Craigslist Deals 6
October 14th, 2009 by ComputerBob
I can hardly believe it, but this morning, I found yet another incredible deal on Craigslist.
Although I stayed up very late last night, I woke up about 90 minutes earlier than usual this morning. It wasn’t even dawn yet.
With time on my hands, I made some pancakes for my wife and then started up my computer, checked my email and took a quick look at Craigslist. That’s when I found it — an incredible deal that had been posted several hours earlier, at 1:30 this morning.
At first I thought maybe it was a hoax, because — according to many recent, angry Craigslist posts — some kids have been posting incredible deals on CL that have turned out to be either hoaxes or infuriating practical jokes on their neighbors, that have wasted a lot of other people’s time, gasoline and patience.
But this ad seemed worth taking a chance on, and it said, “Call any time,” so even though the sun was just starting to come up, I called.
A young man answered, and told me that he still had his item for sale. I asked him when I could go look at it. “Right now, if you want,” he replied.
He lives about 20 minutes away, so I asked him for detailed instructions on how to find his apartment. Then I got in my car and made my way there.
But I was pretty nervous the whole way, still wondering whether it was going to turn out to be one of those hoaxes or jokes that I had read so much about.
The sun was up when I got to his apartment, which was right where he said it was going to be.
I rang the doorbell, hoping that he would answer the door, but also fully prepared to apologize profusely if it turned out that I was waking up someone who had no idea why I was ringing their doorbell so early in the morning. To be safe, I had taken along a printed copy of the CL ad, just in case I needed proof of my good intentions.
I was relieved when the same young man to whom I had spoken on the phone answered the door, and both he and his large, friendly dog welcomed me into their tiny apartment.
A few seconds later, I was in his cramped office, looking at the Hewlett-Packard LaserJet 4000N printer that he was selling. Here’s a short summary, in case you don’t want to click on that link: the 4000N is a 1200 dpi workgroup laser printer that has built-in networking and is rated for 65,000 pages per month. Various online reviews state that the LaserJet 4000 series of printers are some of the most reliable, cheapest-cost-per-page printers that HP has ever built.
As his only printer, it was already connected to his computer and turned on, so he pressed a couple of buttons on its control panel to tell it to print its 2-page test print, listing all of its features and specifications. A few seconds later, I was reading two crisply printed pages that made a very good impression (actually two of them — pun intended).
A minute later, I had paid him for it.
Two minutes later, we had discussed his computer, which needs a new, bigger hard drive. I gave him my card, and he seemed very interested in hiring me to clone his existing hard drive onto the new one that he’s hoping to buy.
Thirty minutes later, my new printer was in my house. It only took about 5 few minutes to figure out how to manually set its IP address to add it to my home network, and to configure my two computers to print to it, using the Linux generic PostScript printer driver. Then I printed some very clean, very crisp-looking test pages from each of my computers. I don’t know how much toner it has, but a quick look inside revealed that it is using an HP high-yield, 10,000-page toner cartridge.
For now, my wife and I are going to use the LaserJet as the main printer for my main computer, and my Brother HL-5240 non-networked laser printer as the main printer for my secondary computer. Then, once the Brother printer uses up most of the new high-yield toner cartridge that we just paid $100 for a few weeks ago, I’ll sell the Brother, probably on Craigslist. At that point, the networked LaserJet will become our only printer for both computers (and any others that I add to our network in the future).
But I’ve saved the best part for last: My new printer cost me only $35 (USD).
Incredible.
UPDATE: The Linux generic Postscript driver worked fine, but by installing the HPLIP package, I was able to switch to the HP LaserJet 4000N Postscript printer driver, which provided more features and configuration options. Unfortunately, both Postscript drivers printed at the same slow speed, despite the fact that my printer has 40 MB of RAM. In fact, using either Postscript printer driver, it took 46 seconds to print my 2-page, word-processed resume, including a 4-second pause after the first page came out, before the second page started to print.
So, since my printing needs don’t really require any of my printer’s Postscript features, I switched from using the HP Postscript printer driver to the “HP LaserJet 4000 Foomatic-pxlmono” PCL (Printer Control Language) printer driver.
Now printing starts about 5 seconds after I click on “print”. It takes only 20 seconds to print my 2-page resume, and only 28 seconds to print this 4-page Journal post that includes a photograph. Both documents print without any pauses between the pages, with exactly the same high print quality that they had when I was using the slower HP Postscript printer driver.
If I understand the technical articles correctly, that’s because although Postscript is a much more powerful and versatile language for controlling a printer than PCL is, Postscript creates much bigger print files than PCL does. In addition, Postscript print jobs are sent directly to the printer, where the printer’s CPU has to process them before it can print them. In contrast, PCL creates much smaller print files, and its printer files are processed by the computer’s much-faster CPU before they’re sent to the printer, ready to be printed.
Because it is a more powerful printer-control language, Postscript is reportedly a better choice for sending precision color print jobs to professional printers, while PCL is reportedly a better choice for locally printing black and white documents that are mostly text.
UPDATE: By the way, here’s more information for anyone who found this Journal post because they’re trying to figure out how to choose a driver for their printer in Linux: I found and selected all of my various printer driver choices in the KDE (3.5.x) Printer Control Module by clicking on KMenu > Settings > Peripherals > Printers, but you can usually find many more printer drivers and printer configuration options by starting your web browser and going to http://localhost:631/admin, to manually start the CUPS print manager. Enter your root user’s name and password when prompted.
UPDATE: A couple of days ago, I bought a new (used) computer — another excellent Craigslist deal and installed Debian Squeeze (Testing) with XFCE instead of KDE. CUPS automatically discovered my networked LaserJet 4000N and I chose to use the HP 4000 Series Postscript driver that it recommended. It works great and printing starts about 8 seconds after I click “print”.
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October 15th, 2009 at 1:43 pm
Hi, again, Bob. I go to your site with some regularity. Always something interesting to find. $35?? Wow. Looks like quite a find. In my neck of the woods, a knock on a stranger’s door at that hour of the morning usually means someone has eaten the last meal of his life, but I guess you have to be ready to make deals when and where you can. Congrats!
October 16th, 2009 at 2:49 pm
LOL. Thanks, Jack! It’s always great to hear from you!
May 3rd, 2010 at 4:55 pm
$35 for a ~$1000 printer, not bad. When that printer first came out, it was closer to $1500, and the company I worked for bought several of them over the years. When I left, they were all still in service, some being 7-8 years old. This will probably be the last B&W printer you will need to buy.