Hp Laserjet 4 Ancient, 1992 Laser Printer

The HP LaserJet 4 was the first in a series of printers

, launched in 1992 and continuing on in production through the mid nineties. This monochrome laser device was intended for business use, but HP would soon release variations on the model for the individual, and home user. As an earlier laser printer, it came in an extremely heavy package, was clunky, loud, and delivered a slow print speed by todays standards. Still, it was one of the most successful office printers of the time, and spawned many of the HP printer lines we see today.

This grandfather laser printer was aimed at the smaller office, intended as an affordable alternative to industrial grade, mass output machines. Operating at up to 8 pages per minute, its speed was slow by todays standard for a laser device, yet was absolutely top of the line in 1992. Only a year later, the HP LaserJet 4Si model would be released, which boasted a top speed of 17 pages per minute. At the time, a print speed this fast was almost unheard of, and is still impressive to this day.

Interestingly, as the original HP LaserJet 4 operated only on PC based systems, the HP LaserJet 4Si was intended exclusively for the Macintosh, and could only be used on a Mac OS. Other Macintosh only models would be released along side their PC counterparts in the years to come, as by-platform printers were still uncommon.

The HP LaserJet 4 could pull off a resolution of up to 600 x 600 dots per inch. Almost twenty years later, we still use this print quality as our basic standard for black and white text printing. When HP created the HP LaserJet 4L, they scaled down the overall size of the unit to aim at the personal use market. Unfortunately, quality suffered drastically and topped out at only 300 x 300 dots per inch.

The original HP LaserJet 4s curb weight of 51.4 pounds made it almost completely immobile within an office setting. Its large footprint of 18.1 inches (W) by 20.6 inches (D) also made it inappropriate for home use, along with a height over a foot tall. And yet, HP still referred to the device as a desktop printer.

With 2 MBs of built in memory, the HP LaserJet 4 was subject to slowdown when interpreting complicated source data. Luckily, HP incorporated a 72 pin SIMM slot for additional memory, though no greater than a total of 16 MBs. Though this is a small amount by todays standards, with only 8 pages per minute maximum, the additional memory would keep the LaserJet 4 running optimally.

No built in networking was available for the HP LaserJet 4, but it did include both a Parallel port and a serial port. It was capable of interpreting PCL 5 and HP/GL2 languages, but could not operate with Postscript, limiting its possible applications to a degree. The device also only included twelve regular fonts and six True Type fonts, further limiting its usefulness in the overall business world.

by: Scooter_Oak

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