HP LASER JET 4200n = "Lemon"

I decided to blog about this because The HP laser Jet 4200 Printer has caused me to feel like an incompetant loser all these years because of its ilustrious lack of performance and perpetual failure. About 4 years ago, our school purchased an HP laser Jet 4200 and placed it our new Pod. Everyone was thrilled to have a brand new printer that would print fast and efficiently and serve the 7 teachers in the lower POD--Woo Hoo!  Unfortunately, that dream was never to be. From the early months of its existence it would spout out a black film of ink jet dust all around the printer, jam frequently and be down more than it was up.

At first I thought maybe the users were somehow "abusing" the new printer, perhaps running too many copies or putting old paper in the tray.  But no, this was not the case. We would look in all the crevices for fragments of jammed paper, but it never seemed to help. We finally used the pull down manual paper tray but this would only help temporarily. The jams continued :( We sent the printer in on numerous occassions to be cleaned, had Garnett Hill out to replace the fusers, and generally just suffered with the over-all performance.

After servicing, the printer would work for awhile longer, but then resume its terrible track record of jamming and failing. When the school purchased another HP laser jet 4200n printer this time for the Annex (At first in Ms. Loflin's room, then Ms. Carespodi's room) the exact same set of problems started happening.  I felt badly for those teachers who were constantly frustrated by the printer.

Well, After Ms. Carespodi's laserjet 4200n printer crashed and burned again this week, I decided to ask my "tech buddies" if they were seeing anything like this in their buildings. Well, much to my surprise and redemption, the reports are in from several schools--and they are very SIMILAR-- My conclusion, HP put out a piece of you know what, and we paid OVER $!1200.00 (times two) only to get four miserable years out of it! At the same time, we have other HP laser jet printers in the building like our HP laser jet 4000's and 4100 both much older models yet still working just fine.

Seems like another example of companies worried more with profit margins and the bottom line putting out cheaply made, and poorly designed technology. Sad :(

The following are some of the testimonied from my tech buddies...

We have had exactly the same problems with it from the first day also. It has been sent in so many times I can not even begin to count. We have had major problems with the trays and Dr, Reichert was willing to purchase a new one to try to solve some of the issues only the tray costs $350.00!! That's crazy to spend that kind of money on just the tray. We can get a new printer for that. The 4000 and 4050 have been really great machines but there is something wrong with the 4200's for sure.


Speas Elementary School


I have a 4200 that I would also call a lemon...fusers been replaced twice, paper jams and for over 2 years, we just open the back panel and let the paper feed out the back to keep papers from jamming...

Vienna Elementary School

I have had to have a couple fusers replaced and the ink toner is more expensive than all others but overall I don't think ours have been as problematic as yours. Ugh! Don't you love technology???
Old Richmond Elementary School

I too have had terrible problems with that model. Always have to get Garnett to come out. Have ordered parts for it. MY old 4050's are still working after 12 years. Amazing.

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Meadowlark Elementary