Caring for your laser printer

My printer is making grinding or rubbing noises when printing and I get an occasional jam. Your pickup rollers are probably worn. This problem is typically corrected with new pickup rollers.

My printouts contain a line down the page, what causes this? The toner cartridge or fusing assembly usually causes this. First, change the toner cartridge if you have one in stock. If that does not correct the problem, call us for service.

Recently, my print characters have a fuzzy “halo” around them? Every year when winter rolls around we receive a lot of phone calls with these types of problems. The cause is actually a lack of humidity in the area of the printer. The friction of the paper moving through the printer and the rotating drum of the toner cartridge creates an excessive static charge drawing out more toner than what is needed. This creates a “halo” effect around each character of your printout. This happens during cold weather in predominately dry office settings. Adjusting the printer density settings can result in a much cleaner look.

My printer hangs at "Processing Job". Large or graphically complex print jobs can be the culprit of long processing times. Increasing printer memory will shorten these processing times.

My documents are faded and printing too light. Typically the toner cartridge is a fault here. If there is a 'Toner Low' message on the printer's display - replace the cartridge. If there is not a 'Toner Low' message you may want to shake the cartridge to evenly distribute the toner inside. Use caution while doing this to ensure that no toner spills out onto you! Also, you may want to check that “economode” is turned off and the density settings are up.

When I try to print nothing comes out of my printer. Make sure you have the correct printer selected. Within the application you are printing from, click on the 'File' menu and select 'Print'. An applet will appear displaying all the printers installed. Make sure the printer you want to is highlighted. You can also print a configuration page directly from the printer. Typically, if you can print a config page then there is a problem with the printer communicating with the network.

How do I re-install my printer driver? Your printer driver should be located on your operating system in your printer's folder.

Replacing an old laser printer

Here are a few factors you should consider before replacing your old laser printer.

• Cost of the toner cartridge—If you own an inkjet printer then you will understand why laser printers have recently become so inexpensive to purchase. Printer manufacturer profit largely comes from the sales of consumables, such as the toner cartridge. New toner cartridges generally have a very short life span, from as little as 2,000 pages versus 14,000 pages on older printers. Therefore you will go through 7 cartridges before you finish the first cartridge on your older printer. At $75-100 per cartridge it gets very expensive to own a "new" printer.
• Speed or pages per minute—Like computers, printers are much faster than their predecessors with only marginal increase in quality. It primarily comes down to how critical or urgent your prints are and how fast they need to be available for distribution. If the print out can wait, then so can purchasing a replacement printer.
• Content of the print—What are you printing: text, graphics or a combination. The more complicated your output, the more it makes sense to upgrade your printer.