What's In A Name ?

This article looks at HP product naming, mainly as it applies to printers.

To solve printer problems you need to know who made it, usually identified by a badge, name and number on the front. Sometimes this has to be supplemented by a part number given by a serial number plate inside or on the back.

Classical Printers

These machines date back 20 years or so and are generally considered "obsolete". They were well made and some people are still using them. Refill toners and a few parts are still available, although they tend to be compatibles rather than originals.

Ultimately parts will dry up unless some sort of group sourcing can be devised. There are probably too few printers left to justify production runs.

The LJ-2200, 4000, 4100, 4200, 5200, and 9040/9050 remain in widespread use

There weren't all that many colour printers, so we may as well name the main ones:

The CLJ-3600, 4600, 4700 and 5500 series remain in widespread use.

Suffix Letters used include:

Hard disks are used for job queuing and secure print where a job is held until the requester is present. Disks are not much use on small printers, which generally print a job as soon as it is requested.

PostScript is a print language devised by Adobe. In the 1990s professional print works would want copy in PostScript form as it could be relied on to perform in the same way across different "platforms". They still do prefer PostScript or PDF. Graphics professionals used it widely, but it was a chargeable extra, often adding a couple of hundred pounds to the price of a printer.

There are a few light versions of printers. More usually HP have made a distinction by using a different model number. For instance the 1500L had a single tray whilst the 1500 had multipurpose and cassette trays. However HP then make a similar distinction using 2820 for the basic printer whilst the model 2830 and 2840 have extra features.

Once you have a feel for the scheme it's quite handy.   A personal buyer will be interested in numbers beginning "1" and "2". Only corporates and graphics professionals will be interested in machines that have a name beginning "9" and ending "DTN".

The scheme was so handy that other manufacturers adopted something very similar. Brother, Canon, Lexmark and others all have "DTN" models.

Printers from the late '90s have names like LaserJet 2100 . If the printer was sold with any components that would normally be optional then letters were added to the end on the name, so a LaserJet 4100dtn was shipped with the Duplex, extra Tray and Network options.

There weren't a great many colour printers when the scheme was devised. The first low-cost machines were the 1500 (non network) and 2500 which had a network port and was therefore for "workgroups". Colour printers generally got a second digit higher than "4" so the 1600, 2600, 2605, 2700, 3500, 3600, 4600, 4700, 5500, 5550, 8500 and 9500 are all colour printers.

Mid 2000's

Early in the 2000s numeric product names became problematic. Low cost colour laser printers were not common before 1999, but quickly became so. HP dealt with this by a range of products where 1500 and 2500 were low end. 1600 and 2600 their replacements, 3000 and 3600 low-mid range, 4600 mid range. The 5500 and 9500 were fast A3 colour machines - matching the mono scheme.

Another distinction was the growth in multifunctional printers with scanners, copy and fax capability and sometimes quite advanced digital sender and workflow abilities. If multifunctions had been limited to the range beginning "3" it would have to contain most future products.

HP decided to use initial letters on laser printer product names to say explicitly whether its a colour or multifunction machine

The "CM4730f MFP" introduced in 2005 is a colour multifunction A4 printer with fax capability. Its mid-range colour A4 capability might be guessable from the "4730" number but prefixing that "CM" makes it explicit. Not satisfied with putting the letter "M" in the prefix HP decided to follow up with MFP as a suffix.

HP were then identifying five parts in their names

HP also re-thought their suffix letters, notably replacing dtn with x .

Other manufacturers have sometimes adopted elements of this scheme. If a printer name suffix has a "w" in it we might guess it has WiFi wireless Ethernet. "M" for "mailbox" is less popular. Replacing "DTN" with "X" has not been widely adopted.

Product Groups

Product groups are another issue. Someone buying a single printer probably doesn't care that the M4345MFP is an updated 4345MFP and that in turn is based on the 4300 - but technicians who have to look after them naturally are interested. HP continued using Canon engines but after the Laserjet 4 series the machines had different styling and it often wasn't evident what Canon engine they were based on. It became known that the LaserJet 4000 used the same engine as the Canon LBP1760 but that wasn't a generic engine-name.

Canon's own naming scheme became so complicated it made HP look good. The HP Color LaserJet 2700, 3000, 3600 and 3800 are all related. The Canon MF8450, MF9130, MF9170, MF9220, LBP5300, LBP5360 are related to one another and to the HP models but you wouldn't necessarily guess from the product names.

HP sometimes reserved a "hundred number" to be the generic name for a product. There is no Laserjet 2400, rather there are the 2410, 2420 and 2430 where the highest number is faster and more feature rich. Likewise the term P4010 is sometimes used for the P4014, P4015 and perhaps the P4515 which are variants on the same thing (but have no known Canon relative)

Naming was getting pretty complicated. Not many callers give the whole name of the printer and just sometimes this gives a problem where they think "3015" is unambiguous and are in danger of getting the wrong part. (The "P3015" is completely different to the "3015" ). Luckily there are not many cases where numbers have been re-used like that.

Recent Printers (2012 On)

HP introduced a new product naming scheme for printers in their February 2012 catalog although they had been phasing parts of it in before that.

HP will undoubtedly have taken the advice of branding consultants before embarking on their latest scheme. Presumably the new scheme was a board-level decision after extensive market testing.

The new scheme introduces two new sub-branding words for Laser printers- "Professional" and "Enterprise".

"Pro" was used on printers such as the OfficeJet Pro 8500 in 2010. The word appeared with the P1102w and P1606dn at the same time but it seemed to be optional(In the HP Printing and Digital Imaging Products Selection Guide April 2010, the "What's In a Name" section at the back of the catalog doesn't mention it. ) By October 2010 new printers were getting this label.

"Enterprise" appears as a prefix for HP laser printers aimed at corporate buyers - its a very popular word with US IT marketing departments. (Run by men aged 50 with a StarTrek obsession). It had previously been a suffix as with HP OfficeJet Pro 8000 Enterprise.

So now we have the market divided

• LaserJet Professional (often abbreviated to LaserJet Pro)
• LaserJet Enterprise

Product Family

The merits of the old 1xxx=personal, 2xxxx=shared, 3xxx=workgroup, 4xxx=large workgroup were getting lost under the prefixes. HP revived the idea as the LaserJet Family Number.

The family numbers are intended always to be whole hundreds and permanent so that customers will be able to find things in the product family they think matches their need.

Product Descriptor

A "product descriptor" can occupy the space between the Family Number and the model. It is one of the following short phrases:

Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be universal acceptance of where the phrase color or MFP will appear in product names - HP do things in a different order on the same document.

Model Number

The model number should be sufficient to identify a printer. HP say Model numbers are unique for every device but unfortunately as we've seen that isn't invariably true.

Many models begin with the letter "M". Apparently this now just means "M" for Model, so for instance the LaserJet Pro 400 M401 is a mono printer - not a multifunction printer.

Model numbers have been shortened to 3 digits - except for models with a history which still have 4 digits like the M401 competitor the LaserJet Enterprise P3015.

We probably can rely on HP keeping to the promise to use different model numbers - at least until the current scheme reaches saturation. So perhaps we could just use the new short numbers like M602 - at the moment that does work.

Bundle Identifier.

Products still get a suffix to give their feature set.

This list is about ten entries shorter than the old one, but entries like "bm" for bookmaker were reinstated in the July edition of the catalog.

Curiosities

A curious name is the HP Topshot Laserjet Pro M275. It's a curious looking machine as well with a camera instead of a scanner on the top.

Laser-printer based printer/copiers tend to be called MultiFunction Printers (MFCs) whilst inkjets tend to be called All-in-One. HP did try the word "Mopier" when the first introduced digital copiers but the name promoted more hilarity than sales.

LaserJet is sometimes CamelCase and other times not. If HP have a standard they aren't managing to enforce it.

Inkjet printers are now "PhotoSmart" or Officejet. The HP Photosmart e-station e-All-in-One should get a prize for nominative inelegance.

The name Deskjet seems to be phased out. The Deskjet 3050A e-All-in-One and the Deskjet 3000 Printer are the only entries in the February 2012 catalog.