HP Business Inkjet 1100D

For the last two years, I’ve been looking for a good replacement for my HP 940c inkjet printer. I have a need for color brochure printing on demand; and while the 940C could produce some nice colors and detail, it was terrible from an overall production standpoint due to paper misfeeds and high ink costs. (I would typically lose 25% of a run due to misfeeds.)

Why have I been looking for two years? Well, I never have been able to find a printer that reviews shows had the right balance of cost, utility, and performance. Ever since the 1100D was released, though, I’ve been reading reviews on the web, snatching print samples for showroom printers at computer stores, and searching the web for a good price. I decided a couple of weeks ago it was finally time to move forward, and I would buy an 1100D.

I spent several hours yesterday getting the printer to run on three machines, two Power Macs and a Windows XP/98SE Andy-built machine. As it turned out, most of the problems were due to a Belkin USB 2.0 hub I had in my little USB office network. Even without that, though, Panther just was not extremely friendly to the drivers that came with this printer. It took several attempts to get the printers to load and have Panther recognize them. Jaguar, on the other hand, had no problems at all. Windows XP started bogging down and locking up after I installed the HP software; troubleshooting revealed the culprit was the printer’s “Monitor My Print Mileage” (mpm.exe) utility. Once I disabled and uninstalled it, XP worked fine. Win98SE also yield up no problems.

I’ll put up a full review of this printer (hopefully) in the next week, as soon as I have a chance to put the printer through some paces using both my Athlon XP powered Windows XP machine and one of my PowerMacs running Panther.