I've been using my HP 4L for about six months now after previously owning
a DeskJet Plus. The results are very nice for the price (just over $600
on sale in the U.S.) – the printer is less solid-feeling with more plastic
parts where the regular 4 uses metal, and 300 x 300 dpi isn't 600 though
ultrafine toner and optional ReT make it noticeably better than the LJ3.
And there is no control panel other than a formfeed/reset button, so all
features must be selected through your software driver.
My main problem using the 4L with my Amiga is the lack of a
fullly-implemented printer driver. The Amiga Preferences drivers in the
HP forum don't give access to all features of the printer – "draft" mode
is not implemented, for example, as a means of selecting EconoMode to save
toner. The program SetupPJL (a freely-distributable subset of the pricey
Studio software) gives that control must be run separately; it isn't a
driver and cannot be run from the WBStartup drawer because it requires
user interaction every time it is run.