An optional 250-sheet paper tray on the bottom increases the maximum input capacity to 510 sheets of paper. The main input tray can hold up to 260 sheets of letter, legal, and other standard sizes of business paper, and the manual-feed tray can hold 10 sheets, as well as envelopes, card stock, labels, and transparencies. The LaserJet 1300's paper handling matches the needs of SOHO users well. The standard is HP PCL 6, but you also have the option of installing HP PCL 5e and PostScript level 2 emulation. HP includes print-driver language options. You can also add an HP JetDirect network adapter for fast Ethernet capabilities (JetDirect 175x 10/100 Base-TX is $159, and the JetDirect 310x is $249) or 802.11b capabilities (JetDirect 802.11b is $199, while the JetDirect 380x 802.11b is $239). The LaserJet 1300 printer includes an expansion slot for an Ethernet print server (the LaserJet 1300N model comes with the $199 adapter).
The printer wakes up quickly, and in our informal tests, the first finished page appeared in less than 10 seconds. This amount of horsepower should readily handle the mostly small-scale print jobs of SOHO users. There are a number of excellent SOHO features in the LaserJet 1300, such as a 133MHz Motorola Coldfire processor chip and 16MB of built-in RAM, expandable to 80MB.
CNET Labs tested the LaserJet 1300 with Windows XP Professional.
HP provides drivers for Windows 95 and later, Mac OS X and later, Novell NetWare, Red Hat Linux, SuSE Linux, HP-UX, Solaris, IBM AIX and MPE-iX. The LaserJet 1300 is compatible with most major operating systems.
You'll need to refer to the electronic manual to decipher the signals there are no markings on the printer itself that explain the status. Unfortunately, the LaserJet 1300 shares this shortcoming. One common and annoying feature of lower-priced laser printers is the array of usually apocryphal status lights that try to tell you what the printer is doing.
However, removing the main paper tray with a little too much force can dislodge the manual-feed tray. In addition to the main paper input tray, you get a manual-feed tray that's located on top of the main paper tray. The standard paper handling is sufficient but a little hard to use.
The toner cartridge and the paper tray are both easy to install from the front. You'll need to refer to the electronic manual to decipher the lighted signals. The toner cartridge fits behind a removable panel above the opening where the main paper tray sits. It's easy to install the toner cartridge and the paper tray, as both are located in front. Most of the LaserJet 1300's basic maintenance functions are easy to do.
Weighing 19 pounds, the LaserJet 1300 is on the heavy side, though its dimensions of 16.3 inches wide by 19.1 inches deep and 9.5 inches high are about right for those of a personal laser printer.
The design of the printer itself is straightforward. But somehow, the excellent print quality of the LaserJet 1200 got lost along the way-along with a lot of our enthusiasm for this otherwise promising personal laser printer. It also offers a number of options unavailable in the earlier model, such as wireless networkability and more memory. The LaserJet 1300 keeps the same look and feel, right down to its sloped-front design and front-loading paper tray. The $399 Hewlett-Packard LaserJet 1300 has some big shoes to fill, replacing one of our favorite personal monochrome lasers, the LaserJet 1200.