Archive for 2008

Printer Tips from the Printer Tech. HP P4015 New Firmware Fix!

Friday, December 19th, 2008 | HP Toner, Printer Repair | 1 Comment

Since HP introduced us to the all new P4015 just a few months ago, 2, count em 2, firmware revisions have been released. The newest firmware is version 04.046.2A released in early September.

The P4015 is the newest reincarnation of the LaserJet 4000 series. The 4000 series has been the mainstay of savvy business’s around the world for a decade and change. While these are not massive workgroup printers like the 8000 and 9000 series, they do well for medium workgroups of 2-15 users. The toner cartridges have a respectable page yield, which leads to a lower cost per page. (see this post to understand the correlation between printer cost and cost per page.)

But, back to the Firmware. As with any HP new release, the P4015 has had a few hiccups. The rapid firmware releases on the part of HP are a positive indication that HP is really staying on the ball with all the bug fixes.

Here is a list of the published bug fixes that this newest revision corrects. Even if the problem you are having is not listed here, go ahead and update your firmware, some fixes are not listed.
• ANY/ANY is not available for Tray2 or the Envelope Feeder
• 49.4C02 error when posting status messages from Chai SOE concurrently
• Bad string displayed when inputting PIN code for stored job
• IOFs using “Internal Page” causes Menu Map, Configuration Page, or File Directory to be corrupted
• Information on the “Show ME How Supported Paper” page is incorrect
• PIN Printing does not work when the EWS is password protected
• Help Message not descriptive enough for the Order Maintenance Kit warning
• 4015 does not report USB stick SN correctly when it is 20 digits long
• Unable to print fonts in Hebrew
Enhancements
• Adaptive Printing Solution – Quiet Mode
• Forms Edge to Edge

Tags: color laserjet, firmware, hp laserjet, p4015

Density Settings and MICR Fonts for the HP P1005, P1006, P1505

Thursday, December 4th, 2008 | MICR Toner and Check Printing | 1 Comment

If you have one of the newer HP LaserJet printers, one thing you’ll notice is the TrueType MICR fonts can appear faint or have a thinner stroke than they should. This is not a toner problem, as as the image quality and density is fine, but rather a result in the way the newer printers render the font itself. If the MICR font doesn’t have the proper stroke width the signal strength of the characters will decrease. Low signal strength may cause your bank’s check scanners to reject them. This will result in your bank in having to manually encode each check. If this happens your bank will likely contact you about the problem. But you’ll need to get the problem fixed or the bank may assess an additional processing charge.

Document Testing is the Key – There are a couple of ways to fix this problem. But whatever you do, you really should have your checks analyzed to make sure the documents are good. If you buy from us, we offer this as a free service, as we want to make sure all of our customers are producing good MICR documents. So if you are unsure about your documents, just send us some voided documents and we’ll analyze them and call you back the day we receive them at no charge.

Increase Print Density – The easiest way to fix this problem is to adjust the print density of your laser printer. To do this, you’ll need to open the properties of your printer (start->Printers->right-click (your printer)->select properties), then select the Device Settings tab. Set the print density to 5 (the darkest) and you should be fine. Click here for a screen shot

Replace MICR Font with a Bolder One – The second way is to replace the font with a bolder MICR font. If you are using the Advangtage TrueType MICR font and have the ability, you can just bold it. In our test the bold version works perfectly on these printers. If you don’t have the ability to bold the font, another alternative is to replace the font with a bolder TrueType MICR Font. We only offer one version of our font, but if you need more flexibility here, try the ID Automation MICR font. It comes with 5 different boldnesses and 5 different widths, a total of 25 MICR font variations. Click here for the ID Automation MICR Font

So far we’ve observed these issues with the HP LaserJet P1005, P1006, P1505 laser printers. No matter what you do, be sure to send us a voided check so we can analyze it.

Tags: density settings, micr toner, p1005, p1006

P2035 New MICR Toner Cartridge Release

Wednesday, November 19th, 2008 | HP Toner, MICR Toner and Check Printing | No Comments

New Product Release – the HP P2035 MICR toner cartridge (New). The standard yield MICR toner cartridge (CE505A) fits both the HP LaserJet P2035 and P2055 series laser printers and is rated for 2,300 pages.

HP released a high yield toner cartridge, the CE505X, but the high yield only fits the P2055 series and will not fit in the P2035. Based on this we decided to initially release only the standard yield toner cartridge. We still have plans to release the high yield MICR toner cartridge once the market shows some demand.

Our part number is RCCE505ANM and they sell for $140 (free shipping). They are in stock and ready to ship, and as always all orders received before 4:00pm EST ship same day.

Tags: CE505A, CE505X, P2035 MICR, p2055 micr

The most toxic place on earth

Monday, November 10th, 2008 | Toner Cartridge Recycling | No Comments

Last night, 60 Minutes had a great report on e-recycling and the environmental impact e-recycling is having. E-recycling is the recycling of electronic items such as televisions, computers, monitors, laser printers and yes toner cartridges. One statistic that blew my mind was that each day we throw out 130,000 computers just in the United States.

Click here for the 60 Minutes Video

60 Minutes then goes on to follow the waste from an e-waste recycling event in Denver to a local e-waste recycling that recycled the materials “in-house”. As it turns out 60 Minutes tracked one container of CRT’s all the way to Hong Kong where it ended up in the village of Guiyu. Where literally acres of monitors are piled up waiting to be recycled. CRTs are loaded with nasty stuff like lead, cadmium, mercury, chromium, polyvinyl chlorides, etc which are know to have numerous toxicological effects from brain damage to kidney disease and cancer. The conditions depicted were horrendous. Much of the plastic was just being burned. The water in the area is so polluted, they have to import drinking water. According to a recent study seven out ten kids have too much lead in their blood. They are using 16 century technology to recycle 20th century electronic goods. Not pretty!

Importing these items into Hong Kong is technically “illegal” but it’s obvious this is big business and officials across the board are looking the other way. I hate seeing this because I realize that most people are trying to do the right think by taking their e-waste to these recycling events. The problem is these countries have very cheap labor and no regard to the health of the people who are actually doing the work. A couple of years ago 60 Minutes had a similar story about where ships go once they reach the end of their useful life. They ended up in India and the conditions were probably worse and definitely more dangerous.

I think when companies manufacture a product they should also provide a method to recycle the product. This will no doubt add to the cost, but it would theoretically insure the product is recycled properly in a healthy environment. I say theoretically because in our business we’ve see evidence of toner cartridges going overseas to be “recycled” in horrific conditions as well.

I wouldn’t let this get you down on recycling. But I would ask and insist that your e-waste is recycled responsibly.

So you may be wondering what does Advantage Laser Products do with it’s toner cartridges? We recycle our toner cartridges here in Atlanta, Georgia where our workers have benefits like health insurance, 401K and work in an air conditioned environment with a great dust collection system. We do get a number of cartridges that we do not recycle. Those cartridges we sell to brokers who then sell them on the empties market. I don’t believe these cartridge make it to one of these Chinese hell holes, because these cartridges have value and will be sold to another remanufacturer that can use the cartridge. There is a third category of cartridge, the cartridge that has already been remanufactured and has no value. These cartridges we return to the original equipment manufacturer, in this case that is HP or Lexmark. Although some OEM’s may be sending their cartridges to illegal recycling facilities overseas, I hope and believe HP is a reputable company and is doing the right thing.

Keep recycling and do the right thing!

Tags: 60 Minutes, computer recycling, recycling, toner recycling

Printer Tips from the Printer Tech. HP CP4005N CP4005DN Error: 49.4C02

Tuesday, October 28th, 2008 | Printer Repair | 1 Comment

One of these days someone at HP will explain to me why PDF files constantly anger printers into stalling out. For now here is your tip:

For the HP Laser jet CP4005N, CP4005DN etc.
If you are receiving the Error 49.4C02 it’s a firmware issue.
Once again the almighty PDF is causing your printer to stall while translating the file into print.
Firmware version 20080128 46.034.0 is the newest thing from HP as of now.

If you have never updated firmware it’s not rocket science. Download the firmware HERE make sure you download the correct version Mac, PC, or UNIX. (seriously UNIX?) Unzip the file and there are several ways to upload the new firmware.

NOTE: Normally when updating firmware the printer will receive the file, update it’s firmware, then reboot. For some reason when I installed this firmware version the reboot did not happen. If this happens let the thing sit for a few hours, then manually power cycle the printer. (I let this customers machine sit overnight) I don’t know if this is a problem with this firmware revision, or if the CP4005N I was working on was being simple. Regardless, this may happen to you. Be careful never reboot a printer during a firmware update if you can avoid it. It’s like reprogramming it’s brain half way, then expecting it to operate. Not going to happen and you will have to purchase a new firmware chip.

That’s it for now.
Andres

Here is a list of fixes from the HP documentation on this firmware revision.
The following fixes or improvements are provided by this firmware release (20080128 46.034.0):

Corrected Processing Job Hang at 1000 pages
Improved PDF printing.
Corrected problems Printing Postscript Macros & Fonts.
49.4C02 error when printing PDFs.
WideA4 setting does not retain extended area after power cycle.
Garbage Display after update avter firmware update.
Corrected localization in Russion Language-“Overheated” where “Warming up” expected.

Tags: CP4005DN, CP4005N, Error: 49.4C02, firmware

Google is amazing!

Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008 | Miscellaneous | No Comments

I’m amazed at how Google has come from nowhere to become an everyday household name and a verb. When Google came out, it wasn’t long before people said, did you “Google” that? It was all over for yahoo. Even George Bush does “the Google“.

Since Google search, Google has released hit after hit, the most recent Chrome a browser that will take on industry giant Microsoft IE8 head to head. Some of what Google has done has been expected, but they continue to think outside the box and come up with products that people never even knew they wanted or needed. I’m sure it helps that Google has more money than god, but still there are tons of huge corporations that never surprise us and never do anything unexpected. What makes Google different? Will they start selling Check Paper and MICR toner cartridges and put us out of business? Probably not, still one thing is for sure, I wouldn’t want to be the target of Google, because if you are, you probably won’t be in business for long.

Google continues to churn out industry leading Internet software at a dizzying pace.

Google Earth – amazing
Google Checkout – definitely a great way to buy products without disseminating your personal information.
Google Picasa – what a great way to share your pictures
Gmail – best web mail out there
Google Desktop – great for searching your computer. I’m not a huge fan because it can bog your computer down.
Google News – A collection of news from the net
Google Chrome – still new, but already it’s replaced IE 7 and SlimBrowser for me
Google AdWords – The real money maker at google is the most effective way to reach targeted users out there. We spend 90% of our advertising on AdWords. And when someone searches for the key words we specify, they see our ads. Perfectly targeted!
Google Maps – again probably the best map software on the web, I love the new terrain feature.
Blogger – I’m using it right now, it’s great.
YouTube – Obviously the most used video sharing on the web
Analytics – If you are a webmaster, this is great stuff if you want to know about where your visitors come from and how they got there.
800-Goog-411 – Great free 411 service that works better than regular 411.
The list goes on and on including Google Calendar, Orkut, Google Groups, etc…

In some cases like YouTube, where Google Video was not number one, Google just opened their wallet and bam, Google is number one once again.

Maybe its the environment that Google employees work in. Check out these pictures of the Google office in Europe. Nuts! But who wouldn’t want to work there. Who knows why Google is so damn good at whatever they put their mind to, but one thing is for sure, they aren’t done yet. Google is currently the 12th largest company in the world based on market capitizalization. With Apple Computer just ahead of them and Cisco just behind them. If google keeps it up, I won’t be suprised to see Google in the #1 spot some day.

Tags: chrome, google, google chrome, micr toner

Weak dollar and high oil prices driving HP prices up

Friday, August 15th, 2008 | HP Toner, MICR Toner and Check Printing | No Comments

The weak dollar and high oil prices are conspiring to bring about price increased for HP toner cartridges. The weaker dollar automatically makes oil prices increase all on its own. You’ve seen inflation in everything at the grocery store from bread to beef, and now we are starting to see the results in our little corner of the world.

As I wrote a month ago, in the face of significant UPS fuel surcharges, we plan to continue to offer free shipping on our toner cartridges, but unfortunately it looks like HP is raising prices 5-6% on it’s toner and inkjet cartridges. We’ll have no choice but to pass the cost increase along to our customers. This will affect new HP Product as well as our Premium MICR Cartridges (New MICR). On the plus side, maybe this will be an incentive for our customers to switch to Advantage Brand toner cartridges (Remanufactured). Advantage Cartridges have the same quality and guarantee as new cartridges. And now there will be an even greater savings.

HP announced the price increase effective September 1st, but our suppliers have told us they will not actually increase the price until October 1st. So be warned, new pricing will be here by October 1. If you are a big HP toner user, I’d go ahead and make an extra big order before October comes around.

Here’s the HP price increase letter:

Tags: HP Toner, inflation, micr toner, oil prices, price increase, weak dollar

Buying a Laser Printer… Do your homework!

Friday, July 18th, 2008 | Toner Cartridge Recycling | No Comments

These days, printer manufacturers are practically giving away printers. For instance you can buy an HP P1005 laser at Costco for $49.00 (This includes a $80 instant rebate from HP). They will sell you toner cartridge for about the same price.

The days of disposable laser printers has arrived. It used to be inkjets were disposable, not laser. Color laser printers are now dipping below the $400 level as well. But before you go out and buy a laser printer, you might want to do some research into how much it will cost to print per page.

Just like when Gillette send you the latest Mach 5 razor (now with 5 blades instead of 3) – better grab your wallet, because that free razor takes $4 blades. You get the point.

The good thing about HP monochrome printers is that the printers comes with an all-in-one cartridge, meaning there is only one cartridge. Some other manufacturers will tout how inexpensive their toner cartridges are, but neglect to mention that for every 3 toner cartridges, you’ll have to buy a drum unit. Panasonic, Okidata, Brother all use this concept. So do the research and don’t get burned. The printers that use multiple cartridges are not necessarily bad and sometime can be less expensive, but unless you do the research, you won’t know. I’ve had customers call looking for a drum unit for a printer they only paid $200 for to find out the drum unit was $250 -they were not happy. All-in-one cartridges are easier to troubleshoot when you do have problems, and tend to make more sense to remanufacture.

Color laser printers are even more tricky to compare. At the bare minimum, your color printer will need 4 toner cartridges, and many of them will have a drum unit for each toner cartridge, so now you’re looking at 8 cartridges.

Here’s an average example an HP 3600n costs $399 (shopping.hp.com), a set of cartridges (4) costs $522.96. The 3600n with cartridges is less expensive than one set of toner cartridges for the unit. Crazy! and HP is actually better about this than most manufacturers. So you might think, each time my printer runs out of toner, I’ll chunk it and buy a new one. From an environmental perspective, this would be just wrong, but HP also has another trick up their sleeve – the printer comes with a “starter” cartridge. Starter cartridges typically print only half as much as the cartridges that you would buy on the street. In reading about printers from HP, they don’t mention this anywhere that I could find, but we see it all the time. Lexmark has been doing this for years, and HP only recently adopted this ploy.

Do your research before you buy. We always recommend HP printers over any other brand. We’ve found HP the most reliable and the easiest to source parts and supplies.

Tags: color laserjet, hp laserjet, laserjet, toner

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