HP LaserJet 2300

I bought the HP LaserJet 2300 to replace an HP2100tn that had expired. I had been so impressed with the 2100 that I decided to keep it in the family and just get the improved model of the one I knew and loved.

I must say I wasn’t disappointed. I mainly print lab reports in either Excel or PageMaker so I needed PostScript and simple that just worked without needing to select lots of options or otherwise fiddle with it. The 2300 is great for this. Once you have done the initial setup, the printer just goes. Send it a print job and it devours it, producing decent quality prints at around 25 pages a minute.

The processor is a decent 266Mhz, and the standard memory is 32Mb. While this is plenty enough, I expanded it to the maximum 288Mb, which I fit myself in around a minute. The expansion was cheaper than I thought and only took a minute, it looks just like standard PC memory, and slots in just like it too.

Officially the 3200 is a workgroup printer that connects to USB, but I use it myself, connecting it to my laptop docking station. While it might seem overkill, there’s no way the university is going to spend several hundred dollars to get me something smaller and lighter to print with while this works perfectly well.

So, the print speed is 21-25 pages a minute, depending on what I’m printing. The print quality is excellent, even when I’m printing graphs, either bar or pie. The shading when using fill is even, smooth and looks good. My old HP 4m seemed to have problems doing even this simple task sometimes, which is why I’m pleased with this one.

Accuracy is important in my work, be it lab work or presenting my findings. This is another reason I like the HP 2300. When drawing graphs, the presentation is accurate, dots and lines are exactly where they’re supposed to be and none of the presentation is skewed. That can cause problems in the science community which is a further point in the printers favor.

The HP LaserJet 2300 is a great printer. It might be big, heavy and just a little noisy but it’s effective and does everything you ask of it without question. If only my technicians were like that.