Delivery was quick. Installing was fast. Got it to sink up the first time connecting to LAN and printer sharing. Quality is great, picture is great. Easy to install. Great Product. Not having all the other problems like some of the other owners.

This printer is a great choice for a few reasons. The least reason to buy a printer is appearance, sure, but the stylish blue appearance on the HP 6980 makes it one of the best looking printers out there. Wireless setup is by far the best reason to chose this printer. I was a bit hesitant about how easy it would work, but the documentation in the box by HP (paper manuals) was very helpful. Just take the printer and the router, run an Ethernet cord between them, and run the software on your PC (PC doesn’t need to be connected to it). Then it instructs you to remove the ethernet cable and in the end, only the power plug needs to be present. I have one Vista desktop and one Vista laptop currently set to this printer.

Some issues to note. It does in fact shake, as I guess many printers probably shake. I recommend placing this on a different desk/table from which you use for your desktop and/or laptop. It’s only a minor inconvenience though. Even with my desktop on the same table, I still feel the shaking somewhat noticeably.

The CD in the package is essentially useless for Vista users. Now in the store, you might see it say “compatible with Vista” and it is, though not as simple as some people I’m sure have been misled to believe. You will need to download the software from the HP site. It’s not hard, just a few clicks on the HP site will get you there. Download and then install on EACH PC with which you’d like the printer to work.

One other quick note. The printer allows you to print a report page showing the printer’s status on your network and other relevant details as well as an IP address you can enter in the browser that shows details such as ink levels and allows some configuration. HP seems to know printers quite well. Highly recommended!

You must get this product. It is so fast and easy. I love it. Just put the memory card in, select the photo using the display, then print. In minutes, I have my photo printed. So much better then having to go through the PC. Now I do it without any help from my husband or kids! I wish I got it years ago.

It is a must have.

I bought this printer to use with a Nikon Coolpix 4300 digital camera in a medical work envioronment. We print pictures of before and after surgical procedures and we keep a copy in the record and send one home with the client. The details are fantastic and always leave quite an impression! The printer takes up very little space and is very easy to use. We don’t even have it connected to a computer. We leave it chairside in the procedure room, though it’s easy to pick up and move if we need to. I have not had any problems with paper jamming, and I love being able to put 1,2 or 4 pictures on one sheet of paper. I’ve tried to keep track of how often we will be replacing the ink cartridge and have found that I can get about 100 prints out of a cartridge (which are about $35 apiece) and we use the matte HP paper. Very well worth the money and prints beautiful pictures in a short amount of time.

This printer is so easy to use. Without reading the instructions I was printing pictures almost immediately after opening the box. The easiest part about it is that you don’t have to hook it up to the computer, and you can still crop and adust the darkness of the picture. In less than a minute you will have a clear true color 4×6 print. This printer can only print 4×6 prints, but how often do you need enlargements? For less than $200 this printer will not disappoint you. The only draw back is that the 1.8″ LCD display could be a little more clear. The text is very clear, but the image of your picture isn’t as clear as it could be.

I replaced another six color photo printer with the HP7350 and have been very satisfied with the results. The colors are vivid and the ease of operation is a delight. Being able to print from my smart media card is a time saver. Also being able to download to my PC from the printer is also a time saver. It is the most quiet printer I have owned. I would recomend this printer to anyone who is serious about digital photography.

HP printers provide excellent quality, especially compared to the Dell I use at home. For the person who couldn’t find the catch tray, pull the center part of the paper tray forward and tip it back. Voila — a catch tray.

I’ve had this printer for about 6 months and its been great. I’m not very technical but I got a wireless router going in the house for a laptop that we move around. I assumed getting this printer to work on the wireless network would be a problem, but the setup went fine using a wireless laptop (running the HP setup CD) and the printer hard wired into my ethernet connection per the instructions (they include the cord to do this). Once it was all lined up, I simply unplugged the printer from the ethernet and it worked great wirelessly. We have it tucked into a cabinet where it’s hidden and the wireless laptop prints to it without a problem. One time it wasn’t working so I pulled it out and ran throught the set up again with it plugged into the wall and its run fine wirelessly ever since. The print quality seems great also, but all we have printed are web pages and a few word documents.

I was a long time Epson user, but I got really annoyed with the way Epson printers stall to clear the print heads (which clog frequently). HP doesn’t seem to have that problem; perhaps because the printhead gets changed every time you replace the ink cartridge.

I use the printer with both Mac OS X and Windows (I run both on my MacBook Pro). No installation issues on either platform. It’s quick, the output looks great, it handles envelopes just fine, and the price is right. Happy camper.

By the way, if you’re office is cramped (like mine) don’t let the depth dimension scare you – you can fold the paper tray up out of the way when it’s not printing, and it takes up about 8″.

What more can I say. The printer does what I want it to do. I DO NOT print photos with this printer. It is my general purpose home printer. It is very fast and ‘seems’ to sip the ink. The printer’s internal webpage currently gives me a Total Page Count of 413 and I have 60% Black Ink Level and 50% Color Ink Level with included cartridges.

I installed the printer in my garage to free up my office desk space. (Office space recently shrank due to 95% of room being converted to a play room. Bah.

The 6980 worked good on my Windows XP PC using a Linksys wireless router with no security. (Yes… I ran it with no security. I played with MAC filter security and the 6980 worked but I don’t think that’s very good security.)

I recently installed Windows Vista and couldn’t believe it when Vista auto-configured the printer’s wireless connection. Recently, I enabled WPA2-AES security on my router. So, I connected the 6980 to my Linksys router with a Cat5 cable and accessed its “website” tool via the printer’s new LAN IP. No problems. I configured its Wireless Network settings to use WPA2-AES and gave it the Passphrase I setup earlier on my router. After disconnecting the Cat5 cable, I refreshed Vista’s Printer control panel and the printer re-appeared. I typed in its wireless IP in Internet Explorer and its internal website popped right up! I was very happy.

NOTE: The IP for the printer is different depending on whether it is connected via Wireless or Cat5 cable. At least it was for me. Check your OS’s printer control panel to discover the IP. If anything in this review doesn’t happen for you… you may want to read the Network Guide and Setup Guide located here:[...]

(Yes, the printer will make your cheapy pressboard desk wobble/vibrate while it prints. But you didn’t buy a wireless printer to put it on your desk!)

PRINTER REVIEWED

HP Deskjet 6980 Color Printer (C8969A#B1H)

When I bought a new computer and new software, I didn’t really think about my old printer not being able to “keep up.” (I also had an old scanner that was not Windows XP compatible and had to buy a new scanner.) I print a lot of photos, both b/w and color, and after scanning in a few photos and printing these, I discovered that I now needed a new printer. The new scanner was scanning at higher resolutions that my old printer could not handle. I have always liked HP printers and decided to buy the HP Photosmart 7550. However, a magazine article I read stated that the 7350 printed just as well as the 7550 and the 7350 cost $150 less. Needless to say I bought the Photosmart 7350. It was one of the best decisions I have made.

This printer does a phenomenal job printing photos, both black and white and color. It does a great job with anything you ask it to print, photos, graphics, or text, and the colors are very true to the original. There are a few drawbacks I have found thus far: 1) it is not a speedy printer. For example, I recently had to print a two-sided, legal size flyer. The flyer had a color photograph, color graphics and text on one side and straight text on the other side. I printed 200 copies and it took 5 hours to do the job (1.5 pages every minute). I had the print quality set at `Normal.’ When I set it to `Best’, it took almost twice as long to print one page. The `Best’ setting obviously gave the better looking results but for the flyer I was doing, the `Normal’ setting was fine. For the photos I print I always use the `Best’ setting; 2) it only holds two print cartridges at a time so you have to switch between the photo and black ink cartridges, depending on what you’re printing. The printer does not come with a black ink cartridge although, according to the instruction manual, you don’t need a black ink cartridge. Buying a black ink cartridge is more economical if you print a lot of regular documents; and, 3) the 7550 has an LCD screen for previewing pictures, the 7350 does not. I don’t consider this a necessity but some people might. All-in-all you have to consider what your top priority is as far as printer specifications are concerned. My first priority is quality of print, speed is secondary. Therefore, the length of time it takes to print something out is not an issue for me.

Something else to consider is the software and scanner you have; they do make a difference. If you do a lot of photos then definitely get some good image editing software. The software will improve the photos you will print, particularly if you plan to print older or damaged photos.

As a final note, the Photosmart 7350 does have memory-card slots located on the front panel – CompactFlash/IBM Microdrive, MultiMediaCard/Secure Digital, Memory Stick, and SmartMedia. It also has a digital camera port located on the front that you can use to print photos directly from your camera; you don’t have to use your computer.

There is so much to recommend about the HP 7350. Printing is extremely quiet and professional in appearance. You have the option of either hooking it up to your PC or Mac (USB cable must be purchased separately) or operating it as an independent unit by simply inserting your smart card into the slot on the front. If you want to print 4×6′s, there is a separate tray/slot for this size of paper. The controls have a nice feel, and the screen displaying the options is angled up slightly, making it easy to read for most people. You can print out an “index” or proof sheet of the photos on your card for preview.

The unit comes with 57(color) and 58(photo) cartridges that are about 1/3 full. If you want to use this as a regular ink jet as well, you’ll have to buy a #56 black ink cartridge. It also comes with a few sheets of glossy photo paper to get you started.

The photos that come out of this printer look as though they were professional printed, with high resolution (of course, the resolution of your digital camera has a lot to do with this) and a clean look. The printing itself is rather slow, especially if you are used to a laser printer as I am, but the results are well worth it.

I highly recommend this printer to anyone with a digital camera. You won’t regret it.

Good printer for on the go. Take it with you on vacation, business trips, wherever you might need a photo printed. It is a little slow to print (between 1 and 2 minutes per photo) and sure the paper and ink are a bit pricey, but all photo printers are. If you want cheap get your photos developed at Wal Mart or Target, but if you want convenience, a reasonable price, and the ability to print photos when and where you want then I’d go with this printer.

Put quite simply.

I opened the box.

I hooked it up to my computer.

It installed itself.

I have printed a ream of pages and it still works.

The images are clear and the text is crisp.

I absolutely love it.

This is a GREAT little printer and totally worth the $$$ – YOU WILL LOVE IT TOO! I opened the box and within 5 min had a picture in my hand that was as clear and as good a quality as any online photo shop. It is fast, cheap and EASY and the best part – it’s INSTANT. I have already printed out over 100 4×6 photos and the ink cart. is still going strong! A huge plus is not having to turn on your computer and log on everytime you want to print out a picture. I have two small children and I take dozens of pictures of them a week. Its nice to now be able to pick just the right shots and print them INSTANTLY. You literally take the picture, put your memory card into the printer, edit the picture if you want and then print. The WHOLE PROCESS takes less than 2 min. – I am not kidding!!
It is so intuitive, you don’t even need to read the instruction manual. Trust me, I didn’t believe that I would be impressed, but I was. If you love pictures, this is totally for you!!

Good things about this printer :

Print Quality : I’ve printed lots of graphics and photos from my PDA. They all look very good. Documents print quickly.

Interfaces : The printer comes with a BlueTooth adapter. This works well, plug it in and go. If you want wireless printing, the WiFi adapter costs about $90. I spent a decent amount of time with HP tech support getting my wireless configured. I think this could’ve been done better but tech support was very good. There is also a USB cable, printing from a laptop via USB works well. *Note: You cannot use WiFi and BlueTooth at the same time – each requires an adapter and there is only one slot available for the adapters.

Portability : It’s light weight for a color printer, but it’s still heavy enough that I wouldn’t want to carry it far. It comes with a nice leather case that fits snugly on the printer.

Battery : the printer also comes with a rechargeable battery. I have not used it much. It fits into the back of the unit and does not stick out very far. If you are on the road a lot, this would be very convenient.

HP Solutions Center : This comes on the start up CD. It is a pain. Whenever you turn on your computer, it will take forever to start up because the HP software ties up your processor accessing your internet looking for updates. I went into start up processes on my PC and turned it off. It’s a bit slow starting up now.

This is probably the 30th HP printer I’ve either personally owned or was directly responsible for purchasing and supporting, and it appears they’ve outdone themselves on this one.

Over the years, HP has put out some very nice units…and in contrast, some complete dogs, as well. That being said, I’m happy to report that this, along with last years Photosmart Premium (C309a) are pretty much the best AIO/MFPs HP has ever made with the OfficeJet Pro 8500 following very closely. There ARE, however a few things I wish HP would have carried over from the C309a to this years model, such as the ADF and the direct CD/DVD printing mechanism, especially for this price point, but since I still have the C309a, and find the touchscreen a complete joy to use I’m not too terribly upset about it.

Setup was a breeze and by far THE easiest install I have ever done. First off, HP put a lot of thought into the packaging, making it easy to remove the AIO from the box. The printer is wrapped in a big nylon bag with large straps, making it easy to remove. The idea is that you keep the bag and reuse it for other things to help cut down on the amount of plastic and paper bags floating around in landfills. Pretty thoughtful. Although it does have a big flower on both sides which could be a turnoff to those who prefer more “manly” carrying devices.

Once removed from the bag and after removing all the plastic protection, I plugged it in, inserted the ink carts, turned it on and let it do its pre-charging and setup. From opening the box, to it finishing it’s initialization took about 15 minutes. I then had it connect to my 802.11g network, using WPA2 security, which went off without a hitch and was ready to install the drivers. I NEVER, EVER use the drivers on the included disc, as they’re usually out of date and filled to the brim with crapware. Instead, I downloaded the “lite” version of the drivers for my OS (Windows 7, 64bit) and proceeded the installation. Once again, this went off without a hitch. It searched my network automatically, found the new AIO, and installed the drivers for it. Easy peasy. The lite driver pack, only weighs in at about 45mb vs 140+mb for the full version. I am able to do everything one would want (i.e. scan, print, fax, etc) via the network and dont have any crapware to eat up resources.

Print and picture quality is top notch. It’s pretty darn fast, as well. I have an HP Color LaserJet and used the same source (Word doc with graphs and pictures), along with the same 105+ gram paper and did a comparison test. Although the laser is clearly better for prints such as these, the Photosmart definitely holds its own with text as small as 6 point still readable. Where it REALLY shines, however, is printing photography. Pictures up to 8.5×11 are simply breathtaking. I detected absolutely no banding or other artifacts. Do NOT let the fact that this unit is “only” a 3 color printer (CMYK) deter you. I printed the same photo on both this, and my main 6 color “photo workhorse”, the Epson Stylus Photo 1400 (The only good thing Epson has put out in a long while) and had a hard time making out any discernible difference. Its really that good.

The touchscreen is simply amazing to use. There is a *slight* delay, but definitely nothing to get in a twist over and it makes configuration much easier than on previous models. Although the new web powered “widgets” are it’s primary selling point, I find, for my use at least, they are more of a gimmick than a must have. They are definitely neat however and fun to play with.

Actually, come to think of it, The Fandango movie ticket widget may come in handy from time to time…..

Now for the negatives, although there aren’t many:

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The first, is the price. I realize it’s a first of it’s kind and thus can generally demand a higher asking price, but even with everything it does, I still think $400 is a bit high.

And my last real complaint is the lack of an ADF. I really would have loved to see an ADF on this as on last years model and am a bit puzzled as to why they left it off, but no biggie.

I would also like to point out that as much effort as HP put into making this more “earth-friendly”, I find it humorous that they provide an app to print out news, weather reports, calendars, etc. All of which can be done online without the need to waste any paper. But seeing as I will rarely use the widgets, it makes no difference to me either way.

—————————————————

In summary, I would have no problems recommending this to anyone. This is a very capable AIO/MFP with an amazing touchscreen and complete ease of use. Just make sure your wallet can handle the sticker shock.

Easy to use, especially for those with no technical expertise at all. The cost prints are a little high, but for printing the occasional quality print, this printer should meet most peoples’ needs. Its portability lends it to taking it with you on a trip and allowing you to share your pictures on the run.

I struggled with choosing between Epson and HP. So many great write-ups about the Epson photo printers, but time and time again when I saw what the HP printers produced in the stores it amazed me. So after being an Epson fan for so many years, I decided to make MY own comparison. I took a CF memory card with pictures saved on it to the local store. I looked only for printers that had slots for various memory cards, which I found (1 Epson and 2 HPs). So I proceeded to take a few 4×6 papers and test print on each of the printers, with NO modifications to the saved image. The results were dramatically different. Both the HP 7350 and 7550 came out ahead of the Epson. The HP was very easy to use and fairly straightforward. It took me several attempts to get the Epson to work. In the end, the HP won in side-by-side comparison. I’ve been using my HP 7350 for a couple of weeks now and am extremely pleased with the quality and ease of use.

The HP c309n Photosmart Premium All-in-One, is a feature-rich printer that can do just about anything you’d expect. It’s list of features include:

borderless photo printing

high quality text printing

double-sided printing

telephone-line fax

4800 x4800dpi scanning

online widgets

an excellent touchscreen interface

memory card slots

USB, LAN and wireless connectivity

stylish design

dual trays (photo and regular)

==EASE OF USE==

The included cd installs an excellent software interface that is clean, easy to use and provides every option I could want. Setup took under 10 minutes total, most of which was plugging in all the cables and ink cartridges. The default settings for the printer are great, but be careful to avoid printing with color cartridges or the black photo ink cartridge except when appropriate. It’s easy to save your own printing and scanning profiles so you can print and scan without any hassle and get the exact results you want. So make sure you do that right away.

==FEATURES==

As listed above, this printer has a strong feature list, best of which is the touchscreen interface. It gives you immediate access to many online widgets as well as printing from memory cards. Some of the widgets are great, like Fandango’s widget for showtimes, buying and printing tickets all from the touchscreen within minutes. However, google maps’ widget only allows viewing a printing of a map, not directions, which hopefully will get added at some point. USA Today’s widget gives you a few pages of articles for each section daily to print with ease, but the pages print out just awfully, almost undreadable. This seems to plague some other widgets as well and should get fixed soon.

Although the widgets have their ups and downs, the other printer features are completely solid. Scanning handles up to four 4×6 photos at once, depending on resolution and computer memory (i recommend 600dpi or higher and saving as .tif). The picture correction and processing automatically produces a much improved image, but you are free to tweak a huge host of settings including lighting and coloring.

==PRINT QUALITY==

Arguably the most important factor in choosing a printer, the print quality is excellent (except on some widgets as mentioned). Text is very clear and deep black, while borderless photos look almost as good as from the store. Occasionally, borderless photos will need to have the right side cut down by about 1mm.

==PRINT SPEED==

This is a moderately fast printer. Once it gets going, it seems to run about 15ppm text or 5ppm 4×6 photo for high quality and about twice that speed for low quality. The problem is that it can take a minute or more to actually start printing. Also, the printer shakes my desk violently while printing, a minor annoyance.

==VALUE FOR MONEY==

While the features may warrant a high price tag for this excellent All-in-One printer, some consumers may find a better deal with a printer more targeted to their needs. My previous printer was the HP Photosmart C6380 All-in-One Printer. It’s similar and matches the c309n in print quality, but lacks the fax, touch screen, widgets and double-sided printing. It’s slightly slower to print, but if these extra features don’t matter to you, the c6380 is worth a look. Unfortunately both have lackluster ink economy. You may find the original color print cartridges last only a dozen photo prints and several color pages. Fortunately, the 564xl cartridges are available for a great price on amazon and will last 2.5-3 times as long as the regular 564 cartridges (which at msrp could break the bank with frequent use).

I LOVE this printer! Within 2 minutes of opening the box, I was printing beautiful photos from my Sony Memory Stick. I have had a digital camera for over a year and have sent many photos via E-mail to family and friends, but it would always take me “forever” to go get prints made. I absolutely loved being able to hand my neighbor friend pictures of our kids together in their trick-or-treat outfits instantly. It has been a true joy to print out hundreds of photos practically non-stop. SO,WHY IS THIS A MUST HAVE? It is extremely easy to use and comes with a “no brainer” setup guide. What you see on the LCD screen is EXACTLY how the photo will look when you print it. You can enhance the photo (ie: brightness control etc.) right from the printer. All you do is plug it into the wall, and start printing. You don’t ever have to connect it to a computer, though you can easily if you want to. It can be used with several memory cards including: CompactFlash Type I and II; Sony Memory Sticks; Lexar Media Sticks; Secure Digital; MultiMedia Card; and xD-Picture Cards. (Wanted to mention this as I was told at a local electronics store that I would need to buy Sony’s Photo Printer because the Sony Media Stick wouldn’t work with any others). I especially love being able to tell it to print 5 copies of a single photo and go off to do something else and return to find gorgeous photos ready for myself, Grandma and Grandpa, Nana, and Aunts and Uncles to boot…all from the comfort of my own home where it is much easier to entertain my kids than it is at a stores printing center. Give it a try, I am certain you will be impressed!! Sorry I can’t comment on the software that came with it as I haven’t even opened it yet…no need to my photos are AWESOME already!! THANKS HP!!

Wow, it seems the reviews on this machine range a lot. Well I can only say good things about this printer. First of all, I am an Epson person, I never use any printers outside of Epson, but Im tired of my Epsons always breaking down, and promising what they dont deliver. I was very impressed with the small things, like the individual holding tray for 4×6 glossy paper, plus the fact that it is a reader for 4 different types of portable media, including MMC, SmartMedia, and Compact Flash. It has a very easy to use and yet effective built in control panel so one can print pictures right off their cameras, bypassing the PC all together. I couldn’t give this printer a better rating. And I never thought an inkjet printer can have such *superior* printing abilty. If i didnt do it myself, i would swear that those pictures i took off my cheap digital camera were made strait from the photo shop, and imagine what this thing can do with a high megapixel digital camera. Only shame is I cannot find any non-HP manufactured inks for this printer, gotta get em’ from HP. I am using a 850 mhz machine w/ windows 2000 pro and I have never seen such a good printer, plus I have to admit, it has a nice look and feel to it. GET THIS PRINTER!

Sharing a printer with 5 other people at work was not ideal so I bought this printer for myself. My coworkers are jealous and can’t believe how cheap it cost me. I love the look and doesn’t take up a lot of space. It’s (only) been 4 weeks and it’s working great – crisp and clean printing. Unfortunately, I already need to replace the black ink cartridge – it doesn’t seem to waste ink during printings so I hope this short life span of cartridges doesn’t continue.

Now, I admit there are definitely printers with more bells and whistles. Sure I would have liked to get one with the scanner/copier/fax, but I was NOT in a position to spend $100.

For less than $40, this printer has not given me ANY trouble. I have had NO paper jams. I have had NO “freezing up” or non-responsiveness. I have had NO smears. I use it for both normal printing, and for photo printing.

If you want to print 100 photos, I would recommend going to your local drug store. But to do a few, this printer does the job. For example on Mother’s Day, I gave my mother and my sister photo montage picture frames (you know, they have all the different shaped holes in them), I printed my own photos and put them together. The printer worked just as fast as I did, I could pick up one photo from the printer, get it taped into the frame, and go pick up another one. I can print 4 X 6 photos, I can print 8 X 10 photos, I can print all sizes in-between.

Listen to this! I am STILL ON THE PARTIALLY FILLED INK CARTRIDGES THAT CAME WITH MY PRINTER OVER 6 MONTHS AGO! Even though I use this printer every day! I print photos, emails, recipes, payment receipts for bills, word searches for my niece, coloring pages for my nephew, postage and packing slips and address labels for my eBay business, everything you can think of – I print it.

I usually use the default “Quick-Set” for printing, but you can design your own if you need to. When I am printing things for myself I use the “fast/economical” setting. It sure is economical – as I said, I have yet to go through the first ink freebies I received. I use the “general/everyday” setting for things I need to look nice. I use the “borderless photo” or “photo with border” settings depending on what I am doing. Or of course, I can manually design my own Quick-Set to use over and over, or I can just change settings on a print by print basis.

I don’t know what more I could ask of a printer for this price. If you don’t need to scan/copy/fax, I would recommend this compact and eye-pleasing workhorse for anyone who doesn’t want to, or cannot afford to, pay more than $40

I bought this to use on my desk in the office to print out emails and attachments and miscellaneous documents. It does not take up a lot of space, prints fast with good quality, and is reasonably quiet. It is perfect for my purposes.

I changed the settings to print only in black and white since I don’t need color. The menus are easy to use.

Like all printers, this does not come with a USB cable to connect with your computer, and the ink cartridges that come with it are the “economy size” that don’t last very long. However once I replaced the black cartridge with a standard size, the ink supply seems to be holding up pretty well based on the amount of printing that I do.

After owning another brand for the past few years, and experiencing a lot of technical difficulties and ink problems (the printer heads would get clogged with ink), I went ahead and bought an HP Deskjet 3845. I waited a few months until writing a review to see whether there would be problems that would emerge after regular usage. I am happy to report that this printer is fantastic. The printing quality is great, and the printer is low maintenance. I do not print a high volume of materials, so this printer is great for my home printing needs. Great job, HP.

This printer was purchased for my wife’s birthday and arrived

in two to three days. Considering money spent the printer

works quite well. Pictures come out very good overall. An

HP 95 or HP 97 cartridge is used for color photos. It contains

three color inks but no black. Still, photos will easily

satisfy the average owner. An HP 100 cartridge can be used

for black and white photos. Yes, the color cartridge must be

exchanged for the black one when converting from color to

black and white and vise versa. Even so, we find the printer

fun and very simple to use. Just keep in mind that the price

of ink will soon exceed the price of the printer if used

often. What we do is use it for special occasions or when

the grandchildren come over.

Gary

I couldn’t ask for a cheaper printer and it works just fine. HP is a reliable brand and it’s easy to find their cartridges. For light volume print jobs, this is what you want.

I found the setup to be surprisingly simple. I have a normal wireless router with 4 ethernet ports. I used the enclosed CD’s to hard wire the printer to my desktop (through my router). Then, I connected my laptop to my wireless network and clicked “setup printer” and the printer was basically already there…so cool! This thing is networked, so I can print to either my desktop (hard wired) or my laptop (wireless).

The printer uses 920XL ink cartridges, so printing cost is maybe half of some other inexpensive HP printers. Here’s my opinion on HP printers. You can buy a $40 printer and pay $.10-12/page for black & white. You can buy a $200 printer and pay $.04-.05/page. This printer is pretty close to the expensive ones for ink cost per page. You’ll need to do some research (HP cartridges are rated for number of pages) for accurate comparisons.

Thanks, Paul.

I did a lot of research before buying this printer.Consumer Report recommended it, but didn’t think the black text printing was sharp enough. It seems fine to me. I wanted to be able to print good color graphics such as greeting cards, and also acceptable photos. It does both very well, and the cartridges are reasonably priced. I am very happy with my purchase.

The Photosmart 335 is easy to use – even for technophobes – and delivers quality prints. Only gripe is the ink cartridges can be expensive.

Very nice product. Worked fantastically out of the box, and the bluetooth support has worked without a hitch (on a Mac – have not tried it with a PC). The unit feels very rugged, and folds up into a very portable, if a bit bulky, package. Print quality is not as good as its much bigger cousins, but definitely more that adequate for its convenience and versatility.

I like the HP 6000 printer very much. It prints good pictures and if you use fast/economical printing for regular printing, stand back to catch your pages! Very fast!

This is the first HP printer I have ever bought and am glad I decided to try it.

We have 2 laptops, one on each level of our home. The HP 4780 wireless printer allows us to print without any of those extra cables. Works great. Its placed in on a desk, laptop can be used from couch or bedroom. We don’t print alot but when we do, the hp 4780 does its job.

Price was cheaper than Best Buy or Staples, no sales tax, reasonable shipping (which still made the item les than the big box stores.

I have had this printer for over a month now. For the price an excellent buy. Perfect for my needs. Item arrived on time, was packed secure. Love this little printer. Would recommend for any home user.

Review conducted with a 2×2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon Mac running OS 10.6.2 – I installed the accompanying HP software, version 10.2, that came with the product, then upgraded that to 10.3 which took 4 minutes to download from HP’s website. The upgrade enabled several features, such as scanning, that didn’t work fully with the combination of 10.6.2 and HP 10.2.

Years ago, I bought an HP wireless laser printer and have wondered why manufacturers don’t make all printers wireless. The ease with which the printer can be placed anywhere in the house, then accessed easily by any desktop or laptop, is far more straight-forward than hooking a printer to a single computer, then sharing it through software on that one computer. The latter hookup requires that a specific computer always be turned on. Ptui. So needless to say, I was interested in this new offering from HP, the tongue-twisting Photosmart Premium TouchSmart Web All-In-One Printer C309n.

Opening the box, one discovers the printer itself, a phone cord for the fax, Ethernet cable, AC power brick and cord, and a USB cord. Since the printer is wireless, I’m not using either the Ethernet cable or the USB cord. The printer is packed in a large cloth shopping bag that can be used for convenient grocery shopping. The handles make it easy to unpack the printer since you can simply lift the bag and printer out of the box. No struggling.

Remove tape and protective covering. Plug in the printer. The screen on the printer instructs you as to how to proceed, showing videos in case you have difficulty with any of the instructions. Essentially, you install five ink cartridges (photo black, blue, magenta, yellow, and standard black) and then the printer takes about 10 minutes to align itself. You then hook the printer up to your Wireless. Don’t worry about your protected network. You can enter your password on the virtual keypad appearing on the HP’s screen. The screen itself works like an iPhone’s: point to click, drag to scroll. All very intuitive. Once you’re on the network, you can install your computer software. I quickly downloaded an app for my iPhone: HP iPrint 2.0 – this allows you to print 4×6 photos of pictures taken with your iPhone – while I was waiting for the software to finish installing.

The printer has two paper trays – one for standard paper and the other for photo paper. Neither is particularly large with the main bay holding 100 sheets and the photo bay holding 20. The photo tray can support up to 5×7 paper and the main tray can support up to 8.5×11 as well as #10 envelopes. There’s support on the front panel for an incredible variety of memory cards, each of which can simply be plugged in:

Compact Flash Type 1; Memory Stick; Memory Stick Duo; Memory Stick Pro; Memory Stick Pro Duo; Memory Stick Pro HG; Secure Digital; Secure Digital High Capacity; MultimediaCard; xD Picture Card

Using those, you can easily grab photos through the interactive touch-screen for printing.

The printer itself works smoothly and is reasonably quiet. Standard black output for text is nearly laser printer quality. Laser quality could probably be achieved with better paper (I have cheap standard photocopy paper in there now and specific inkjet paper would be desirable). In any case, this could easily be used for business letters. Since the printer also works as a copy machine, it’s nice to have what’s essentially a color photocopy machine without needing to first scan a sheet into my computer, then send it to a color printer. Moreover, the HP displays the output on the screen, allowing you to confirm, fix the placement of the original, reduce/enlarge, etc. prior to the printer job taking place.

The fax works quickly and easily as well without requiring any input from you at your computer. The touchscreen makes the entire process simple. The unit will answer a fax line automatically after 5 rings. You can turn that feature off if you’d like from your computer.

The scanner is easily accessed through the Mac’s Print & Fax preference panel, though you can also access this while standing at the printer. Scans can then be sent back to your computer or to a memory card or flash drive plugged into one of the front ports.

For some reason, I found the internet access capabilities of the HP to be fascinating. I’m not sure why, but having what amounts to an iPhone as part of a printer just seems interesting. I stood there watching a trailer for Disney’s Christmas Carol (and yes, the HP has speakers so that it can play multimedia content) that I could have watched on my computer screen or iPhone. HP has apps that allow the printer to take advantage of certain specific types of content (maps, illustrations, coupons, for example). I expect this to be useful in unexpected ways as time passes.

Photo printing is more than acceptable. It’s not up to the quality of HP’s high end printers (B9180 series, for example), but you’re not buying this for perfect color output. The quality is up to the level that you’d get from your corner store and you’ll be very happy sharing photos with family members and friends.

The printer has a sleep mode and an off mode. If you use it for incoming faxes, you’ll leave it in on/sleep mode; the sleep mode is useful as well for those who will be printing from multiple potential sites within the home or office.

Negatives:

1) The top panel has no damping on it. If you lift it up to place a page on the glass, but you fail to lift it far enough, the panel will fall rapidly to the glass. Most copy machines, scanners, and similar devices have a top cover that stays put, at whatever angle you happen to let go at. Not here.

2) There’s no feeder for the fax or scanner, so if you have multiple pages to copy/scan, you’ll be standing at the printer for a time.

3) There’s one more negative, though this one is HP’s own specification for the unit. The printer duty cycle is noted on HP’s website as being up to 2500 pages for the printer and up to 1250 pages for the copier. This is actually pretty good in comparison to other similar printers, but is not good in comparison to laser printers, which will often easily allow for 10,000 prints per month over the course of years. But realize that a ream of paper is 500 sheets – this printer has a duty cycle of 5 reams of paper. If that will take you years to accomplish, this is not a problem, but if you go through a ream a month, you might be unhappy if the printer keels over in five months. That said, the 1 year warranty would still apply so it might not be an issue after all.

In summary, this is a novel printer with an interesting collection of features, HP’s generally excellent attention to detail, and a well thought out software package that installed without difficulty on the latest Mac operating system.

The HP H470wbt Officejet Mobile Printer is a life saver. I am a commercial investment real estate broker and often need to redraft documents I carry the unit in my truck. One day recently I needed to redraft a document prior to the buyer leaving the country for a month, so I fired up the HP inserted paper and “viola” new documents. The color is good the black and white is nearly laser quality, the footprint is small and it’s easy to connect and use. I highly recommend this unit for small jobs and road warriors who need print capability is a small package.

I purchased this for myself since I did not want to keep up-loading and waiting on delivery of my pictures from some of those online retailers. Not to mention the price of those on-line retailers can be expensive. Plus I wanted a quick and easy way of making photos without using my computer.

This printer is very easy to use. Once set up, all you do is insert your memory card, select which image you want to print by scrolling up or down on the display, put in a blank 4″ x 6″ photo paper (preferably glossy, not matte) and push the print button. The quality of the prints from this printer is fantastic. As good, or better, that HP’s more expensive models (HP 425 or HP 475) and just as good as some of Cannon’s & Epson’s more higher priced models. Absolutely one user friendly stand alone photo printer with great pictures.

It’s small, lightweight and very compact. Design features are very functional and it looks really sharp.

The prints speed is a little slow and the LCD screen is a bit small, plus the ink cartridges may be a little expensive. But, I was able to print approximately 90 photos from the originally supplied cartridge. I expect to get a lot more photos when I replace this cartridge with another retail purchased one, because we all know the original ink cartridges supplied with most printers are only approximately 1/2 filled with ink. One thing to remember: DON’T buy any other replacement ink cartridges except the HP 95. And definetly DO NOT buy and refurbished or re-filled ones.

In the latest comsumer reports survey, this printer really scored well vs. some stiff competition. It ranked in the top 7 of 27 other different models tested. Finishing with an overall score of 65; an Epson model scored the best at 75 and a Kodak scored the worst at 37. This HP 335 even placed higher than the HP 475 ($230.00) and the HP 425 ($190.00) and at a better cost ($100.00). I purchased mine for approximately $80.00 from Amazon.com

Nevertheless, for the money and quality of pictures you receivce from this printer, it’s well worth the money invested.

HP Photosmart Premium printer is an awesome all-in-one printer (print, fax, scan, copy). It will also let you print directly from the web through your existing internet connection (selected sites/app with the touchsmart web app) or the memory card using the various memory card slots available. This printer also has wireless, wi-fi, and bluetooth connection capability. It has a nice LCD touchscreen that is useful for navigating all the functions, editing photos and operating the touchweb. It’s basically almost like a computer by itself. Having said all those good features (and the advance technology of the touchsmart web), I think this printer strongest feature is still the print quality which is a good thing.

Here are some things (that it currently doesn’t have) that will make this printer even better. First, include paper feeder for scanning, copying and faxing so we don’t have to do it one page/side at a time (manually). Secondly, greatly expand the web sites/apps that are compatible with this printer (the touchsmart web), or just add a web browser and let people browse (and print) freely using the nice 4.33 inch LCD (or save document/image to the memory card). Maybe HP will add these features in the future.

Pros:

1. Great printing/image quality, and fast printing as well.

2. Do it all with this printer (print, fax, scan, copy, web)

3. Web printing without a PC (USA Today, Weather, Maps, Photos, Coupons, Movie tickets etc).

4. Compatible pretty much with all kinds of memory cards out there (memory slot)

5. Can still connect with USB or ethernet if you don’t have/want to use the wireless capability

6. Print photo easily from iPhone, iPod Touch, and Bluetooth enabled device

7. Sleep mode available (useful if using this machine to receive/stand-by for fax or remote printing)

8. Edit photos without a PC

9. Printing 2 sides (safe paper/trees)

10. Great quality for printing 8 X 10 color photo

Cons:

1. No paper feeder for scanning and sending fax (do it one page at a time)

2. Limited Touchsmart Web functionality (maybe HP will expand it to more/all websites in the next version to make it even more usable)

3. Can’t scan document or photos and save/process it directly to the memory card without your PC

4. Though this printer is not heavy, it’s a bit big (bulky), so make sure you understand the dimension of this printer before you buy

Sidarta Tanu

Another good HP printer. This one works ok with Vista home premium.

I don’t load the HP disk that comes with it. Hp loads too much junk that drives you nuts with updates and pop ups.. This trash is very hard to get rid of when installed. Plus on some vista rated printers the HP install crashes and you have a mess on your hands… HP installer has Vista problems.

I use the Vista hardware installer and insert the HP disk when the install wizard calls for it. Vista finds the drivers on the disk and installs printer and is good to go…

Okay first let me say I got a great deal on this printer. I paid about $24 for it. It came with one each 21 and 22 type ink cartridge whose normal price together is around $29. So you could say I bought the ink cartridge at a discount and they gave me the printer. I have had it more then three months and it does everything I asked. This is considered to be a photo printer but I really have not tried that part. But as a printer for doc it is great.

H

I’ve used the HP 6000 for only a short time (printing a hundred pages or so), but have found it excellent so far. Installation, though a bit slow, went easily. Printing speed in fast draft is exceptional (about 3 seconds a page) and the quality good. Communications between the printer and my computer could be faster, too, but once it goes to work it zips. One minor paper jam was easily fixed. I’m surprised at getting this much for the cost.

This is a great printer for the price! My son installed it and it was ready to go in an hour. Thanks for saving me some money!!

I am a very short time user of this printer, however, this is at least 16th printer I have had at since my first Centronics in 1979, and I have installed many more at work.

The printer is very well packed. The print head comes un-installed. I had a little apprehension putting in the print head. The gray bar that is raised has a stiff spring. It would not be the first time I have pulled something too hard, but there are no locks or catches. It just lifts up. The head went in smooth as did ink installation. The next step is to put power on and wait for the printer to align. This takes some time. The printer werrs, pops, grinds, sounds like it is trying to load paper, but eventually prints, JUST WAIT.

After plugging in the Ethernet cable, the network light came on, and pressing the light got me a network printout. (However, it was not necessary). From here you put the disk in the computer and follow instructions. I installed the printer on three computers, a desktop wired to network, and Asus EEEpc, wireless (copy all files to a usb and run setup from the usb), and a laptop also wireless. The desktop with Vista required me to except port 427, the Asus running XP required nothing, and the Laptop running Vista and Zone Alarm required reconfiguring Zone Alarm. The good thing is the firewall changes required were somewhat explained by the software. The Zone Alarm instructions were better than the Windows FireAlarm instructions.

I have read many of the ‘professional’ reviews on this printer. Now that I have it installed and have printed several test prints, some thoughts. Print speed, is well within acceptable limits. In fact I read one review that said it was too slow. I disagree with that. I also read that the ‘Photo’ quality was not good. Well it is certainly good enough. It does make noise, however, it is no worse that most other HP ink jets I have dealt with. It is not a factor for me, but it it were I would pick the Wireless model and stick the thing in a closet somewhere.

I would highly recommend this printer to anyone looking for no frills printing. I particularly like the cost of ink! While I have refilled carts before, at $9.99 for color carts, for 300 pages and $14.99 for 700 pages, I don’t think I will mess with it. The black XL cart is suppose to print 1,200 pages that is almost 5 reams of paper!

this printer is great for the price. i purchase this printer to installed it in my work truck and let me tell you it is not too big and it gets the work done. i almost buy a expenssive one for over 100.00 i am glad i didn’t

After several years of fighting with a wireless print server to allow my 5 PCs to print to a single printer, I finally decided to replace the whole setup with a new wireless printer. After reading many negative reviews of the various printers available, I entered into the process with much trepedation. I’ve used HP printers for many years and have had some good and some not-so-good experiences, so again, worried about what I might get myself into. I purchaces a new c309n-s (the follow on to the c309n) this afternoon and now sit here sipping my wine after a no-fuss, easy-peasy-leamon-squeezy install process. While the process was not exceedingly fast… the only problem I ran into was on one of the PCs installing the driver software. This, I must admit, was not unexpected since the PC in question is a very old machine that frequently has problems. The rest of the machines installed end-to-end without a single issue. Setup issues have been the bane of my existance for so long, I just had to rave about how easy this was.

No, I haven’t printed a lot on the printer yet, but the samples printed from each PC install were beautiful. I like that there is a tray for photo paper separate from the plain paper and it seems to work well without any intervention. I haven’t tried fax features yet, but it’s the feature I’ll use least, so not too important. I also haven’t tried the scanning features, but will try to remember to come back and update this in a few weeks with my experience there.

This printer is great. Separate tray for 4×6 photo paper, so you can easily switch paper sizes. In fact, I was having so much fun with it, I ended up getting a higher megapixel camera so that I could print even bigger, better pictures. I am surprised by how many pictures and other graphics I have printed and still haven’t had to change the ink cartridges (separate photo ink and color cartridges) Can exchange the photo ink cartridge for a black ink only one, which is a nice feature. Unless you want to print your pictures without a computer, this is definitely one to check out. If you want to print without a computer, check out the other versions of HP PhotoSmart printers. However, I prefer editing the pictures slightly first (i.e. cropping, color enhancement, brightness or contrast) and then printing them out.

I’ve had this printer for several months now, and thus far, have been very happy with it. I don’t print out a high volume of documents, so both the price and printer fit my needs perfectly.

I tend to only print out various Word documents and/or website pages, and the speed is not bad. I have also printed out some digital pictures, and they turned our surprisingly sharp. While you could tell they were printed pictures (compared to something like Ofoto), they are nice enough that you could hang around the house. I wouldn’t use this printer primarily for digital pictures, however. While the quality is okay, it’s not great enough that I’d want *all* of my photos to be from this printer.

My only minor complaint is that the cartridges haven’t lasted me as long as the previous HP printer I had. After three months, I had to replace the cartridges which seems fast. It’s one of the main reasons why I recommend not using this for digital pictures (not to mention I’m sure there are better quality printers out there that are geared towards digital photographs). So, yes, this would be fine for printing out pictures – occasionally, yes, but not frequently.

One small thing that I like is it prints pages in reverse chron order, page 3, page 2, then page 1. My previous printer printed them page 1 first, page 2, etc., so I had to shuffle through the papers and reorder them. Yes, a minor issue, but it was annoying if you printed more than 10 pages or so.

Overall, I would recommend this printer for the person who doesn’t need to print a high volume of documents (or digital photos). For the home computer user like me, it’s perfect.

Originally reviewed this printer in mid-2008 and reserved 1 star due to not knowing long-term performance. Have now had this item well over one year, and it is still going strong. Print quality is exceptional; copies look like originals. Fax works great and so does the scanner. Phone is a bonus. Best price was on line–including shipping, it cost less than at my local store. Easy to set up; software easy to install. Great item.

This is a nice printer, love the wireless aspect, slightly bulky for a mobile printer.

This printer is great for every day use. I have had it for a month now and I have never had any problems. Having three college students in the same house requires a good economical printer and this printer has not failed any of us.

I needed a small mobile printer suitable for taking to Court and setting up right at the counsel table. This way, when a judge wants to read a case, or receive a short pleading, we can bang it out right away rather than have some poor devil from my office hop in a car to drive it over to us as in former times. Also, since this printer is color, we can occasionally use it to knock out a photo or whatnot as an exhibit when needed. The fact that it has a pretty beefy battery adds to the versatility of this nice accessory.

My H470wbt installed automatically and effortlessly on my Windows Vista notebook computer. It downloaded both the device driver and an update to the driver without prompting me one single time. It simply went about its business efficiently and unobtrusively. In fact, that is pretty much the theme of this friendly little device. It simply works and works well. It is very quiet too, so you won’t draw any complaints from even the crankiest host.

The unit comes with a snappy leather case for transporting to and from Court or wherever.

The unit is intuitive enough that I have yet to crack the manual, although if/when I utilize its bluetooth capacity I suppose I will need to do that.

HP has produced a winner. Highly recommended

Put the old camera & film in the attic for nostalgia sake! Get a 2 MP digital or higher and print your photos with this printer! The 4″x6″ tray is a plus for album & framed prints and the 8×10 tray is fine for multiple prints on one page (called albums). I use desktop publishing programs to create collages of pictures as well. The photo print quality of the HP is magnificent! People who see my photos cannot believe a printer produced them with such vivid color and clarity. I have made “memories” CD’s using my cdwriter and imported background music for the “slide shows”. The HP software does it all – follow the directions. User friendly and the ink goes a long way! Don’t pass on this one – I paid … only 3 months ago and it’s worth much more -it’s on sale so run for it! Print only what you like and you will LOVE what you print!

One of these models, purchased on sale for $50, has come in very handy after my previous all-in-one fax machine died.

I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the high quality of even photograph prints, although the machine has only two ink cartridges, not four. My last all-in-one, the Epson CX9400Fax, had an extremely temperamental set of four cartridges, which ran dry in the blink of an eye and could not be refilled, and frequently were “not recognized” at all. At long last, the machine did not run, even for faxing, and had to be replaced. (Fortunately it was still under warranty.)

This HP, by contrast, also has a much smaller footprint. It has a huge advantage over most all-in-one machines—a hand held head set. This makes it possible to send faxes even through international calling cards, when necessary, rather than paying the exorbitant phone rates generally charged by land line carriers. For those all-in-one machines without hand sets, that option is off the table. It’s dial direct, with no intermediaries, or forget faxing.

Moreover, the paper seems to feed reliably (another problem with the Epson).

This is a dandy little machine for the dough. At first I used it as a backup. Now, it will be my regular all-in-one. I have bequeathed the Epson replacement to my partner.

This is my third HP and the results just keep getting better. The 7150 is stylish and well designed. The printer has a 4 x 6 photo tray that allows 20 sheets of photo paper to be loaded and printed in a batch mode directly from HP’s excellant photo printing / album layout software. Even with the 20 sheets of 4 x 6 paper loaded you can still print on regular paper via a lower paper tray. Prints using the photo color cartridge are stunning. I have to say I sold my Epson 820 in no time flat and even made my Canon friend blush when he saw how incredible the prints are. As always the big advantage to HP is the quality. These printers don’t jam, don’t need head cleaning and don’t require tweaking to get the results you see on screen.

I have had this printer now for about 6 weeks. Printed 8 of my top photographs at 13 inches by 19 inches and ran out of yellow and photo black ink. Now I know that the inks that come with the unit are not “full” and I do hope I get a better run from the new XL cartridges. Apart from that I am over the moon with the results of the prints. Crisp clear and they look great at this size. Not a problem to set up but the setup did something to my registry settings and it now takes forever to boot. If your interested in large format printing from an 8mp camera then this is a good buy. I am more than just satisfied with the purchase. The pics are sellable.

This printer doesn’t have any bell or whistles, but does it’s job well. I needed a small printer for my computer hutch and it fit the bill.

To be honest, this should be a 4.5 star review in light of some software issues, but the printer does such a fantastic job that I thought I should round the stars UP rather than down. I’m truly thrilled with this printer, and that’s that. If only HP could streamline their software, this would be a full 5 star review.

I’ve printed at least 2 dozen prints — 4×6, 5×7, 8.5×11, HP paper, Epson paper, Staples paper, etc. — and I have great difficulty determining that ANY of these did not come from a professional photo lab. In fact, I’d told a friend that I’d received this great printer, and when I presented him with a gorgeous 5×7 of a group of us, he asked me where I went to have my photo developed! The output is THAT good. The only output complaint I have is that every once in a while one gets some very shallow linear scratches to the glossy finish, but they are so incredibly small, you have to hold up the photos to a light at a specific angle. This is being very picky, and it’s truly a NON-ISSUE for me.

Some have claimed to have had problems with ink drying time, but I have not: prints are dry within 15-30 seconds, though I do let them sit for a minute or two just in case. I tried smearing the “wet” ink on one after 10 seconds, and there was no smearing, so, if one uses HP Advanced Photo paper, or any of the premium glossy papers I’ve tried, I do not forsee any such problems.

My biggest problems in terms of print output are of the software variety. I have not been able to determine whether this is an HP or a Corel issue (on the computer I have connected this printer to, I use either Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 or Jasc PSP 9, which is the basis for the Corel software, since Corel bought out Jasc and built their PSP series on this Jasc platform), but there are some differences in inch standards between these software packages and the HP printer software: I can edit pictures to print to a standard paper size (let’s say 5×7 here) and crop photos to either those exact dimensions or at least to preserve that particular aspect ratio, but when I then send the photo to this printer via the HP software, the preview shows gaps along the “borderless” photo preview on both of either the 5″ or 7″ sides. This is true of 4×6″ photos as well. I have not been able to figure out which software is to blame for having dubious “inches,” but I’ve created a work-around that I’ve found totally satisfying…

I do edit ALL photos I take with photo editing software before printing, so what I do to work around this problem is create the output crop to be a 5.1″x7.1″ (aspect ratio preserved) photo. Then, I save the file to a SD/SDHC card, stick it into the printer directly, and then the photo is centered on the printer’s preview screen, and it prints perfectly along ALL borders. I know that this is not perhaps the solution a professional photographer would like, but for a amateur photographer like me who does some not-so-amateur digital photo processing, the output is astounding, and this workaround is not a significant problem.

I would be remiss, though, if I did not refer you to the truly exhaustive technical review on the sub-par HP software that the reviewer named “Bond… James Bond ’007.5′” wrote. It points out some software glitches and the resource-hog multi-process problems that do exist with the bundled HP software. As far as I’ve seen, all he writes is accurate. The issues are slightly different with the Vista 64-bit OS I’m using, but the differences are not significant enough to enumerate.

One bug that I have also found is in HP’s attempt to load its “HP Smart Web Printing 4.0″ into all browsers. It is not compatible with Firefox 3.0.4, and it’s fairly easy to disable there; however, reading the problems “Bond” experienced trying to uninstall it from IE, I’m not looking forward to that operation.

The printer software interface is not all that user-friendly either. I’m used to Epson’s multi-tabbed affairs that have literally pages of options. HP seems at first to have the same approach, but, actually, some, but not all (!!!) of the tabs are mutually-exclusive: whichever tab you print from will be the set of options chosen. So, if you think you’ve set one option on one tab and move to another and print from it, that other tab’s setting may have just been negated. This will take some getting used to, and I can’t pretend I quite comprehend this interface yet, but I’ve simply been bypassing it by saving my edited photos to SDHC cards and printing them directly from the printer with WONDERFUL results.

These praises and complaints I’ve noted in my experience with this printer and its software are typical of what I’ve experienced with HP in the past (I am writing this on an HP Pavilion Media Center m8430f, so I know what I’m talking about) is that HP hardware tech is formidable and wonderful stuff — but their software? Not so much. Very much resource-hogging, non-necessary stuff that drags down your system and creates quite a few glitches.

There are so many other features I could comment on, but this review is waxing long. Suffice it to say that I’m absolutely thrilled with this printer, and I’d recommend it in an instant; however, I’d do so with the caveat that it’s probably best used as a stand-alone, not hooked up to any computer (to avoid the software issues), simply used to print photos one has edited on a non-connected computer and saved to SDHC media to print directly from the printer without software interaction. If that’s how one chooses to use this printer, I think they’ll have a 5-star experience!

HP K8600DN Office Jet Pro Color Printer (11 x 17″ Format)

Duplexing (Automatic double-sided printing)is huge. Big time/cost savings. Better use of paper/environmental impact.

Print quality is fine. Previously used HP’s CP1700 printer for about 7 years before replacing w/this updated version.

Like the large (volume) & separate ink cartridges… EZ to change-out. 90% of printing volume is 8.5″ x 11.0″, the

rest is 11X17″.

Things that could be better (a lot better) printing on heavier papers… straight-path/manual feed from the back

is very poor/very difficult to the point of un-usablity (I’m being polite). Over-all the product works well.

This printer has just been given a very favorable comment on page 72 of the July 08 issue of PC World, so you can imagine my shock when I see only one star here on amazon. Then I read the review. It has nothing to do with the printer. The person is angry with amazon. This is not the place to register that gripe. HP did not do him ill nor did this printer. How many people have passed it by just seeing that one star without reading it? There is a 5 star review for the K8600, sister of this without the duplexing or networking by someone who owns it. I do not own it yet, I am still shopping and comparing, but this printer is currently in my cart as one of the finalists and may well be the one I buy. Its capacity, features and ink cost are very very appealing.

To Richard Thompson of Montclair, New Jersey, who had so much trouble with the paper tray. There is an extender tab, which, when pulled out (duh), controls the printed paper very nicely. This great little printer is worth at least $100.00 more than the selling price. I have had several, and this is by far the best. Richard King, Fabius, NY

This is a great printer, the print quality is perfect. It’s a bit quite slow and doesn’t have black ink included.

I have only had this printer a day but I am very happy with it. The installation does take a bit of time .. about 30 min [which HP said it would] but it’s all done automatically from the installation software. The print quality is very good and fast depending upon the website feed. Unlike the previous reviewer, I just let the installation take it’s course and I have had no problems with any HP popups so far. I am using a wireless network at home and I was very surprised how easy the HP software located all the wireless network information and connected without any problem. So far I am VERY pleased with this printer and would highly recommend it especially for wireless users.

My HP 890C inkjet printer stopped feeding properly some months ago. I had extra ink cartridges on hand, and they’re expensive, so I continued to use it, even though I was hand-feeding just about everything. It was a rare occasion when it fed two sheets of ordinary copy paper consecutively. So, finally I gave up in disgust and bought the Photosmart 7150 Inkjet a few days ago.

It feeds well, and tonight I just finished printing 32 old family black and white photos, four copies of each,4 up on each 8.5″ X 11″ sheet of Kodak glossy photopaper.

The quality is superb! At least as good as the prints you would expect from a quality photo shop. I should say that, on the best quality setting, the printer is extremely slow. But the quality makes the wait worthwhile. Also, it assists in the drying for the picture to come through slowly.

I had a heck of a time getting 4 up of the same picture on a single sheet. Finally, I went to Corel Draw 8 (Corel Photo Paint

didn’t help) and imported 4 copies of the same picture and enlarged them to fill the sheet. It worked fine, and now I know how to do it in the future.

The printer is inexpensive, and I hope it continues to feed properly. The best printer I ever had was an HP Laserjet, which I bought in 1989. My experience with that one keeps me coming back to Hewlett Packard. I’ve had three or four printers since then, and except for the 890C they’ve all met my expectations.

Now, if only they would come up with a printer that was fast, as well as capable of good quality…

Joseph Pierre

I judge the color print quality as very good, despite it’s not a photo printer. I’ve printed photos and renderings, as well as presentations and never been disappointed. Mac drivers are nice, and do a good job based on color profiles for various media.

Still works after almost a year. With my experience with some HP printers, it’s a good sign. Average cost of page for the K8600dn (casual printing plus heavy-color printing) is around $0.12 per page with original XL cartridges and mostly letter-size pages with text.

Network interface is quirky. In a Mac environment, we constantly get a “broken connection” message, and need to hold-and-restart the job (no need to delete and re-print a job). Sometimes it will have problems recognizing the presence of paper. Other than that, I’d say it’s a reliable machine, after more than 3600 pages, it’s still spotless.

Note: careful about 3rd party cartridges. DELL store once sold us 88XL cartridges without the electronic circuit built in. The printer did not recognize them at all. By the time we found out, it was too late, as DELL refused to take them back.

I have not had this printer for very long, and it is not my primary printer. I purchased it because I was looking for a printer that had a copy function that would copy legal size paper and had an atomatic document feeder. The price on the newer ones with these features are out of my price range and the ink is more expensive. I have always enjoyed my HP products so that was another +. The fact that it can be used as a fax, copier and auxillary printer for the low price I paid makes it a winner in my book.

I bought this product becuase I needed a scanner with automatic document feed; I have been thrilled with how easy it was to set up; I can now scan 20 pages at a time, and turn into a pdf document within just a few minutes. Have not had one jam in the month that I’ve had it. Color prints are very nice. Great deal for the money!

I have had many printers and multifunction printers but this one has to be the best of the lot. It is easy to set up and the photo prints I have printed have had the best colors and no blurring what so ever of the lines. There are two paper trays so I keep photo paper in one and plain paper in the other so I do not have to physically get up and change out the paper. The MP500 has a smaller footprint than other multifunction printers which saves space. You can connect your camera directly to the printer or insert the camera memory card or print from your computer. This is a wonderful product and Canon knows what people want and need with a reasonable price.

Yes I agree – yoou have to be careful with the install, but what it basically means is that you have to read the instructions, and let the machine do its part.

Upon install I opted for wireless, which was very easy to set up, and all the software was OPTIONAL….

Test pages (I did about 4) all came very good…

Very satisfied, and recommend it to both home & office.

When I realized I needed another printer for proofing and small-run jobs, I assembled what I thought to be a relatively simple lists of desired features. They included: CMYK inks, wide-format prints, duplexing, and network capability. I didn’t think finding those qualities would be terribly difficult, but I was quickly proven wrong.

In comes the OfficeJet Pro K8600DN. After months of looking, I settled on this little puppy, and I couldn’t be happier with it. If you’re a graphic artist looking for an affordable printer, or if you simply want to be able to print small runs of quality color documents, this printer works wonderfully.

Keep in mind, however, that this is not your standard office printer. It doesn’t scan, it doesn’t fax, it doesn’t do your laundry. It just prints–incredibly well, I might add. Furthermore, it weighs as much as a small car and takes up a lot of real estate on a desk. Keep these things in mind when looking at this model.

Setup is straightforward. After unwrapping the thing, you’ll quickly notice it has a good build quality; plastic it may be, but it doesn’t feel near as flimsy as your standard all-in-one. You install the duplexer, drop in the print heads and inks (front-loading, a nice feature), and plug it in. The first time you turn it on, the printer whirrs and chirps for a good 20 minutes before spitting out a diagnostic sheet. Review this carefully to make sure no adjustments are necessary.

The K8600dn can handle all types of media, including sheets up to Super B size (13 x 19). That kind of paper is large and relatively expensive, but crucial when you’re proofing something before shipping it off for a final print. The standard media tray in the front of the printer is solid and works well, but a nice option is the rear-loader for single sheets of special media.

As for the print and color quality, it’s excellent. Color lasers might produce slightly better color, but let’s face it: few people have the money to slap down on a color laser. When it comes to inkjets, the prints from the K8600dn rival almost any I’ve seen. One caveat: I have not printed photos on this machine. It’s not billed as a photo printer, but it does have the capability. While I have faith it will produce good results, my advice to those looking to print large quantities of big photos should stick with one of the myriad 6-9 color wide-format photo printers by Epson or Canon.

If the color reproduction, the duplexer, the network capability, and the ease of use doesn’t get you, the speed of this printer probably will. It’s blazingly fast, even when printing complex illustrations or layouts. This is a real treat for short-run jobs.

As for operation costs, I can’t give a full report, as I’ve only had the printer a while. However, the inks are relatively common and can be had for a decent price; the printheads are rated for a pretty long life. The printer is Energy Star compliant, which is appreciated. I’ll try to report back when I get a better handle on what the costs are in the long run. However, this isn’t the type of printer that I (or most, for that matter) am going to be using constantly.

I got this printer through an Amazon third-party seller for about $300, shipping included. Frankly, after using it for a while, I probably would have been willing to pay a good deal more. HP got it right with this one!

Another great product from HP, and another great job by Amazon. Outstanding quality and low price makes the HP a sure winner. Also, having the handset is a plus–I had an HP 4215–same product sans phone. As usual, Amazon partners with top-notch retailers. The HP arrived in 3 days, via FedEx, in 3 days. Enjoy !

I was new to digital photography and wanted a good quality printer without a lot of bells and whistles. I edit all my photos on my computer so I wasn’t interested in printing and editing my pictures on the printer itself. You can use a usb cable and load to the printer but I don’t use this feature. I have owned this printer since it first hit the shelves last year and have not had one problem with it. It is quiet and is puts out a great digital picture.

I am BLOWN AWAY by the print quality in a 13 x 19 photo printer that costs about $200. Big prints are GORGEOUS.

One interesting oddity: The only photo paper I had on hand when the printer arrived was HP Premium Photo Paper, which oddly enough is NOT one of the paper choices on the drop-down menu that appears when you want to print something on this printer. I selected “Other Photo papers” and the colors were AWFUL. Then I found three sheets of 4×6 “Advanced” paper (the recommended type) in the box. I set the paper selection to “HP Advanced Photo Paper” and the print was perfect. Then I re-tried my HP Premium Photo Paper with the same “Advanced” setting and results were also perfect. I have since used “HP Premium Plus Photo and Proofing Gloss” paper (another one NOT listed) with the same “Advanced” setting and the results were also gorgeous.

I often use JASC Paint Shop Pro Version 7.0 to make multiphoto collages on a single sheet of 13×19 photo paper and the results are always top-notch. Inks are also very reasonable, and you replace only the color that runs out, not an entire multi-ink cartridge. I love this printer.

10/8/2009 Update: The ink cartridges that come with this printer have very little ink in them. Get the 564XL ink cartridges from Amazon for about $7 each. It takes about three Photo Black cartridges and one each Magenta, Yellow, Cyan (all $7) and one Regular Black cartridges ($30) to print either 160 8 1/2×11 photos or 60 13×19 photos. That’s $72 in ink, less than 50 cents for each 8 1/2 x 11 photo and $1.20 for 13×19. Add the cost of the paper and it’s a screaming bargain.

This printer has more than paid for itself in two weeks.

Final note: I don’t understand all the fuss about stretching etc. on borderless prints. Why do you need borderless? Results are perfect on bordered prints, which is all I print. If you frame the prints, as I often do, the border is covered by the recess in the frame, or the mat. If you DON’T frame the print, what’s wrong with a thin white border?

DO NOT replace any ink cartridge until print quality visibly declines. I can usually print over ten perfect 8 1/2 x 11 photos after the warning message pops up, showing almost no ink in one or more cartridges.

This printer joins my home office in addition to a Canon Pixma Pro9000 large format photo printer and an older Epson RX500 All-in-One printer/scanner/copier. I tend to mainly use the Epson for low-color non-photo printing since it seems to be the most wasteful with ink usage (replacing its 6 ink cartridges is not cheap and the printer annoyingly always uses some of the 5 non-black color inks even if you are printing a black-and-white text-only page), with the HP B8550 and Canon Pro9000 being used exclusively for photo printing. I am a serious amateur photographer with way more DSLR cameras, lenses, and gear than can be justified given that I have never earned any income from my photography, but I enjoy printing everything from 4×6 photos to 13×19 enlargements. I frame the 13×19 photos and circulate displays of photos on walls around my house, as well as print photos for friends, so I suppose that is my “payback” for this hobby. My photography interests include people and pets, travel and vacation photos, nature photography and macro close-ups, and John Fielder-inspired wide-angle shots of landscapes and wilderness.

The HP B8550 is a well-made printer with a variety of thoughtful features built into it that accentuate its usability for those looking for a mid-range large format photo printer. If your main interest is in printing lots of 4×6 photos or if you are just using a low-resolution digital camera with a tendency to take blurry photos, you may be just as happy using a less expensive photo printer since a 13×19 photo will accentuate the imperfections that were caused by a bad camera shot. Also, if you print more documents than photos, a photo printer like this should not be your only primary printer.

Unlike the Canon Pro9000, the B8550′s control panel includes a 2.4-inch color LCD display. It has a surprising variety of built-in functions. You can insert various memory cards into the printer and, just using the control panel without needing to access the computer, perform functions such as:

** Perform “Red Eye Removal” editing on your photos.

** Print out ruled notebook paper, graph paper, music paper, a task checklist, and even a fairly challenging maze.

** Clean and align the printhead.

** Print a “Printer Status Report” that shows the printer’s model and serial number, how many pages you have printed so far, and the date when you installed each of the 5 ink cartridges.

** Set language and country/region preferences for the displays.

** Create and assemble photo album pages, create panorama prints, create wallet and passport photos.

** View and edit photos that are on your memory card. Rotate, crop, resize, perform a “Photo Fix” adjustment (which I did not really ever find to be useful), adjust brightness on the photo, add a “Color Effect” of Black&White, Sepia, or Antique, perform a Print Preview, add a date stamp to the photo being printed.

While the basic photo-editing functions suffice for printing 4×6 photos without needing to use the computer, if you are printing larger photos (especially 13×19 photo paper), you really should be editing your photos from your computer where you can see a much larger screen since the 2.4-inch LCD display only allows rudimentary previews of photos similar to the 2.5-inch LCD on digital cameras. But it is nice to at least give the user the option to insert memory cards or a USB storage device into the printer and immediately start printing after performing some basic photo editing. You can also connnect a PictBridge camera to the USB port on the front of the printer.

Installation and set-up of the B8550 printer hardware went smoothly. In addition to the included “Start Here” set-up instructions, when you first turn on the printer, the LCD screen also guides you, using short animated videos, through the installation of the printhead and ink cartridges, and the loading of the paper into the two trays, the “photo tray” that holds 4×6 and 5×7 photo paper and the “main tray” that holds the larger paper sizes on up to the 13×19 paper.

The one aspect of the printer that I consider to be a mechanical design flaw is in the way the output tray and paper extender lock into place when raised up to a 45-degree angle. The output tray and paper extender are housed in one unit that sits above and covers the main paper input tray below it. To access the main paper input tray, you pivot the output tray up and it clicks into place at a raised 45-degree angle, allowing you access to place paper onto the main paper input tray. But the output tray is held at this 45-degree angle with such a loose grip that a slight bump of the printer can cause the output tray to slam back down hard to its horizontal position. This happened twice on my printer and, both times, the output tray swung back downward with such force that I had to check that the plastic hinge on the output tray did not break or crack. Luckily, the tray remained intact, but I learned the lesson not to leave the output tray propped up at its 45-degree angle for too long and to carefully lower it back down with my hand underneath it whenever I load new paper into the main paper input tray.

Towards the end of the B8550 printer set-up, you install the CD software which contains the printer driver along with various other software, some of which I considered useful and some of which I considered useless clutter that eats up disk space and system memory. The CD install gives you the option for either a “recommended” express installation or a more manual select-what-you-want custom installation. I selected the express installation, which turned out to be a bad, but correctable, decision. When I completed the CD installation, I was able to print my first photos in less than 30 minutes from the time that I initially took the printer out of the box.

But I was surprised by both the hundreds of megabytes of disk space used and the number of extra HP-specific processes now running on my Windows XP Task Manager (listed with their KB of memory usage):

ACDaemon.exe : 2180KB

ACService.exe : 2076KB

hpqbam08.exe : 3920KB

hpqgpc01.exe : 6692KB

hpqste08.exe : 8508KB

hpswp_clipbook.exe : 3624KB

hpwuSchd2.exe : 2200KB

hpqtra08.exe : 11744KB

By comparison, my Epson Status Monitor only consisted of one process running that used just a fraction of the memory that all those HP processes required:

E_S4I2K1.EXE 2712KB

So I started to consider what HP applications I wanted to keep and what I wanted to remove. My computer has 2 GB of memory and over 600 GB of disk space, but I do not want to clog this up with unused applications.

The “hpqtra08.exe” process is the HP Digital Imaging Monitor; I kept that.

The ACDaemon.exe/ACService.exe processes are involved in checking for updates for the ArcSoft Print Creations software. I have sometimes used previous ArcSoft software to mainly create greeting cards (especially during the end-of-year holidays), so I wanted to retain the ArcSoft software that was loaded during the CD installation. The B8550 printer also includes a “Creative Projects Guide” booklet that describe how you can use the included ArcSoft Print Creations software to create photo album pages, calendars, placemats, greeting cards, and frames. But the ACDaemon.exe/ACService.exe processes do not need to be always kept running and consuming memory since you can manually start it up. I shut those down so that they did not always remain running.

Likewise, the “hpwuSchd2.exe” process that kept running is the HP Software Update process that performs scheduled checks for new and updated HP software. But it does not need to be kept always running since I can just manually start it up from the Start menu on a periodic basis. So I used the Windows Registry Editor to delete its “HP Software Update” entry from: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE:SOFTWARE:Microsoft:Windows:CurrentVersion:Run

The included “HP Smart Web Printing” software lets you selectively gather and edit Web page content from your browser to output to the printer. The application is supposed to work by embedding itself inside your browser, and then you can click the “HP Smart Select” button that it adds to your browser’s toolbar, and you use your mouse to highlight Web page content that you wanted to collect into a “Clip Book”, and from your browser’s “Clip Book”, you can then print just the portions of various Web pages that you are interested in, instead of printing entire Web pages. A great concept… but I could not get this to work. My Firefox (version 3) browser refused to accept this software as a add-on plug-in, and it also did not work with my Internet Explorer 7 browser for some reason. In addition, at one point, I saw a Windows system error message announcing that the “hpswp_clipbook.exe” process had crashed. So I had enough of this and went into the Control Panel’s “Add or Remove Programs” and uninstalled the “HP Smart Web Printing”.

“Shop for HP Supplies” is another program that the CD installs onto your computer and also places a shortcut for it on your desktop. But after trying it out, I found that it is only useful if you want to buy your ink cartridges and printer supplies at MSRP list price and do not ever shop around for the best price. When you click on its desktop icon, it accesses a Web page called “SureSupply – Order supplies”. But the ink cartridges were all offered at the (inflated) MSRP list price, and the only vendor options were either to purchase directly from HP, or from CDW or Staples online stores (Amazon was not an option listed on the Web page!) So I also uninstalled this program.

The printer’s CD also installs the “HP Customer Participation Program 11.0″. This is just like the Microsoft Customer Participation Program, where this program will send back statistics of how you use HP products so HP can improve on its products based on the gathered statistics. It is an opt-in program. But I wanted to remove this program and, in doing so, freed up over 60 megabytes of disk space.

After I completed the printer CD installation, for some odd reason, my Internet Explorer 7 browser could no longer play embedded Flash content on Web pages, even though embedded Flash applications still worked on my Firefox browser. When accessing various Web pages that used Flash applications (including Amazon’s “Listen to Music Samples” Flash application), the Web page would display the Adobe Flash download link and the Web page’s embedded Flash application would not work. I presume that this was probably caused by the “HP Smart Web Printing” application embedding itself into my IE browser (and interfering with the browser’s Flash plugin) because my IE browser could display Flash content just prior to the installation of the printer CD. The problem persisted even after I uninstalled the “HP Smart Web Printing” application. I actually had to go to the Control Panel’s “Add or Remove Programs”, uninstall both the “Adobe Flash Player ActiveX” and “Adobe Flash Player Plugin”, and then re-install it from Adobe’s Web site in order to get my IE-7 Flash functionality working again.

So even though I would rate the actual printer hardware 5 stars, my CD installation experience gets a rating of 2 stars. The CD was installed on a Windows XP (Service Pack 3) system. Your mileage may vary with Vista, Mac, or your own flavor of Windows.

The B8550 printer’s size is typical for a large format printer. At 23 inches wide, it is overall smaller than my Canon Pro9000 since the Pro9000 also has a top-feed paper tray whereas the B8550 input and output trays both are in front of the printer. In fact, it is probably one of the smallest and lightest photo printers available that can print on 13×19 paper. But if you place this printer on your desk next to your computer, the footprint of this printer will likely occupy a large portion of your desk. My home office from where I telecommute everyday working on e-commerce Internet applications consists of one desk, one computer workstation table, four 2-drawer file cabinets, and several bookshelves. Both the Canon Pro9000 and HP B8550 printers now sit on separate 2-drawer file cabinets. Like many printers, the B8550 does not include a USB cable (my Canon Pro9000 also did not include the USB cable, even though I think that it is lame for manufacturers to not include the cable with their printers). I actually had to combine a 10-foot A/B plug USB cable with another USB extension cable in order to place this printer on another 2-drawer file cabinet that was farther away from the USB hub sitting on my desk. When used with the optional HP bt500 – Network adapter – USB – Bluetooth 2.0 EDR , you can connect this printer via Bluetooth. But I have not always been happy with the consistency of Bluetooth connections, and so I decided to use an extension USB cable instead. Another connectivity option that I considered was to use the HP Wireless Printing Upgrade Kit (Q6236A) , but judging from the widely varying opinions about that product, I also stayed away from that option.

I found that the top of the 23-inch-wide printer made for a convenient place to put 13×19 photos right after they are printed to ensure the inks are fully dry for a short period before further handling. And one nice aspect of 13×19-inch photo printouts is that they are very similar in size to the full-screen image that I preview on my 22-inch widescreen monitor. I also have to admit that after looking at my digital photos both on a 22-inch widescreen monitor and by selectively printing out 13×19 photos, I rarely print 4×6 or 5×7 photos anymore; 8×10 photos are now the smallest size that I print out.

Which brings me to the most important attribute for all photo printers: print quality. Taking into account the mid-range price of this printer and the fact that it is one of the most inexpensive 13×19 photo printers, I would rate the print quality 5 stars. I selected various scenery and nature photographs that were taken using a Canon EOS 40D 10MP DSLR. On 4×6 photos, the B8550 output is pretty much identical to my Canon Pro9000. When comparing 13×19 photos using the best quality settings for both printers, however, my Canon Pro9000 does have slightly better color and clarity than the B8550. But the differences are very subtle… which is a very pleasant surprise since I was comparing the output from the 4-ink-color (cyan-magenta-yellow-black) B8550 to the output from the 8-ink-color Pro9000. During these 13×19 photo comparisons, I was printing photos on the B8550 using both HP Advanced Glossy Photo Paper and HP Premium Plus Photo and Proofing Gloss paper. And the Pro9000 was printed using Canon papers. The Pro9000 is also about 40% more expensive than the HP B8550. Canon’s Pro9000 is also packaged with far better software (aimed at the pro or serious amateur photographer) compared with what is included with the B8550.

Even though HP advertises that their “Vivera inks offer instant-dry, smudge-resistant photos”, I left one slight thumbprint on the very edge of one of my first 13×19 printouts using their recommended HP Advanced Glossy Photo Paper when I immediately picked up the sheet the moment it fully came out of the printer. But if I carefully lifted the just-printed photo from the bottom and let it sit by itself for 5 or 10 minutes, the photo ink did admirably live up to the smudge-resistant claim as I was able to vigorously rub my thumb over dark areas of the photo without creating smudges.

But for the casual/amateur photographer who wants a very affordably-priced large format photo printer, this is a great printer! HP obviously had to make some compromises to keep the price low, but the beautiful print quality is superb. I printed out 13×19 photographs that included a close-up macro photo of a butterfly standing on top of a purple coneflower, a wide-angle shot of a picturesque canyon filled with surreal rock formations and lots of earthtone hues along the canyon walls, photos of serene mountain lakes with blue skies and swirling cirrus clouds overhead, etc, and they were all printed out in glorious color, rich in detail, with sharp line boundaries in areas of the photos where there was high contrast and lots of color/shape transitions.

I was using an HP Photosmart 7260 which made very good photo prints. It used 6 color photo ink but I had to change one cartridge to pigment ink for text.

I bought the IP4300 and here are the differences:

**It uses separtate ink cartridges but uses 4 colors for photos.

**The print quality is equal or better than the HP (but close).

**The IP4300 is quiet and 2 – 3 times faster.

**The print driver has both auto and manual modes so you can tweak the print.

**It has two paper paths. I put photo paper in the back feeder and plain paper in the front cassett. Located below the pull out catch tray.

**I can set the default to plain paper and select photo settings when needed. The printer will automatically use the back paper feed.

**This printer has automatic head alignment and it works great.

**You can turn on a power save mode to have it shut off if not used after some time (I chose 30 minutes). It will automatically turn on when printing.

**All 5 cartridges are installed. Pigment black produces excellant text.

**I have seen some reviews where itwas stated that the prints have a red tint. I got the same thing at first. If you are not using Canon paper, start with this setting: Select paper “Photo Paper Pro” and High Print Quality. This removed my red tint (I use Kodak paper).

Overall, if you want a printer for text and high quality photos, this is it. If you are looking for advance photo printers Canon makes those too. These are not usually good for text.

Ron

I love this little printer. Easy to use and compact. I have had no problems using solo with the memory card or hooked to the pc. Prints great pics in about 60 seconds.

Wow, I can’t say enough about this printer. I’ve tried Lexmark, HP, Dell, and now my second Canon – and THIS THING BEATS all.

PROS: It exceeds all my expectations – automatic 2 sided printing, card reader, super fast printing, AMAZING PHOTO printing… and the list goes on. Maximum DPI is 9600 X 2400. I just printed a photo that is better than most of our professional photos. I love the 2 paper trays – I put my 8.5 x 11′s in one tray and 4 x 6 photos in the other. No need to switch back and forth. AND FOR 145.74!!!!! WITH FREE SHIPPING!!! I haven’t been able to find it cheaper anywhere – anywhere online, any store, or even on Ebay. I’m returning my HP1510 that I was also trying out from bestbuy. THIS THING IS GREAT!!

CONS: It’s big – but I like it like that – I have no need to save space.

I don’t usually do this kind of thing, but I’m going on this site to say something about this product. I’ve struggled with printers, ink, trying to use a little USB thing to talk to my old HP printer, fighting with firewalls and such – it was all a total disaster. I was thinking about getting one of the cheap color lasers, but then I went to look at ink and its not hard to see the consumer trap with ink for those things. After a lot of hand-wringing and looking around forever, I went to Office Depot and after standing in the printer isle looking lost and confused, checking sales tags and going back and forth to the ink isle for about an hour, I bought this HP Office Jet Pro 8000. First of all, when I brought it to the checkout counter, it rang up at about $70 for the printer itself, so I was happy with that but also wondering if the lady made a mistake or something. Then I got home and set it up, and installed the software, and it worked perfectly. Push “print” and it prints instantly, and surprisingly fast. I have some color graphics in my company logo and such, and the printing quality was outstanding. I was immediately super happy with the way this thing worked. Anyone in my family can push “print” from any one of their computers anywhere in the house, and walla, there it is. I’ve printed a bizillion things and recently I had to buy a new black ink cartridge. They make a high capacity one that prints several thousand pages, and it was cheap compared to all the other printer inks in the aisle. It is still working great for me. Best printer I’ve ever had, and I probably go through about a ream of paper a month.

I received this printer tonight. Took 30 minutes to unpack and set up and install software. Printed off my home page and not only is it fast but has a nice print to it. This is not a printer for a person that prints a lot of stuff but for the average person like me that needs one every now and then, then this is the one for you. Have not done photos yet but I did not buy for photos. Just needed a printer for a quick print of whatever I am referencing at the time. Good buy, quick delivery, and quality product for the price.

I ordered this item from Amazon.com because of the instant rebate and ink offer. I was FLOORED when I saw the quality of the pictures printed. This printer is so easy to use, I started printing in minutes. So far I have printed almost 100 pictures and it’s still going strong.

BUY this printer if you like taking and printing pictures.

With one month’s experience with this printer, overall the K8600DN has been great. Easy set up, good quality images, quick. This is a printer with 8-1/2 x 14 and 11 x 17 capabilities and regrettably, at this time (according to my research), HP does not offer a second paper tray option or any printer with a two paper tray capability.

This seems to be a great printer. I am using it as a replacement for my old Cannon PIXMA 3000 which just gave up the ghost. When you read the other reviews that talk about a 30 minute set up time, don’t look at that as a sign of difficulty or potential incompetance on the reviewer…this unit does do a 20-30 self diagnostic as part of the set up process. Images are clean and clear. And HP finally has the message to create separate ink carts for each color rather than having to toss them all out when you run out of one single color.

What I like:

- The wireless capability. Can print from any PC in the house on this one.

- Separate Ink Cartridges

- Duplex printing

- HP has pre-sent usage pattern ready for you – like fast utility print, duplex printing, printing for photos, etc.

- Tools that help you see what your ink usage will be like.

- According to the HP site, low cost per page printing. (fingers crossed here).

Dislikes:

-Big footprint on the desk. Oh well.

Bonus: If you act before year end, your old printer may qualify for a $50 rebate when you return it to HP. See the HP product site for details. This helped knock $50 off this price.

Here’s why. I was spending WAY too much money on ink for an older printer that had all sorts of gadgets I didn’t need. This thing is lightning fast and the colors are great. Yes, it’s a little flimsy, but next time that bothers you, go look at your receipt. Hope your experience is as good.

I love this printer. It is exactly what I needed. Great quality of print and fast. It is a lot quieter than the hp it replaced and the epson I have at home. I do wish it had more paper tray capacity. I compared this printer with comparable hp and epson printers. I am so glad I bought this printer. It is the best printer I have owned.

This printer was ridiculously easy to set up and prints with amazing quality. Plus with it being wireless I can print from anywhere in the house. This is a great product.

It’s a good machine.

Just tested it out…the thing copies well, faxes well, scans well and prints well. Nothing earth-shattering here but it does a good solid job.

A big plus is that it’s intuitive and a person can accomplish most things looking at the color LCD and pushing adjacent buttons on the front panel. It also has intuitive support software.

It’s not fun to pay big bucks for devices that are outdated by something better and cheaper a year later. For $85, this a great deal.

I could say a lot of nasty things about my last HPs but instead will simply say that this machine is already better. If it’s trouble-free more than a few days past the warranty, unlike the HPs, I’ll continue to be impressed.

I agree with the other reviewer that this printer has been one of the “toughest” I have ever come across. I’ve had mine for about 6 years now and it’s been in and through college, left in storage for two years, dropped from about 7 feet onto concrete from the very top of the pile on the storage dolly, which put a few nicks in the plastic, but it still works like the day i bought it. For an inkjet, the print quality is very good and I’ve been astonished with the punishment mine has taken with virtually no problems.

As a long-time photographer and graphic designer, I’m pretty familiar with printing in irregular formats. The HP Photosmart B8550 is the second large-format printer I’ve owned, and will be replacing an HP Deskjet 1220C for the majority of my photography printing and graphic design work.

Overview:)

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The Photosmart B8550 is a large-format printer, capable of printing photographs and posters as large as 13″ x 19″. If you just want to print 4″ x 6″ weekend snapshots or if you don’t understand why someone would want to print something so large, this is **NOT** the printer for you. This printer is very, very large and is designed primarily for people who want to print very large photographs and digital images.

The Physical Object:)

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The Photosmart B8550 is surprisingly sleek and sexy-looking for a large-format printer, and is significantly smaller and more attractive than the 13×19 printer it will be replacing. The LCD screen is bright and clear, and the printer feels solid and well-built.

The printer’s included software integrated quickly and seamlessly with my various photo-editing programs. I was very pleasantly surprised both with how attractive the printer is, and with how well it works with Photoshop, Illustrator, Light Room, Aperture, and iPhoto.

The Prints:)

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The prints from the Photosmart B8550 are nothing short of superb superb. I have printed 3″x5″, 4″x6″, and 8.5″x11″ photographs and have been awed by the quality of the prints I get from this machine. When using the recommended HP Advanced Photo Paper prints of all sizes tested came out bright and clear and were absolutely dry to the touch within seconds of coming out of the printer.

The quality of the prints is so good that friends who I have shown them to have been unable to distinguish them from lab-created prints, and two of my friends have had me print enlargements of their wedding photos because they thought the quality of the prints I showed them was BETTER than the prints they got from their professional photographers.

Speaking from experience, the people who are complaining about the quality of these prints are DEFINITELY doing something wrong. I don’t know if they’re using the wrong paper, printing on the wrong side of the paper, or using the wrong settings, but if you use the recommended paper and the correct settings on the printer you will get FABULOUS results.

The Supplies:

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One of the most surprising things about this printer is how affordable the recommended replacement supplies are.

The paper is surprisingly affordable, with 50-packs of 8.5×11 or 100-packs of 4×6 glossy HP Advanced Photo Paper costing roughly $20. Likewise, the ink is surprisingly cheap, with replacement cartridges being priced at roughly $15 each.

To put this in perspective, the ink and paper for the large-format Epson printer at my office costs more than twice as much as the supplies for this printer, and the results are markedly inferior.

CONCLUSION:

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The HP Photosmart B8550 is, without a doubt, the finest home printer I have ever owned, and is one of the best 13×19 printers I have ever used. In fact, this is the best printer under $1,000.00 that I have ever used, bar none.

The print quality is nothing short of outstanding, the wide variety of compatible sizes make this a very versatile printer, and the affordable supplies make this printer a joy to use and excellent for hobbyists and photography enthusiasts.

While this may not be the printer for everyone it is an excellent choice for anyone who is interested in printing large photographs, and saving a great deal of money by printing enlargements for themselves instead of sending them to a lab.

I have been enthusiastically recommending the HP Photosmart B8550 to all my photographer friends, and would suggest this to anyone who has a DSLR camera and wants to try printing big, gorgeous pictures of their favorite shots.

This is the most affordable, highest quality, consumer photo printer I have ever used, and I am constantly surprised by the high quality of the results.

I purchased the HP D2560 Deskjet to print basic documents like letters, forms, print screen images, etc. I bought a Canon Pixma 9000 to print high-quality photo images, but an 8-color printer it is too expensive to use for everyday, plain paper printing. The HP D2560 is an inexpensive option for this kind of printing. The ink cartridges are small, but there are XL sizes available. The two printers together are a dynamic duo.

You searched diligently to find the right camera at the right price to capture those precious moments and exploit those eye-pleasing scenes. But once those amazing snapshots were taken, you needed a printer just as superb to make the photos worth their megapixels. I have always stuck with Canon for my camera, and because of this iP4300 I now stick with them for my printer. This printer produces phenomenal results, something I expect when I worked hard to take good pictures.

The set-up and installation guide is step-by-step. You don’t need to worry about whether you’ll be able to set it up or not, because it is quite simple. Everything you’ll need is in the box EXCEPT a USB A to USB B cable. You will have to purchase a USB cable to connect the printer to the computer. The drivers and utilities installed total a little over 200 MB, not very big. Registration is extremely easy. Not a complaint about the installation (using Mac OS X 10.4).

The plastic that the iP4300 is made out of is a little flimsy, but not anything to worry about. You would still have to try very hard to break it. It is a slightly larger than normal printer, but not unmanageable. The fact that all of the trays fold up into a perfect box-shape is very convenient.

The photo quality is phenomenal. Of course, you will want to get some photo quality paper. I printed off 4 3x6s on a page, then an 8×10, and instantly saw a difference from any other printer I’ve dealt with. I did colors and black & whites, high contrast ones too, and in the all black areas I did not notice any streaks or lines. It was superb quality.

I was torn between this and the iP6700D. But in researching, I noticed that the iP6700D has two more photo colored ink cartridges (which sounds appealing at first) BUT less nozzles than the iP4300. So divide the already fewer print nozzles over 6 ink cartridges means a significant drop in nozzles per ink color in comparison with the iP4300′s nozzle count. Then, the iP6700D offers the same B&W resolution as the 9600x color resolution, which also sounds better. But the iP4300′s 600x is all you really need for B&W. The B&W print quality is amazing, do not worry. So unless you just have an insatiable desire for an LCD screen, I recommend to you the Canon iP4300 over any other printer.

I decided it was time to upgrade my printer, and wanted to get an ALL IN ONE, since I was also in need of a scanner and copier. My previous printer was a canon printer ( i 960) , and since I was very happy with the quality and ease of use of that printer, I decided to stick with a canon product. After some research I determined that the new Canon MX330 would be perfect for my needs. This printer delivers as promised. It does a great job at all functions, and was very easy to set up. Photos ( when printed on canon’s glossy photo paper) look great, and are near or as good as photo lab quality. Documents printed out come out very sharp, and the automatic feed feature for multiple pages during scanning/faxing works great. The Fax feature I could not test totally yet since I don’t have an actual phone line, but use a “Magic Jack” line, and there are some issues when trying to fax using a “magic Jack” phone line. I am going to play around with the fax settings to see if I can get it to work through my “Magic Jack” line, but this is no fault of the Printer, since “Magic Jack” says its phone line may not work for faxing. The Printer is pretty large, so it does take up a fair amount of space, so make sure you have plenty of room before getting this model. For just over $100, and with Canon’s Quality and performance, this is a great All IN ONE Printer to get.

This makes awsome pictures it is very easy to operate. I’m very pleased with the finished products a very good investment. My grandchildred think this is great!!! And so do I.

The Good:

-Outstanding output quality for the price

-Good speed

-Automatic Duplex printing

-Lightweight drivers/software

-Inexpensive ink

The Bad:

Aside from a slightly cheap asthetic feel, I can’t find a thing. And for such a low price, it’s to be expected. Other manufactures might have shnazzier printers at the same price point, but keep in mind most other manufacturers don’t sell printers, they sell ink, so you pay for it in the long run.

Overall I am extremely satisfied with this printer. Coming from an IP4000, I had high expectations, and this did not dissapoint. I have owned every major brand of printers (HP, Epson), and Canon is absolutely where it’s at. Cartridges are much more affordable, you aren’t forced to install 400mb of junk that loads 5 processes at windows startup (HP), and the attention to detail is great (i.e., you can program the printer to shutoff after X minutes of being idle). Do yourself a favor and buy a Canon.

Pros:

– Printing Speed

– Image/Text quality

– Price

– User-friendly Software and customizable features

Cons:

– Size – kind of bulky

Additional Thoughts:

***UPDATE 9/26/2009***

After receiving a flood of e-mails from people asking me for tips on how to refill the cartridge, I’ve decided to remove my e-mail from this review and include the instructions for your benefit:

Lately, I have been refilling the very same cartridge this printer came with. I’ve been fed up in the past with having to buy overpriced proprietary cartridges.

What you will need to refill:

1. Power Drill(Bought one for about $20-$30 at Home Depot

2. A thin drill bit (forgot the radius, I just went to Home Depot and asked for the smallest one available)

3. Black ink refill Kit (You can obtain one on eBay for $5-$10 depending on whether you buy in sets like I do. The kit will include an instruction manual, a syringe, and a small bottle of ink).

Instructions:

Create a tiny hole at the upper portion of the cartridge underneath the sticker where a small imprint is located. After making that hole, use a syringe and fill it with ink. Push the syringe needle through the hole you’ve created until you feel the needle pushing through sponge inside the cartridge. Squeeze the ink in gentley.

The only downside to this approach is that I have to go disable to printer monitor so that Canon’s manual page counter can’t force me to replace my cartridge. To do this, follow these steps:

Go to

1. Canon Utilities

2. My Printer (folder)

3. My Printer (application)

4. Printer Status

5. Option (top left)

6. Uncheck “Enable Status Monitor”

Last part:

Reinsert the cartridge back into the printer. The printer will still whine that the cartridge is empty. With the printer on, hold the “Stop” button down for 5-8 seconds. Whining begone.

Eventually this ink cartridge I’ve been refilling is going to dry out permanently one way or another. At that point, I’ll be buying another one.

But you get the idea. Save tons of cash. Pay a few bucks for the price of the typical $20 cartridge.

This printer is great!! I got this printer about two months ago, paid $150 from amazon, and I’ve had very few complaints. It truly is a great printer, and exceeded my expectations. I was hesitant at first to get this printer because I wasn’t actually able to find it in stores (not available at the major electronic stores), and didn’t have a chance to test it out ahead of time. Trust me on this though, it really is great!

PROS:

Simple to set up

Excellent print quality

Great software (easy to use)

Memory slots

Great color LCD display

Print on both sides of the paper without having to do any work!!

2 paper feeders (comes in handy…automatically switches when one is out)

Very quick

Cheap Cartridges (around $12 per color)

5-cartridge printer (when one color runs out, you don’t have to replace the whole cartridge, just the one that is out)

Extremely easy to install cartridges (lights inside the printer tell you whether it is installed properly or not)

Easy to scan and copy

Quiet (once it has “warmed up”

EXCELLENT VALUE (beats most of the $300-400 printers)

CONS:

a bit BIG and clunky

no fax

takes a while to “warm up” (once it warms up…its FAST)

This is by far the best printer I have ever used. The only concern I would have is that if you don’t have much space, you might be in trouble, but that would be the case with almost any other all in one (this is a little bigger than normal though). I already had a fax, so the fact it didn’t have that feature wasn’t a big letdown, but if you have to have a fax, I would still go with Canon (cheapest cartridges and great quality). When you turn the printer on, or if you haven’t used it in a while, it will make wierd noises (I guess its “warming up”?) for 20-30 seconds, but then its good to go for a while.

I would definitely suggest this printer to anyone looking for a great multifunction printer, especially if on a budget.

I had a Canon BJC4200 for almost 10 years and it worked flawlessly. I got bored and bought a HP. My God! What a mistake, the HP were always cleaning its head, were slow, and when I printed a 10 pages document and went away, the pages were never in order! I quicky got rid of the HP and bougut an Epson. BIG MISTAKE. Epson economy printing is a joke. It is grey, faded, almost like if you had printed 1000 pages and the ink is in its last days. I called Epson and they told me that the NEW EPSON are programmed to print (in econo mode) in that way (grey and faded). I got angry for that rip off and bought this Canon. What a change! It is fast, it has dual tray, it never get jammed, it prints large documents and the pages are always perfectly rearranged and MOST OF ALL, in the Canon economy mode (even tough is very fast) the quality is excellent, like the NORMAL mode of the Epson. I just laughed at the people of Epson after seeing the economy mode impressions of Canon. My conclusion is the Canon is WAY AHEAD of its COMPETITORS. Canon makes the BEST ink jet PRINTERS in the industry. PERIOD.

This 4 pound printer is great. It’s a bit pricy, but then most portables are. There are two things about this printer that I really like. First of all, it’s fast. Second, the text looks pretty good and the color graphics are very good. Don’t buy any other printer that’s slower. You will be frustrated! I’ve only had this printer a short time but so far am very pleased. Fast output and no paper jamming!!! One thing, the extra-cost battery is expensive, but if you need it, it’s a wonderful add-on and its charge last quite a long time. I recently used this printer and it’s battery all weekend for printing invoices at a show I was doing. Not a problem and at the end of the weekend the battery still had plenty of charge. It was great not having to plug in the printer to electricity. The Canon iP 90 is highly recommended. One other thing: some say the ink cartridges are small and don’t last very long. Well, perhaps, but they’re not very expensive either.

I AM IN LOVE WITH THIS PRINTER. Ok, as much as a person can appropriately be in love with a printer…

But this thing has seriously been great. It doesn’t seem to use much ink, the cartridges are affordable (a nice change!), and it prints really beautiful, vivid 4″x6″ color prints – with or without borders. It prints edge-to-edge flawlessly.

I’ve been using it for about 6-8 months now and it’s a little workhorse. I’ve recommended it to many people and in my line of work, it’s extremely handy to have along in order to print info on the go. I’ve printed in my car before – just plugging it into a converter in the cig lighter and beamed (via infrared) the info to my laptop. I’ve never connected it with a cable to my computer – just used infrared.

It does occasionally pull in more than one piece of paper, but not half as much as the HP printers I’ve owned in the past. Also, it DOES NOT come with a printer cable, which I think is pretty crappy. Lucky for me, I only use infrared. But for the average person, it may be an unpleasant surprise.

Overall, this is the best printer I’ve ever owned – it’s worth the price for the quality. And if you have a Canon digital camera, you just plug it right in and can print photos without needing to use a computer or laptop at all!

GREAT PRINTER! Can’t beat it!

I bought the printer, installed it and started using it immediately. Didn’t run into any installation problems with the software.

Pros: Amazing print quality, photos come out with NO graininess at all. Couldn’t be happier with its high quality printing. Also prints very fast in draft and normal modes. The flash memory reader is useful — I use it more to copy files from it to my computer, rather than print direct.

Cons: I’ve done a lot of web-site printing, but I can’t help but think the color print cartridge ran out fairly quickly. Printer doesn’t come with USB cable — but that seems to be par for the course. Printer handles envelopes ok — not great.

I’m extremely happy with my printer, especially given the affordable price (pre-lifetime cartridge spending…).