packard seems focused on such things as size and weight, by the way.

The LaserJet 2500 can deliver about 16 pages per minute of output in standard configuration. If extremely high-quality print is needed, it can be adjusted, though one will need to keep in mind that pages per minute printed will drop to about four. Consider that the quality at that point will rival what one might see on printed stationery, if there’s a concern about the pages per minute speed.

The IT specialist responsible for connecting this printer to its network will have little trouble doing so. The 2500 comes with standard wired technology, including USB 2.0 and Ethernet 10/100 Base-TX ports. For an older network that hasn’t been upgraded to newer technology as yet, there is also an old-style parallel port that’s available for the IT specialist’s use.

Print resolution for the HP 2500 is also decent enough, at 600 x 600 dots per inch (dpi). This is sufficient to deliver a crisp and clean looking product, even when it’s been tasked to print out graphics-rich jobs, it must be said. It does all this with the aid of a 300 MHz processor, which is speedy enough to take on multiple tasking from a large number of workgroup users, which is a good thing.

As far as included memory, Hewlett-Packard delivers the 2500 with 64 MB of standard RAM. For most any workgroup, this is normally more than enough to handle the largest of jobs with relative ease. However, if expansion is needed, the 2500 can be upgraded to 256 MB of RAM. IT specialists will be pleased to note that memory can be swapped out fairly quickly and easily.

In addition to everything else, the HP LaserJet 2500 printer can also hold 500 sheets with an ability to hold a total of 850 sheets once optional trays are added. The C9703a magenta prints well on a wide variety of media stock, including labels, Vellum paper, bond paper and transparencies all print with ease using HP 2500 toner cartridges. Given that it costs only about $330, list, and cartridge toner are also low cost, most any workgroup is sure to be pleased when it learns that it’s getting this printer.