Printer - Selecting A Laser Printer

• Requirements:
  • Industry standard PCL5 or PCL5e compatible – check for Printer Command Language support in product specifications.  PCL6 will typically also work. If it says “Host based”,  PCL3 or anything other than the PCL’s noted it probably will not work appropriately.
  • Font - “Reasonable” font support – most commercial grade printers are fine but there are notable exceptions such as the HP-P2015 & HP-3052/3055 models which were stripped of all but 2 fonts and are insufficient so they cannot be used.  The fine print in the footnotes of their specifications showed “Onboard fonts provided are Line Printer and Courier”.
    • Standard/typical e-Forms require "Arial" and "Courier new" fonts.  
    • Additional fonts may be needed or desirable to match specific logo & custom form text styles.   Please avoid printers with unusually limited font capability such as those noted above.  

• Other considerations:
  • Most major brands have been used successfully so choose your favorite
  • Speed – choose what fits your desires & budget
  • # of drawers depends upon your needs/planned use for the printer.  Although not a requirement you may want more than one.
    • If printing multi-copy forms such as invoices you may want:
      • Drawer one white
      • Drawer two pink copy
      • Drawer three yellow copy, etc…

  • 11 x 17 paper size, for printing landscape reports with many columns

  • Full Duplex capability (double sided printing) for paper conservation

• When installing the printer please observe these configuration guidelines:
  • Be sure to set the printer to recognize PCL print jobs either specifically or with autodetection
  • Use a V3 type driver when installing on a Windows machine instead of the typical default V4 type

            Failure to follow these configuration guidelines may result in print files failing to physically print even

            though they show entering & clearing the printer queue without error.