HP brings sweet simplicity to MFPs

Many high-performance, laser-based MFPs (multifunction printers) cost $10,000 or more and provide features and capabilities so sophisticated — or bewildering — that you can buy them only from a reseller or VAR, packaged with setup, training, and maintenance contracts. Hewlett-Packard bucks that market model with the LaserJet 4345mfp.

Starting at $2,600, the LaserJet 4345mfp sells on HP’s own Web site, and it delivers rocking speed and quality whether printing or copying. The basic installation doesn’t require much more than plugging in a Cat 5 cable. Bundled software and an embedded Web server provide the standard suite of HP network-printer management tools, which you’re probably already familiar with.

The 4345mfp’s base configuration combines a fold-out, 100-sheet auxiliary tray and an internal 500-sheet tray with 256MB of memory and a 20GB hard drive. The automatic document-feeder flips pages over to copy, fax, or scan both sides, though printing on both sides requires a duplexer. The printer differs in one key respect from the high-end MFPs we reviewed in January: It handles letter- and legal-size documents, but not tabloid-size.

The 4345mfp’s touch-screen control panel design is so clear users probably won’t require any training to make copies. Scanning to a PC with HP’s optional Digital Sending Software is equally simple. Setting up the receiving folders involves merely pointing to them in the software’s Configure mode, which either you do on the server or users do on their clients.

Still, HP’s design isn’t perfect. For example, the 4345mfp knows automatically what size paper is in a tray, but there’s no place for an external label, so users are left in the dark. And the machine lacks some high-end but useful copier features. You can’t erase the black stripe that forms at the center gutter of copies from books, nor can you add page numbers to copy jobs.

The printer’s management capabilities earn mostly high marks. Thanks to the machine’s internal Web server and HP’s Web Jetadmin software, you can keep a close eye on the 4345mfp’s status from the comfort of your PC. However, as is true of virtually all MFPs I’ve tested, the LaserJet 4345mfp doesn’t provide IT managers with sufficient granularity to control which settings users may modify on the control panel: You can’t prevent a curious employee from changing the device’s IP address or putting it in test mode and leaving it that way.

The LaserJet 4345mfp delivers performance that will keep an office productive. In my tests it made copies at 43.1 ppm (pages per minute), just a bit shy of its 45-ppm rated engine speed. It printed text at 27 ppm, a bit slower than the two slower-rated systems from the January roundup.

Its printed text documents impressed me with sharp, clearly defined letters that remain evenly weighted down to very small sizes. The 4345mfp’s copies are also surprisingly free of spatter or cloudiness, though some choppiness shows up on the edges of letters.

Printed graphics get good marks for smooth transitions and shading and for sharp focus. Like all monochrome devices, the 4345mfp produces graphics that show some graininess in places. Also like all monochrome devices, the 4345mfp struggles to copy gray-scale graphics, which have interference patterns, a grayish, flat look, and noticeable loss of detail. The 4345mfp did a good job scanning text at 200 dpi and captured fine detail in line drawings at 600 dpi, but in monochrome mode it made a muddy mess of gray-scale graphics.

The 4345mfp is inexpensive to acquire and equip but no bargain to operate. Printing, copying, or receiving faxes costs about 1.27 cents of toner and other consumables per page — a moderate rate in the printer world. But a copier-dealer’s pay-as-you-go service contract could push price per page down to about 0.75 or 0.7 cents with maintenance included.

Although you might be able to negotiate a lower cost per page for a system sold through different channels, HP’s push to sell MFPs the way printers are sold certainly simplifies the procurement process. And HP has done a commendable job tailoring the LaserJet 4345mfp for offices that need throughput, simplicity, and expandability without some of the more arcane copier features.