PC LOAD LETTER is a printer error message that has entered popular culture as a technology meme referring to a confusing or inappropriate error message. The message is instructing the user to refill the paper tray with letter-sized paper. The error message's vagueness was mocked in the 1999 comedy film Office Space .
The message is encountered when printing on older HP LaserJet printers such as the LaserJet II, III, and 4 series. It means that the printer is trying to print a document that needs "Letter size" (8½ × 11 in.) paper when no such paper is available. [1]
"PC" is an abbreviation for "paper cassette", [2] the tray which holds blank paper for the printer to use. These two-character codes are a legacy feature carried over from the first LaserJet printers, which could only use a two-character display for all printer status and error messages. "LOAD" is an instruction to refill the paper tray. "LETTER" is the standard paper size used in the United States and Canada. Thus, the message is instructing the user to refill the paper tray with letter-sized paper. Other messages that might be seen include "MP LOAD LEGAL", meaning the "MP" (multi-purpose) tray needs to be filled with legal size (8½ × 14 in.) paper. [3]
Users confuse "PC" with "personal computer", "LOAD" with some action someone might do to that computer, and "LETTER" with an alphabet letter or short document (in particular outside the United States and Canada, where most paper is A4 size, and users don't know "LETTER" is a paper size at all).
The error can be dismissed (other than by filling the paper tray) by emptying the print queue and printer buffer or pressing "Shift+Continue" [4] and, in extreme cases, restarting the printer and repeating. The LaserJet 5 introduced a "GO" button to override the warning message.
The LaserJet 5, 4000, and later models added number labels on paper trays and displayed a new message, "TRAY [x] LOAD PLAIN [paper size]" where [x] is the tray number.
The error message's vagueness was mocked in the 1999 comedy film Office Space . [5]
Laser printing is an electrostatic digital printing process. It produces high-quality text and graphics by repeatedly passing a laser beam back and forth over a negatively charged cylinder called a "drum" to define a differentially charged image. The drum then selectively collects electrically charged powdered ink (toner), and transfers the image to paper, which is then heated to permanently fuse the text, imagery, or both, to the paper. As with digital photocopiers, laser printers employ a xerographic printing process. Laser printing differs from traditional xerography as implemented in analog photocopiers in that in the latter, the image is formed by reflecting light off an existing document onto the exposed drum.
A page printer is a computer printer which processes and prints a whole page at a time, as opposed to printers which print one line or character at a time such as line printers and dot-matrix printers. Page printers are often all incorrectly termed “laser printers”—although virtually all laser printers are page printers, other page printing technologies also exist.
Inkjet printing is a type of computer printing that recreates a digital image by propelling droplets of ink onto paper and plastic substrates. Inkjet printers were the most commonly used type of printer in 2008, and range from small inexpensive consumer models to expensive professional machines. By 2019, laser printers outsold inkjet printers by nearly a 2:1 ratio, 9.6% vs 5.1% of all computer peripherals.
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The HP 2100 is a series of 16-bit minicomputers that were produced by Hewlett-Packard (HP) from the mid-1960s to early 1990s. Tens of thousands of machines in the series were sold over its twenty-five year lifetime, making HP the fourth largest minicomputer vendor during the 1970s.
The HP-41C series are programmable, expandable, continuous memory handheld RPN calculators made by Hewlett-Packard from 1979 to 1990. The original model, HP-41C, was the first of its kind to offer alphanumeric display capabilities. Later came the HP-41CV and HP-41CX, offering more memory and functionality.
LaserJet as a brand name identifies the line of laser printers marketed by the American computer company Hewlett-Packard (HP). The HP LaserJet was the world's first commercially successful laser printer. Canon supplies both mechanisms and cartridges for most HP laser printers; some larger A3 models use Samsung print engines.
The HP 200LX Palmtop PC, also known as project Felix, is a personal digital assistant introduced by Hewlett-Packard in August 1994. It was often called a Palmtop PC, and it was notable that it was, with some minor exceptions, a DOS-compatible computer in a palmtop format, complete with a monochrome graphic display, QWERTY keyboard, serial port, and PCMCIA expansion slot. The abbreviation "LX" stood for "Lotus Expandable".
Printer Command Language, more commonly referred to as PCL, is a page description language (PDL) developed by Hewlett-Packard as a printer protocol and has become a de facto industry standard. Originally developed for early inkjet printers in 1984, PCL has been released in varying levels for thermal, matrix, and page printers. HP-GL/2 and PJL are supported by later versions of PCL.
An error message is the information displayed when an unforeseen problem occurs, usually on a computer or other device. Modern operating systems with graphical user interfaces, often display error messages using dialog boxes. Error messages are used when user intervention is required, to indicate that a desired operation has failed, or to relay important warnings. Error messages are seen widely throughout computing, and are part of every operating system or computer hardware device. The proper design of error messages is an important topic in usability and other fields of human–computer interaction.
The HP LaserJet 2400 series was a line of grayscale laser printers sold by Hewlett-Packard. The printer was aimed at small and medium business use. It was the successor to the HP LaserJet 2300 series, and was in turn replaced by the HP LaserJet P3000 series.
The HP LaserJet 4 is a group of monochrome laser printers produced in the early to mid-1990s as part of the LaserJet series by Hewlett-Packard (HP). The 4 series has various models, including the standard LaserJet 4 for business use, the 4L for personal use and the 4P for small businesses. Additional models included the 4Si model, created as a heavy-duty business printer, and the 4V model, a B-size printer for desktop publishing and graphic artists. There are also PostScript variants of these machines with the '4M' designation, where M stands for, but is not limited to, usage with an Apple Macintosh. Hewlett-Packard also released an upgraded version of the LaserJet 4/4M known as the 4 Plus ('4+')/4M Plus ('4M+').
The NeXT Laser Printer [NeXT PN N2000] was a 400 DPI PostScript laser printer, sold by NeXT from late 1988 to 1993 for the NeXTstation and NeXTcube workstations and manufactured by Canon Inc. It included an adjustable paper tray, which enabled it to print on several paper sizes including A4, letter-size, and those of legal and envelope varieties. It was very similar to other printers based on the Canon SX engine, such as the Apple LaserWriter II series and HP LaserJet II/III, although those other printers only printed at 300x300 dpi. Some parts are interchangeable with the LaserJet II/III.
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The HP Integral PC is a portable UNIX workstation computer system produced by Hewlett-Packard, launched in 1985 at a price of £5450. It utilizes the Motorola 68000 microprocessor and ran the HP-UX 1.0 operating system.
HP Inc. is an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Palo Alto, California, that develops personal computers (PCs), printers and related supplies, as well as 3D printing services. It was formed on November 1, 2015, as the legal successor of the original Hewlett-Packard after the company's enterprise product and business services divisions were spun off as a new publicly traded company, Hewlett Packard Enterprise.