Further Reading

The extremely affordable HP LaserJet 6L printer seems to be designed to bring maximum pleasure to those looking for a Hewlett-Packard printer that comes at a low price, yet is full of the features that are prized by many laser printer enthusiasts. This includes good printing speed to go with durability and HP reliability. Additionally, print quality from the HP LaserJet 6L toner cartridges is also another attractive feature of this model.

Hewlett-Packard -- which has lately discontinued this model -- included certain capabilities in the 6-series to which this particular laser printer belongs. It is truly a personal printer and not intended for use within a network workgroup, but that's only because it probably can't keep up with the page-per-minute requirements of most such workgroups.

Speaking of that print speed, the 6L prints out at a somewhat leisurely six pages per minute of product. Still, that's more than doubles what most any inkjet printer is capable of doing. And the six pages of black-and-white product will look more than fine at 600 dots per inch resolution using HP toner cartridges. Given that, there is relatively nothing in this regard to complain about as relates to print quality.

When it comes to connecting the HP 6L to a computer, Hewlett-Packard offers standard capability through a hard-wire parallel port function. It doesn't feature USB, but at about $70 in price for the printer (if one can be found) that hardly seems to be a concern for most people on the lookout for a real bargain when it comes to laser printing.

Installed memory is only one megabyte, which can be upgraded to only 9 MB, but the printer will be making use of the computer processing power available from the computer to which it's been connected, so that's no big issue either. All of its activities will be controlled by a 24 MHz microprocessor, which is another reason why it produces about six pages per minute.

When it comes to storage capacity, the printer does well enough at holding about 100 sheets of paper, all of it going into a single tray. When it comes to what kinds of paper stock this machine can print on, it's a fairly diverse collection that includes transparencies, labels, envelopes and plain paper. It also features the ability to print on a relatively large number of paper sizes as well.

This particular Hewlett-Packard is also fairly durable, featuring a monthly duty cycle of about 6,000 pages. When one takes into account that a low price is delivering that high duty cycle, the printer then becomes even more impressive. It also has a print cartridge rated for 2,500 sheets before needing replacement. This personal printer, therefore, will have a very low cost-per-printed-page ratio.

When taken as a whole, it's easy to see that the extremely affordable HP LaserJet 6L printer is likely to remain a sought-after laser monochrome printer for quite some time. It can run off of Windows NT 4.0, as well as IBM OS/2 and even Microsoft DOS operating systems and it also features good durability to go with that robust printer cartridge. In truth, there's actually not much to complain about, especially when it only costs about $70 for a new one, if one such can be found anymore.

Online retailers have a capability that many local sellers lack, that of unlimited space and this means finding LaserJet 6L cartridges won't be a problem. Since Hewlett-Packard has the reputation for lasting a long time, HP LaserJet replacement toners is something that continues to be needed. Know that locating laser printer toner cartridges for your HP printer won't ever be a problem.