Archive for December, 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

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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.
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