We’ve been using an ori­gi­nal Laser­Jet 4 that I bought ele­ven years ago. It still ser­ves its pur­pose quite well, but there are a few things that are finally beco­m­ing bother­some about it. The main pro­blem right now is that there is no way to turn it into a duplex prin­ter and we want to print a run of books in the next few weeks.

It appears, though, that one of our requi­re­ments for such a new prin­ter is a fairly uncon­ven­tio­nal one: We want it to have little tolerance on how it draws paper. Most prin­ters I’ve had my hands on in the last few years are not par­ti­cu­larly relia­ble in prin­ting the lines par­al­lel to the edges of the sheet. More often than not, you can defi­ni­tely notice the dif­fe­rence. Duplex prin­ting makes this even worse: the two pages don’t line up well enough because the mecha­nics of the prin­ter are not good enough.

Now, the ques­tion is: How do we find out which prin­ter is good at that? I’ve heard reports that the Kyo­cera FS-1900 is not too bad, and Bro­ther has a few that work well. I’m posi­tive that the Laser­Jet 4 family was the last decent prin­ter HP built, so they’re out the race. And I’ve always had a soft spot for Lex­mark, but I’m not fully sure why that is so.

This is going to be hard.

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