Hewlett-Packard Has a Plan for Fixing Printer Problem : Computers: The firm is mindful of what happened when Intel tried to downplay Pentium’s flaw.

Mindful of the ruckus that erupted after Intel Corp. tried to downplay a computer chip flaw, Hewlett-Packard Co. is expected to unveil an aggressive plan to find and fix a minor glitch in 1.5 million of its popular ink-jet printers.

Hewlett-Packard, which dominates the global computer printer market, said that beginning today, it will send free repair kits to every registered owner of the faulty printers, built at a Vancouver factory between June, 1993, and March, 1994. Other owners can receive the kit by calling a toll-free number.

Hewlett-Packard does not expect the repair plan to affect earnings because it set aside enough money to pay for it last year. “We don’t expect it to have a material effect on our financials,” company spokesman Jeremy James said.

The move, first disclosed in the Sunday Oregonian newspaper, comes less than a month after Intel bowed to mounting criticism and said it would replace its defective top-of-the-line Pentium chip for free for anyone who asked.

“A lot of computer companies are coming clean with anything that could explode in their face and turn a very minor problem into a major one,” said Walter Winnitzki, a computer industry analyst at Dillon, Read & Co.

Hewlett-Packard said it followed Intel’s Pentium saga with interest, even though the printer repair campaign was already planned by the time the Pentium’s problems were first disclosed in early November. Industry analysts said Hewlett-Packard’s approach is the right one. “Hewlett-Packard has a very high-quality image in and around computer manufacturers,” Winnitzki said. “They’re reacting to what appears to be a minor problem.”

In the wake of the Pentium experience, “most computer companies are becoming sensitized to the fact that they really are consumer product companies,” he said.

Hewlett-Packard first realized that some of the 7 million Deskjet printers it sold in 1994 were defective after receiving an unusually large number of calls from customers. Users complained that the printers often failed to grab the first sheet of paper in a feeder tray or that they grabbed two sheets of paper at once.

Only one of the printers that could prove faulty, the Deskjet 560C, is still being sold.