HP Photosmart A636 Compact Photo Printer reviews

Unlike its similarly portable sibling, the Photosmart A526, this midpriced model is fast: The 4-by-6-inch photos we printed came out in less than a minute each; other snapshot printers we've tested have taken almost twice as long. Most colors looked realistic, with good detail except in dark areas. My only gripes: Fleshtones seemed a little orangey, and monochrome photos had a slight pinkish tinge.

Connecting this squat, black machine to a computer requires you to provide your own USB cable (HP doesn't provide one), but the driver, stored in the printer's firmware, automatically installs itself. No computer, no problem: Just insert a media card into one of A636's many slots to start. The printer's 4.8-inch, touch-sensitive color LCD responds to your finger or to a stylus (HP includes one). The backlit navigation icons flanking the central display area are easy to understand, as are the images and messages on screen. The A636 comes with a carrying handle for road trips; a $25 battery is optional.

Printing options include captions, clip art, frames, and effects such as sepia toning and cartooning; you also get simple editing tools. The printer takes an unusually wide range of media sizes, from 4-by-6-inch photos to panoramic (4-by-12-inch) to 5-by-7-inch. The high-yield replacement ink cartridge ($35) lasts for approximately 120 prints, or 29 cents per print. A lower-capacity cartridge ($20) lasts for about 55 prints, or 36 cents per print.

A few of the Photosmart A636's controls perplexed me (for example, lowering the LCD is unusually difficult), but overall it was easy to use. And ultimately, this versatile photo printer made its mark on me: I actually missed it after testing it.

Melissa Riofrio

Review: HP's OfficeJet J6480 All-in-One Printer

By Gerry Blackwell
July 24, 2008


More and more big corporations are paying attention to green IT – looking for ways to reduce carbon emissions associated with information technology equipment and operations. Small businesses can and should do their bit, too.

One easy way: choose a product such as Hewlett-Packard’s recent OfficeJet J6480 All-in-One Printer the next time you need to replace an existing printer or add a new one.

The J6480 delivers color photo and document printing, sheet-fed and flat-bed scanning with optical character recognition (OCR), plus faxing and photocopying. It has Wi-Fi wireless connectivity built in. It’s fast, provides good print quality, and it wasn’t too difficult to set up.

Price: An Amazing $169
We know, of course, that printer manufacturers subsidize the cost of hardware in the expectation of making their profit on ink and paper sales. Still, one worries when a product with this much functionality sells at such a low price. Where, you have to wonder, did they cut corners?

HP claims a duty cycle of up to 5,000 pages. That means if you print an average of five pages a day, it should last four years. HP will make its money on ink cartridges, of that you can be sure, but as with some competing models recently, it offers a more cost-effective, high-capacity cartridge option.

The standard HP 74 Black Inkjet Print Cartridge, with which the product ships and that HP sells for $15, supposedly gives you 210 pages. The $30 HP 74XL cartridge gives you 780 pages.

You likely won’t get that many pages from either, of course – print cartridge capacity depends on how much is on each page and other factors – but the XL cartridge clearly delivers better value.

Greener Than Thou
Just how green is the J6480? It’s Energy Star compliant, meaning it meets standards for reduced power consumption (35 watts while printing, 40 while copying), but lots of modern IT equipment is Energy Star certified.

More importantly, the HP product comes with an auto duplexer that lets you print on both sides of the page. The duplexer in effect flips the page over to print on the other side, automatically.





Duplex printing saves paper, which saves costs, but also helps reduce downstream and upstream environmental impacts from pulp and paper production and transportation of paper products, raw materials and finished documents. It also saves trees.

Many big companies now make it a policy to only buy printers with duplex capabilities, and some are configuring them to print on both sides by default.

The J6480 includes a junk fax blocker – you can register phone numbers of known junk faxers, and it won’t answer calls from them – which could reduce unnecessary printing.

HP’s Smart Web Printing, available with most of its printers, is another tool ostensibly designed to reduce unnecessary printing. It’s a utility that helps you select just the pages or parts of pages at a Web site that you need to print, so you avoid getting reams of pages you didn’t want.

Mind you, we can never understand why people want to print Web pages in the first place. The best way to save paper (and printer ink), of course, is to print less.

Set-Up Pain
To find out how easy it would – or wouldn't ‑ be for a typical micro business person to set up the J6480, I assigned the task to my partner, who has virtually no hands-on experience with tech products – other than using them. She reports that it was not terribly difficult, but more time consuming than she would like.

HP printers come with voluminous software bundles, including optional components – such as a complete photo software bundle – that most small businesses don’t need. But unless you know to select the manual or advanced install option, the product will install everything, and especially on older, slower computers, that can take a long time.

The documentation was also a little confusing. The quick set-up guide uses sometimes ambiguous graphics and small-print multi-lingual text.

And the J6480 shipped with a generic wireless set-up guide that appears to suggest you need an optional Wi-Fi dongle to make the wireless functions work – until you realize it’s talking about a completely different model. In fact, wireless is built in to this product. Setting up the J6480 to work wirelessly on other computers after an initial install using a USB cable is relatively simple and quick.

The set-up process was also not very forgiving of operator error. When my assistant accidentally hit the eject button on the CD-ROM drive, aborting the installation, she had to uninstall the partly installed software and start over from scratch.

HP Officejet J6480 All-in-One Printer reviews

Customer Reviews
Flaws in the software
I had to replace an HP all in one printer and came across the J6480. I liked the features of the printer and it was a bit smaller than my old one. Hooking up the printer was simple, but the software is another issue.

It took an hour to get through the installation (Windows XP) and everything worked well. I was able to scan, fax and print. What was not evident until the next day was I had a problem with printing any type of text document from Word and even notepad(other programs such as excel would print fine.) After hitting a print command it took up to 8 minutes for the print menu to come up then the document would finally print.

I spent 3 hours with technical support (the support rep was wonderful) and we uninstalled my software and reinstalled his and the problem did not go away. His solution was for me to back everything up and reinstall windows….NOT!

My solution is to return the printer to the store if possible. I rely on it for my business. Too bad, I really liked all the other features.

Great All-In-One
Had a 6210. It died. Looking around, checking reviews, all that kind of stuff we do nowadays. I settled on the HP J6480 all-in-one printer. Less than 2 bills and it does all that my old 6210 did and more, for less than I originally paid for the earlier model.

The setup was a breeze (Win XP) Easier than I had hoped for, and the 802.11 works like a charm.

The quality of the printed documents was just fine, and the first couple of photos I printed showed exceptional color balance. Built-in duplexer works like a dream. How come my cars don’t get cheaper as they get better? HP should have a little conversation with GM.

Heard some reports of bloatware. Nah. Less than earlier models. What they give you is pretty tight and lean now, and some of it pretty darned useful. Just go with it. You’ll sleep better at night.

I have no complaints. Inexpensive, reliable, good quality, easy setup. What’s the world coming to? Buy one. You’ll enjoy it.

Five stars.

Great AIO for the money!
I too went through a couple of trials with the software, but now that I figured it out, it has been a pleasure to use. Initially I set it up with a USB connection because I didn’t realize that I would not come back to the first screen that appeared when I opened the CD. I should have just started with choosing the wireless connection (would have saved a little time). If you start with a USB connection, you have to re-open the CD after the initial(USB)set up and go to the add a new device option (this is a new menu that has different options than the initial menu). Even after going through the motions of adding a new device, the software said that it could not find the printer on the network, but the printer printed out a page giving me the OK with a green checkmark and a “no problems found” as well as other info including IP Address. I had to go back in and use the “Find the Printer using IP Address” option (the page that the printer created had the IP address on it, so I used that one). Once I did that, I had no problems. The software found the printer, and I was doing everything via wireless.
This took me all of about an hour to figure out, and had I started with wireless it would have taken less time I’m sure. I am using an HP laptop with XP Professional. I don’t know if this will work with Vista.
I am now loving this AIO!!

HP Wireless DeskJet 450wbt printer reviews

The good: Excellent photo print quality; includes Bluetooth card; portable; includes rechargeable battery.

The bad: Fairly expensive; mediocre text-print quality; slow print speeds.

The bottom line: The HP Deskjet 450wbt offers full-size prints, excellent photo quality, portability, and wireless Bluetooth and IR printing, making it a good buy for businesspeople on the road a lot.

Specs: Printer Type: Personal printer - Ink-jet - Color; Max media size: Legal (8.5 in x 14 in), A4 (8.25 in x 11.7 in); Connectivity technology: Wired, Wireless


Reviewed by: Kristina Blachere
Reviewed on: 02/26/2004 Released on: 10/01/2003 If you're constantly on the go for business, then you'll need a printer to take with you. With the HP Deskjet 450wbt, HP has repackaged its popular Deskjet 450cbi to include the often hard-to-obtain Bluetooth card so that you can print from wireless Bluetooth devices. In addition to wireless Bluetooth capabilities, the 450wbt comes equipped with infrared capabilities so that you can print from your PDA, plus a battery and a parallel print cable. However, this four-ink inkjet printer lacks robust print speeds, decent text-print quality, and the ability to print without an attached computer--features you will find included with the similar Canon i80. But if cost is no option and you want the hands-down best customer-service warranty in the business, the HP Deskjet 450wbt makes sense for you. Measuring a slim 13.3 inches by 3.2 inches by 6.5 inches (W, H, D), the HP Deskjet 450wbt, like the Canon i80, is a very compact printer designed to print full-size 8.5x11 documents. The input tray snaps into the body, and the output guide retracts so that the printer will fit snugly into your briefcase or luggage. Even with the battery installed, the 450wbt weighs only 4.6 pounds.

The 450wbt supports both parallel and USB connections through ports located along the back. Oddly, HP includes a parallel cable in the box, but you'll have to buy the more popular USB cable yourself. The 450wbt comes with a preinstalled Bluetooth wireless card, but if you remove the Bluetooth card, the open slot in back supports CompactFlash cards (Types I and II), provided the images are stored in Digital Print Order format (DPOF is a digital standard created in 2000 by Canon, Eastman Kodak, and Matsushita Electric). An infrared port located on the printer's front panel makes it easy to beam your PDA-created document (Palm OS or Pocket PC) directly to the printer.

If you travel a lot, you'll want the optional carrying case ($59-$99) and the AC car adapter ($77). Both are available from HP's Web site. It is standard to offer these options separately. The HP Deskjet 450wbt's best features are its included battery and various wireless capabilities, both of which cost extra on the Canon i80. Beyond the battery and the wireless features, the HP Deskjet 450wbt continues printing with only one of its two ink cartridges still working, and HP provides a plastic ink-cartridge case to avoid spillage while traveling. Another sweet touch is a small plastic sleeve hidden on the bottom of the printer to hold your business card. Think of it as the working person's equivalent of having name tags sewn into clothing.

The Deskjet 450wbt's included software is rudimentary: HP Photo Printing Software allows you to create and print photo-album pages; BT Print sets up Bluetooth printing; HP Mobile Printing for Pocket PCs sets up infrared printing; and you get online access to MyPrintMileage, a Web-based program that keeps track of how much ink you use and suggests when to order new cartridges. The print driver software covers only the basics, such as paper type, print quality, brightness and saturation, and various maintenance tasks, including print-head cleaning and color calibration. The interface is simple and easy to use. While the HP Deskjet 450wbt created excellent color prints in CNET Labs' tests, the Canon i80 performed significantly faster and delivered slightly better print quality overall. The 450wbt text print speeds averaged a slow 1.48 pages per minute (ppm), which compared poorly to the i80's zippy 5.6ppm. With color photos, the 450wbt took 4.07 minutes to print our 8.5x11 test photo, whereas the i80 took a mere 2.8 minutes per page, or about half the time.

The 450wbt's text printing, even on coated inkjet paper, was a disappointment. Our CNET Labs' test document looked oversaturated, with blurry letters. Because this printer is a Deskjet, designed for businesspeople on the go, rather than part of HP's Photosmart line, the 450wbt really should print crisper text. Color graphics, while better, showed visible banding and dithering, and the colors in our test document looked faded.

The Deskjet 450wbt's strong suit is printing photos. It did an excellent job with our tricky, high-resolution, 8.5x11 test photo, producing smooth and natural-looking skin tones, vibrant colors, and no visible dithering (meaning you couldn't see any of the ink dots). We did, however, notice some faint banding in the backgrounds.

In CNET Labs' tests, the 450wbt's ink costs were average. It printed 55 copies of our 8.5x11 test photo before running out of ink, which works out to $1 per page. If you print mostly 4x6 photos, your costs will run about half that, around 50 cents per print.

HP Photosmart C4480 All-In-One Printer review

Reviewed by: Josh Norem
Review Date: August 2008
HP's Photosmart C4480 All-In-One is a fine multifunction inkjet that is easy to use and pumps out great-looking photos and crisp text. It can print, copy, and scan) with equal aplomb (but not fax, making it a surprisingly well-rounded printer with just a few small flaws.

Even though it's an all-in-one printer, the C4480 is geared toward photo printing, with a multiformat media-card reader on its face plate. You don't need a PC to print from the media slots—you can just stick a card in and use the integrated 1.5-inch LCD to help you print your pictures. The display also lets you start a scan or copy job.

The C4480 is capable of producing high-quality 4,800x1,200dpi prints, and when we first printed some test images with the stock tanks, we were very impressed by the color accuracy, saturation, and overall quality. Prints were a bit dark, but they still looked very good, with rich, bold colors. They looked even better with HP's special "photo" cartridge, designed for those who print a lot of snapshots. The $24.99 cartridge both enhances print quality and lets you save your regular black ink tank for text jobs.

Text reproduction, meanwhile, was equally rich, jumping off the page. It's not quite as sharp as what a laser printer can output, but it's much richer, and text looks dark and bold.

Scanning (either to PC or to a print) and copying are also simple and elegant; simply press the buttons on the unit's face plate. The scanning engine runs at 1,200 dots per inch (dpi) and produced good results in our tests. Scanning a document took about 25 seconds, then another 25 seconds to print it. If you opt for saving it to a file, it shows up under "My Scans" as soon as scanning finishes.

Still, we had some issues with the C4480. The printer comes with two stingy introductory tanks, with the black tank rated for just 190 pages and the color tank just 150. Fortunately, replacement tanks are more reasonable. A black tank costs $14.99, with a cost per page of 8 cents; a color tank will run you $17.99, boosting the cost to 12 cents per page. These prices are a bit on the high side, but the tanks are rather inexpensive, so it balances out a little bit. HP sells high-yield tanks for $29.99 (black) and $34.99 (color). These tanks lower costs to a more wallet-friendly 4 cents per page for black and 6 cents per page for color.

A more serious concern is print speed. HP's claim of 23 pages per minute (ppm) color and 30ppm black is pure fantasy. Our 10-page mixed document of text, photos, and graphs took 2 minutes and 49 seconds, and our 20-page text file took an agonizing 4 minutes and 48 minutes. HP claims you can print a 4x6 photo in just 25 seconds, but our time of 49 seconds was almost double that. An 8x10 took 2 minutes and 44 seconds, which is also slow. We tried printing our mixed document in "fast draft" mode, and though it was certainly much faster at just 52 seconds, it's still not even close to achieving 23ppm. One tradeoff for the slow print speeds is that the printer is very quiet in normal (non-draft) mode.

We also had problems with the included software. If you're printing from a PC, HP provides a do-it-all program called the HP Solution Center that helps you administer tasks and check on ink levels. We like the Solution Center, but we wish HP's photo-printing software was integrated into it. The program, Photosmart Essential, was unwieldy—to print, we had to import photos into it; even worse, it accepts only one folder at a time, so printing photos from separate folders required us to import each folder separately, which is a time-consuming annoyance. Finally, the C4480 doesn't include a USB cable, nor does it provide any networking features, so you'll have to attach it to a local PC if you want to share it on a network. (If wireless is a must-have feature for you, HP's Photosmart C4385 is very similar to the C4480 but includes Wi-Fi connectivity and costs about $30 more.)

The C4480 has a few flaws, but none of them are deal-breakers. We wish it printed faster, and that it had wireless connectivity options and an easier wizard for photo printing. Nonetheless, we can recommend the unit to those looking for a multifunction printer that delivers great photo output.

HP LaserJet 2420-DN Network Laser Printer Review

A good quality laser printer is still an essential for any office where printing is required. Today's inkjet printers can easily match laser printers in terms of text quality, crispness, and even speed, but no inkjet can compare to even a low-end laser printer in that most important of benchmarks, price. Laser printers have considerably lower CPP (Cost Per Page) values due to their large reservoirs of toner and more efficient printing process.

Here at PCstats, we consider business computing equipment to be as important as the latest 'enthusiast' computer gear when it comes to reviews. We work in an office ourselves, and we know how difficult it can be to find reliable unbiased information in the less-than-sexy area of reliable business equipment. We've taken a look at several laser printers over the last few months, and today we're pleased to have another one in-house.

The Hewlett-Packard Laserjet 2420dn model that we're looking at is a networked monochrome laser printer with a 1200x1200 maximum resolution, 64MB of onboard memory (expandable to 320MB), 350 sheet paper capacity, a built-in HP JetDirect Ethernet print server, automatic duplex printing and a price tag of about CAN$1049 (US$899).

For a non-home office, a networked laser printer should be considered a requirement. While technically any printer can be networked by installing it on a networked system and sharing it, the actual process of doing this can be cumbersome and inefficient for more than a few PCs.

For one thing, having a PC between the printer and the rest of the network adds an extra layer of complexity and potential hardware failure.

For another thing, unless you have a fast PC which you can afford to use as a dedicated print server, whoever uses the PC attached to the printer is going to be constantly interrupted with printer issues as well as suffering slower performance from the overhead that print serving imposes.

It is far better to pay the small premium and get a printer with networking properties. These devices have a built in network adaptor, allowing computers on your network to communicate directly with the printer and making printer sharing unnecessary. Printers like the HP 2420DN take that one step further by incorporating a full networked print server.

HP Laserjet 1022nw Printer Specifications Reviews For Monochrome Network Printer In Lotus Systems

HP Laserjet 1022nw Printer prints text, images, and graphics smoothly with the 266MHz processor and 8MB of memory. HP Laserjet 1022nw Printer works really fast as it prints at a speed of up to 19 pages per minute. HP Laserjet 1022nw Printer economizes on the use if time. The first page emerges in less than 8 seconds. It gives you the offer to work wireless.

You can put the printer anywhere in the wireless network environment; data travels at up to 54 Mbps across up to 100' (30.5 m). There is a light on the control panel ensuring that you are connected wirelessly. HP Laserjet 1022nw Printer automatically adjusts the optimal print quality with HP's Smart printing technology. It can print complex documents without problems via the Hi-Speed USB 2.0 connectivity.

It can save space with the compact design suitable for desk, shelf, or other convenient spot. The printer can load different types of media in the 250-sheet input tray and 10-sheet priority input tray. HP Laserjet 1022nw Printer prints on a variety of media like plain paper up to legal size, envelopes, transparencies, card stock, postcards, vellum, rough paper, and labels. It can manage remotely with the HP embedded Web server. At the same time, it prints securely with the Wi-Fi protected access via WPA pre-shared key.

With this, you have facility of toner replacement from HP SureSupply, which enables you to receive alerts when a cartridge is low for it monitors for its remaining life. You can also thereby enjoy easy online ordering or check stock and prices at nearby stores for HP Laserjet 1022nw Printer. For the promotion of HP Laserjet 1022nw Printer, HP presents exclusive offers and rewards discounts on HP ink, toner, and paper. You will be given the privilege to shop from a list of customized printing supplies and get free next-day shipping with its My Print Rewards program.

HP provides award-recognized after sales support. You will get peace of mind with the one-year limited warranty with HP's renowned Total Care service and support. It has been recognized as consistently providing An Outstanding Customer Service Experience by J.D. Power and Associates. You can also rely on printing excellence. PC Magazine has designated HP as a Reader's Choice for 14 years in a row. There is a 24x7 toll free number that provides you answers to all your queries.

For getting after sales product supports for HP Laserjet 1022nw Printer, you will have to choose your operating system from among Microsoft Windows Vista, Microsoft Windows Vista (64-bit), Microsoft Windows XP, Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Microsoft Windows 2000, Microsoft Windows ME, Microsoft Windows 98, Mac OS X and Linux. You can register yourself with HP and will get several helps and after sale services for the product.

Review: HP OfficeJet J4680 All-in-One Printer

For $130, you might not be surprised to find print, scan, and copy capabilities in HP’s OfficeJet J4680 multifunction ink-jet printer. But the J460 also has a built-in fax machine, wireless connectivity, and a 20-sheet auto document feeder. HP boasts about the J4680’s 20-page-per-minute black-and-white print speeds and 17-page-per-minute color print speeds, but in our real-world tests, the printer proved to be something of a slowpoke.

Setting up the printer was easy enough: just attach the included USB and power cables, install the software and print cartridges, and you’re ready to go. There were also a couple of cool setup features I hadn’t seen before in an HP multifunction device. First, when running the software installer, you’re asked if you want to install HP’s Inkjet Utility Widget, which runs in OS X’s Dashboard. The widget gives you a quick glimpse of your ink supply and allows you to launch the standard HP printer maintenance utility software. Second, after you install the print cartridges, the printer asks to insert a sheet of paper so that it can print out an alignment page. In itself, this isn’t unusual, but many printers require you to analyze this test output yourself, choosing which bars line up best and then using the printer’s on-board menus to input that info. With the J4680, you simply lay the printed sheet on the scanner bed and press OK. The scanner reads the sheet and makes any necessary adjustments.

The J4680 uses two ink cartridges, one black and one tri-color (cyan, magenta, and yellow), that claim to yield 200 and 360 prints, respectively. Replacement cartridges cost $15 for the black and $25 for the tri-color. HP also sells a high-yield black print cartridge; at $28, it costs a little less than two standard-yield black cartridges, and promises to print 700 pages before running out of ink. Unlike some HP printers, the J4680 doesn’t offer support for a photo color ink cartridge.

It was easy to set up the J4680 to connect to the office wireless network. The printer showed up as a Bonjour printer automatically, and you can join individual wireless networks via HP’s Control Center software on your Mac. That sure beats configuring the device using the printer’s on-board menus and controls, like I’ve had to do with other multifunction printers. I was also pleasantly surprised to find that push scanning from the J4680 to my MacBook over an Airport network worked seamlessly as well, as many printers we’ve tested in the past either skip support for network scanning or offer it via some tedious workaround.

We printed a wide variety of test pages on the J4680 and found the prints to be of good quality. Prints of our standard Photoshop test files were a little over-saturated, and a bit too red all around. The J4680 doesn’t provide an ICC color profile, so you’re better off letting the printer handle the color management. The four-color printer also lacked the smooth, continuous tone you might find from a six-ink photo printer, but the results were acceptable. Text, when printed in Normal or Best modes on plain paper, earned a Good rating. Text was clean, with sharp letters legible at even very small point sizes; but when text was printed with a colored background, there was a tendency for bleeding that looked messy.

Print times were slow. It took 19 seconds to print a 1-page black-and-white Microsoft Word document; 1 minute and 47 seconds for a 10-page text document; over 4 minutes for our Photoshop test file; and a whopping 22 minutes to print our 4-page PDF document at Best quality (not the higher Maximum DPI mode also available) on plain paper.

The J4680 also features a 1,200-dpi, letter-sized flatbed scanner. It can produce 48-bit scans, but only after you find and enable that feature deep in the HP scanning software’s preferences. That’s my biggest complaint about the scanning software: most settings are hidden up in the menu bar pull-downs, requiring a search for the proper controls to customize your scan. Once I figured out the software, I was able to get good quality scans that were color accurate with lots of detail. I was able to scan into Photoshop CS3, as well as directly from HP’s scanning software. You can choose to scan a document to OCR in TextEdit, scan to PDF, scan to e-mail, or scan to file.

I tested the copier with a variety of documents, from photos to magazine covers to text documents. The copies of photos had a slight yellow tint, but the magazine cover looked very good. A copy of a grayscale test page was a little light but maintained a good amount of detail. You can place the original either on the scanner’s flatbed or in the automatic document feeder, which can hold up to 20 sheets of paper. It took about 4 minutes to copy a 10-page black-and-white Word document. The J4680 doesn’t offer two-sided printing or scanning.

The J4680 also features a built-in fax machine that worked as advertised, and the included automatic document feeder takes the hassle out of sending multi-page faxes.

HP C7280 Photosmart All-in-One Printer review

Customer Reviews

Software is major problem3
Setting up this printer was easy and it printed the test pages well, but, the software fought with other programs on my computer and slowed down my entire system. It took over 30 minutes to install it. Then once installed I could print from all of my programs except anything that had a word processor in it - even notepad. It would take from 2 to 8 minutes for my print menu to even come up. I also tried another HP printer the day before and had the same problems.

I also want to mention that I was on the phone with tech support for 3 hours and completely uninstalled and reinstalled the software which made no difference. His suggestion was for me to back up my computer and reinstall windows. I did not take his advise.

Instead, I am a proud owner of the Cannon MX850. It installed easily and functions wonderfully with my computer…no problems. I have always liked HP, but their software has made me switch.

Just as an FYI, I am running on Windows XP on a 3 year old machine with plenty of operating memory etc.

Other than the fact that I could not print from word processors, the printer did well with photo printing - great quality.

I like it…4
I got a great deal for $167. Couldn’t ask for more.

Pros:
> Wireless works perfectly fine. My printer is in other room connected to my wireless network and print from anywhere in the network.
> All in one feature - Printer, Scan, Copy, Fax…all at home…
> the web based printer admin interface is good too…

Conz:
> Makes some noticeable noise and shakes my table (its not too strong though) while it is printing. Its in other room so it doesn’t matter much for me…

Other points:
> You must assign fixed IP to your printer…otherwise if it is dynamically assigned then everytime you switch your printer off it gets a new ip while your computer (which I don’t shutdown at all) still holds the old ip…so you have restart the system to make it pick the new ip…but i didn’t face any issue after I assigned a fixed ip (good that there is an easy option to do that in the printer) to the printer…

> I tried all options and other then FAX everything worked fine for me…FAX somehow didn’t work the first time…i still have to try it again…must have something wrong…
HP C7280 is excellent…software is not so great4
The HP C7280 is fantastic. It’s fast, clean and makes very clear prints/copies.

The C7280 is fast and has great range when using wireless printing. I also enjoy viewing the pictures on the small screen prior to printing to make sure I actuall want it or not. It is great. I highly suggest it.

THe only issue, and its a BIG issue is the software. It’s terrible. After being on the phone with HP tech support and downloading and reloading the software, it was confusing, frustrating and it was almost enough for me to take it back. It crashed my windows XP where I had to get it reinstalled. This is a MAJOR issue and HP really needs to resolve it. I finally got it to work after downloading other fix it files from the HP site. (I wish I had the link to share). After a week, I finally got it working on one of my computers. This computer would get at least 4 stars out of 5 if the software was easier to install and didn’t screw with my operating system.

HP Photosmart C4280 All-In-One Inkjet Printer review

Earlier this year, I found that I needed a new printer AND a new scanner. Rather than buy separate components, I shopped around and found the very affordable HP Photosmart C4280 All-In-One Inkjet Printer. At only around $100 or so, it is a great printer for the money.

I was especially looking for something that would give me decent quality prints of my digital photos, which I use for my scrapbooking projects This little machine does the trick!

The machine comes with one black cartridge and one three-color ink cartridge, which do the job well. But for enhanced color for your photos, they make a six-color cartridge that you may want to invest in.

The ink cartridges aren’t dirt cheap (black goes for about $15, tri-color for about $20, you can save by buying a two-pack with one of each). But they last surprisingly longer than I thought they would. Just do yourself a favor and use only genuine HP inks, I have used cheapo ones in other printers, and they ruined the printers.

The scanner and printer features work really well, too. You can set it to scan into your favorite image editing software, or just use the software that comes with the device. And it makes good quality photocopies, as well…no more having to go out to a copy shop, or put money in the machine at the library.

You can either print photos from your computer, or you can insert your camera’s memory card and print from there, no computer needed for this. There are slots for various sizes and types of cards, including the SD card and Compact Flash.

The only thing is that this does NOT come with a USB cord, which is required for hooking it up to your computer. You will have to either buy one separately, or just use the one from your old printer, which is what I did.

If you are looking for a good all-in-one printer and are on a budget, you could do much worse than this one. I highly recommend it for those looking to spend around $100 or so.

HP DeskJet 5850 Printer Review

Last week I bought a brand new HP DeskJet 5850 Wireless Inkjet Printer from our local Apple store where it was a featured Apple-friendly printer. I bought it primarily because 1) I need a new printer and 2) it has a wireless networking option which would give me much more flexibility on where I could place the printer in my home office.

The other night I attempted to connect the computer to my new airport extreme equipped G5 on my airport extreme network. I followed the directions that came with the printer religiously. It didn't work. I could get the computer to see the printer if it was connected via an ethernet cable to my airport base station. But once I tried a wireless connection, Apple's Rendezvous couldn't find it. I think I spent around two hours in total trying to troubleshoot this stupid printer. So tomorrow it goes back to Apple. There is a 10% open-box fee on returns. Maybe they'll wave it given that the thing doesn't work as promised. But even if they don't, I'd gladly pay the $15 bucks to not have to endure any more of the headache associated with this printer.

I guess it pays to look at user reviews before one makes a purchase like this. Perusing CNET and ZDNet reviews, this model has been panned by users for the same problems I'm having now.

Update: Well, based on the comments I received to this entry I decided to try again. This time I contacted an Apple rep from the Apple store where I bought the printer and he walked me through the set-up. We still could not get it to work. The problem is that if the printer is connected via an ethernet cable to the base station an IP address is assigned to the printer and the computer can see the printer. The minute you take the ethernet cable out of printer and try to find it using the wireless feature the computer can't find it. I took the printer back to the Apple store; they gave me a full refund. I had a long talk with the local Apple genius at the Genius Bar and he admitted that he was unable to get any of the HP wireless printers to connect to the store network via the wireless option. Hard cable worked, wireless did not. I suspect that the problem has to do with compatibility with the airport extreme base station. (By the way, I did follow the suggestions listed by people who had commented on this entry and downloaded the latest driver. Still didn't work.) When questioned which of the printers showcased at the Apple store would run on a network, the Apple guy said that none of them would. He did recommend a Brother model from Apple's online store so I'm going to look into that next. I've given up on wireless for now.

HP Photosmart A716 Portable Photo Printer review

HP is one the biggest names in computers and computer peripherals such as printers, displays and more. For today's review we are going to have a look at HP's newest portable photo printer called the Photosmart A716 Portable Photo Printer. HP made this printer very small and completely self-contained so that you can take pictures on your camera and then print them without the use of a computer.

Review Verdict

The HP Photosmart A716 is the perfect printer for shutterbug that wants to be able to print and store photos on the go. That is assuming you don't mind paying twice what you could print the same photos for at your local Wal-Mart. At the end of the day the A716 prints great photos, but expect to pay for portability.
The Good & Bad
Very small and portable size
Optional internal battery for truly portable printing
Internal 4GB hard drive for extra photo storage
Burn photos on CDs & DVDs without PC
Decent photo output

Non-intuitive controls
High cost of ownership
No photo papers bundled
Difficult to edit photos on small LCD
No USB cable


Essential Specs & Stats
Dimensions: 9.9" x 4.6" x 5"
Printer tech.: Thermal inkjet
Max. color resolution: 4800 x 1200 dpi
Max. BW resolution: 1200 x 1200 dpi
Mfr-claimed printing speed: 39s
Noise level: 55 dB
Printable area: 5" x 7"
Paper-in capacity: 20
Screen: 2.5" LCD
Extras: TV output, 4GB HDD for photo storage, on-screen photo edit

Package Content
HP PhotoSmart A716 Printer
HP 110 Tri-color ink cartridge (5ml)
Setup guide
Power adapter
HP PhotoSmart Premier software CD
Slideshow remote
S-video cable

HP L7780 Printer and All in One printer review

Overview

Until now in our office we had been using an HP 7410 series. That model, which is also an all-in-one printer, scanner and fax, still works and will find a new home with a relative who has spoken up for it.

But between my husband (an attorney who tends to print in black and white, and is a heavy fax user) and me (an entrepreneur who does a lot of in-house marketing with color printing), we wanted something that printed faster with smart faxing capabilities. I’m happy to report that the new L7780 is faster and should be cheaper to maintain, too. It prints 10 color pages per minute (highest quality) and even more if you adjust for medium or lower quality — about double the speed of our previous printer. The print quality is excellent — crisp and clean looking and very close to laser print quality to my eye.

The OfficeJet Pro L7780 already is an important component of our small business office.

It can print from a wireless or wired computer network. It prints color and black-and-white copies.

It also comes with a suite of proprietary HP software so you can manipulate scanned documents and photographs, such as removing red eye effects. You can also download photographs directly from a digital camera to the printer — very convenient. And you can print crisp photographs on photographic paper.

On top of everything else, I love the stylish black design with round/edges and silver accents. The design looks contemporary and makes you feel good.


Quality
I consider the output quality excellent. I printed several documents and they turned out crisper than the old model we had been using. For marketing uses, the print quality is more detailed and sharper than any previous printer we have had. And the photographs and images I printed were impressive for home and office use.

Price
This machine retails for $499 at Staples, although from time to you will see specials or find it with rebates, making it significantly less expensive. I can remember our first inkjet printer many years ago, with far fewer features. It cost more than this one, and had about one-fourth the capabilities. Considering all the advanced features, I’d say the HP OfficeJet Pro L7780 is a bargain.

HP Photosmart 100 Printer review

Product Requirements:
Device:
Digital Camera with any one of three following memory module formats: Compact Flash, Smart Media, or Memory Stick.
No computer is necessary unless you want to store or manipulate images.

Desktop:
Windows 2000, 98, 95 or NT 4.0 with USB port support.
No Apple Macintosh support at this time.

Part of the magic of photography is seeing/sharing images as close to the �moment� as possible. This is arguably one of the key reasons for the success of the instant photo cameras like the ones made famous by Polaroid. Ever notice how everyone wants to see the viewfinder after you take a digital picture? Hold this thought for a minute.

My Mom and Dad still buy film, shoot it, drive it to the local drug store and pay about $0.50 per print to get twenty-four 4 by 6 inch photos, and then they only keep about six out of the twenty four. They are afraid of digital photography because of the �computer.�

As digital photography has come of age, the weakest link has been the problem of computer literacy, not to mention having to go back to the (digital) darkroom and print or email photos and remember who wants them. The cost of generating one�s own photos is also something holding-back general acceptance.

The HP Photosmart 100 printer does a nice job toward building a bridge of accessibility for digital photography by delivering photos �on-the spot,� not requiring the mastery of the point-and-click paradigm, and delivering them in a fairly cost effective manner.

The fact that it is this close at all really sold me on switching over to Digital. I am willing to pay a little extra to get my pictures on-the-spot, and not printing all of those BAD pictures has got to be better for the environment.

OK, enough about the numbers, let�s talk about the HP Photosmart 100 printer.

The unit itself is much smaller than a toaster, and prints a very nice borderless 4 x 6 photo in about 2.5 minutes, and I particularly like that it prints all the way to the border of the paper. It also makes a small proof sheet or wallet-sized (2.5 x 3.5 inch) photos. The printer also supports the DPOF protocol, which means that you can decide what to print while your digital film is still inside the camera, and when the card is plugged into the printer it already will know what to do.


(Left to right: 4 x 6 print, 2.5 x 3.5 print, proof sheet)

The printer comes with a CD ROM (containing the drivers to interface with a Windows OS machine via USB), user manual, power adapter, some sample photo paper, warranty card and that�s about it. If you are planning to give this as a gift to parents who speak English as a second language, never fear. The HP web site has several different language versions of the little manual ready for free downloading.

The top of the printer has a very simple backlit LCD-based user interface that uses icons. It is very easy to use.



I�ve compared the images from this printer to that of our HP PSC 950 and my brother�s Epson Photo printer (at the 4 x 6 size). When we use the good paper, it holds its own and in some cases did a better job with the exposure control than the larger PSC 950.

The units uses a 32VDC power supply, so in order to print photos while in the car, I use a 120VAC inverter and plug the wall adapter into the inverter. Think of it: you will be able to print photos at the family reunion picnic (or soccer game) to hand out to everyone while you�re still there!

The HP Photosmart 100 has been ideal for our family. My siblings, cousins, uncles/aunts have digital cameras, and (of course) they all use different memory storage formats. Imagine how much more fun those get-togethers are now? Never mind �just an hour photo� how about �hold on for a couple of minutes photo!� Everyone with all of their incompatible memory cards can now swap photos (albeit on paper) as well as with those aunts and uncles that don�t have an email address.

A close-up view of the front of the printer shows the Compact Flash card slot (left), the Sony Memory Stick card slot (right), and the Smart Media card slot (thin slot above the memory stick).



If you are really interested in buying this printer, your best bet is to go see some sample printouts at the retail outlet. You will see that this printer along with a 2+ mega pixel camera will do a fine job. Below is a picture of the printer �in action� making two wallet-sized photos.

A quick note on pricing: the price on HP�s website was much higher than the prices I found around town. Staples, CompUSA and Office Depot all had it for about $179. Office Depot has a �$10 in-store coupon� that you can print and Staples has a web coupon for �$30 off on a purchase of $150 or more� that brought the price down to $149 and was the clincher for me.


Pros:
Print Quality
Easy to use
Portability, small size
Compatibility
Quiet
�cost per print�

Cons:
32VDC power supply doesn�t allow direct powering from car/boat
USB port only

Hewlett-Packard Photosmart C8180 All-In-One Printer

US $399.99

I've been a happy user of my HP 7280 all-in-one unit for a number of months. After I reluctantly returned the C7280 review unit, I put my money where my review mouth was, bought one, and have had no regrets.

HP asked me to review the C8180, and here's what I found after using on it for quite a while.

First off, the 8180 is not simply a 7280 with HP's revisions du jour; it has a higher resolution scanner and printer. According to HP, the additional sensors that make up the 96 bit scanner sensor produce better color accuracy as well as reduced noise and grain from negatives. It is more obvious when scanning certain colors, like saturated reds and greens, and scanning certain types of originals, like offset press or inkjet prints. As we'll see, actually producing a 96 bit scan is awkward.

However, the 8180 has no fax capability at all. It has the same abilities to read from various types of camera memory cards, and it also can print via USB, Ethernet, or 802.11b/g wireless. It has no 802.11n capability. It also has the same print engine that uses six separate ink cartridges.

One important new addition is a CD/DVD burner with LightScribe capability. LightScribe allows you to print custom images or text on the face of LightScribe-compatible blanks. In addition to being controlled by the 8180 itself, the burner can be shared with your computer, and any application can print to the LightScribe print driver.

The 8180 comes with a sheet feeder capable of handling various paper sizes and quantities, although my review unit did not have one.

Given the flawless performance of the feeder on my 7280, I predict that the 8180's will function just as well.

The 8180's appearance has been updated. Whereas the tall and chunky 7280 had a control panel that was festooned with buttons, and a keypad, the 8180 is low-slung and streamlined. With no built-in fax, there's little need for a keypad, as its bigger LCD screen is used for controlling almost all functions. The 8180 is wider, due to the CD/DVD burner on the right side.


Software install is generally easy, although HP presents an excessive number of reminders to register the unit, and sign up for various emails that'll drive you crazy. It's not possible to complete the installation process without having the installer get the last word in by launching your web browser and teleporting you to the HP registration page, even though you've already screamed "NOOO" as loud as you can.

Once installed, you'll get the usual complement of HP applications allowing you to scan to OCR, scan pictures, or make copies. A standard installation includes HP Photosmart Studio, which is a jack-of-all-trades (yet master of none) program to manage your scans and photos. iPhoto or Adobe Photoshop Elements will far better serve Macintosh users. HP includes ReadIRIS 11 for optical character reading. ReadIRIS is a capable program that deserves its own review.

During the setup, you select your connection method. I tested USB, and network (Ethernet) connections. I did not try the Bluetooth capability. HP advertises that Bluetooth will allow printing from a cellphone. I had no problem connecting the 8180 to my 801.11g wireless network. With the printer located only a few feet from the base station, network throughput was not an issue. However, a USB connection is always faster than a network connection, and that's most noticeable when scanning.

After the installation is complete, the 8180 goes through a time-consuming and somewhat noisy setup and calibration process. If the 8180 does not get regular use, the unit will occasionally spring to life, as it checks for proper calibration. If you even so much as open the lid to gaze inside, the printer goes through its 45 second or so "Printer preparation in progress...do not interrupt" routine.

HP's scanning software is reasonably easy to use. Scanning is controlled via the HP Device Manager, a small application that allows access to the various 8180 functions. You can scan to Preview, or save an image file to disk for editing with any image editor of your choice. If you don't have a capable editor (there's no excuse not to), the scanning software allows for choosing the desired resolution, color adjustment, scratch and dust removal, and restoring faded colors. I found the color restoration feature worked well. I could do better in Photoshop Elements, but HP did a creditable job nonetheless.

To my non-programmer's eye, the scanning software appears the same as for the 7280. The 8180 scanner specifications say it's a 96 bit scanner, while 7280's scanner is 48 bit. One would think the 8180 scanner would produce a greater range of tones and colors, but I was not able to notice any significant differences. Upon further investigation (lots of point and clicking to discover hidden options) the resolution options setting of the scanner driver for the 8180 maxed out at 48 bits/millions of colors. I was unable to find any setting to allow me to scan at greater than 48 bits. What's the point of having a better scanner if the software won't take advantage of it?

If all else fails, read the manual. Unfortunately, the manual was unavailing. At wit's end, I emailed HP, and got the following answer describing how to enable 96 bit scans. I include it so anyone who ends up purchasing an 8180 does not spend the time looking for this needle in the HP documentation haystack; it's not there (and it should be).

"Launch the HP Solutions Center application. Under Scan Settings / Scan Preferences is a "Quality vs. Speed" tab. On that dialog there are two selections that must be made, (a) scan at maximum bit depth, and (b) 6-color scan. For the 8180 both are necessary to enable 96-bit scanning. That's it. Subsequent scans will be 96-bit."

Bit depth notwithstanding, the scan quality was good.

Print quality was very impressive. This is truly a photo-quality printer. If you use HP brand papers, the 8180 will sense the paper type, and set the printer to take best advantage of the paper type. The 8180 uses five separate inks plus black, each in its own cartridge. In the old days, HP used bigger three color carts, with yellow, magenta, and cyan all in one. If you emptied one color, you had to replace the whole shebang, even if there was plenty of one or more of the other colors remaining. Now, you need only replace the needed color.

The 8180 will print borderless prints up to 8.5" x 11" and it also has a convenient second tray to fit 4" x 5" photo paper.

Front panel controls are a feature of the 8180. At 3.5", the LCD is bigger than on the 7280. While most users will generally control the 8180 from their computer, you can do quite a bit from the front panel itself. You can print from camera image storage cards, print from photos on CDs or DVDs, and make copies.

I made a good number of copies of both paper documents and photos, and the the quality was uniformly excellent. I also tried making a contact sheet of images from my image storage card, and it worked as advertised with no troubles.

One curious feature that you access only through the front panel is the 8180's ability to save images from a camera storage card and save them to a USB flash drive plugged into the 8180's front USB port. This allows you to back up the card without having to use your computer. This worked perfectly.

You can also read from the camera card and burn them to a CD/DVD using the built-in burner. Unfortunately, I could not get the 8180's built-in burner to recognize a blank CD, even though I tried three different types of CD blank. Oddly, I had no trouble using the LightScribe feature of the drive (more on that later).

The front panel allows for basic editing of photos prior to printing. You can fix red-eye, crop, add a border, and do "automatic fixing." These features worked as advertised. I do all my editing on the Mac, but others may not. Front panel editing may be just the feature you're looking for.

LightScribe is a HP-developed technology that allows CD/DVD burners to use inkjet technology to print images on the front of special CD/DVD media. You can burn a DVD of your favorite images, and use the LightScribe-capable burner in the 8180 to "print" your favorite image on the front of the disc. LightScribe does not print a full-color image; it resembles a sepia toned black and white photo.

HP included a sample LightScribe DVD blank. I had no trouble installing the LightScribe printer driver, and then choosing, editing, and printing the image to the front of the blank disc. I was worried that I'd waste my one blank disc, but the process was easy and trouble-free. Given that LightScribe blanks cost more than plain blanks (prices may vary widely), this is a nice way to customize your photo CD/DVD media.

HP 8180 Specifications

Conclusion

The HP PhotoSmart 8180 is very good, but not great, multi-function printer/scanner/copier. The software is typical HP, which is to say it's merely adequate. The large front panel LCD is nice, and the built-in editing features are available to those who who don't want to have to use their computer for a quick edit and print. The 8180 can read almost any type of camera memory card.

I was not able to burn CDs/DVDs, although LightScribe worked properly.

If you need fax capability, this is not the unit for you.

The real reason to buy the 8180 is for its fine print and scan quality. Whether you do 48 bit scans, or delve into hard-to-find settings to enable 96 bit scans, the scanner's output is very good. HP paper sensing is a great feature, and the HP ink technology is outstanding.

rating: 3 out of 5. It's a fine printer and scanner, but you pay a premium for some features you may never use.

HP Photosmart Pro B9180 printer reviews

by Regardt van der Berg | SACM
07 July, 2008

When it comes to photo prints, A3 and smaller, very few printers currently available come close to the HP B9180

This printer first grabbed my attention at last year’s HP Labs in Lisbon, Portugal, and I have been dying to try it out ever since.

What sets this printer apart from almost anything else on the market today is the size of prints it can produce and the fact that it is aimed at a professional market. This means that the colour accuracy and overall print quality are nothing short of superb.

Moreover, I was blown away by the large variety of media that the B9180 can print on. This includes glossy, satin, and matte photo paper as well as film, transparencies, banners, and my personal favourite, canvas (special fabric used by painters).

In fact, at HP Labs last year, I printed one of my best shots from my Portugal trip on canvass and the results were simply out of this world.

Considering that this is an A3 printer, it’s no surprise to find that this printer is large and heavy, but it will be right at home in a studio environment thanks to its curvy features and neat aesthetics.

It’s also not strange to see that this printer makes use of eight ink cartridges to produce its professional quality prints. Apart from the standard colours (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black) it also makes use of light cyan, light grey, light magenta, and photo black to produce images only equalled by those produced by photo-lab developers and which cost hundreds of thousands of rands.

Even though this is a professionalgrade printer, it’s still pretty straightforward to install and operate. Its drivers support both Windows and Mac OS and you can hook it up to your PC or put it directly on your network via the built-in network port.

Impressively, the paper output-tray is partly made of metal: this simply emphasises the fact that this printer means business. It also boasts a manual-feed paper slot that can accommodate media up to 1.5mm thick.

Probably the most impressive feature on offer is the internal calibration system. An HP densitometric closed-loop colour calibration integrated into the print head is able to measure the colour values of a test image.

It will then compare these values to that of the values loaded at the factory and it will auto-calibrate should any changes be detected.

During the two weeks that we used this printer, there was very little to find fault with it. It worked like a charm and consistently produced great photos.

While this printer might be a little expensive for home users, it guarantees a quick return on investment for photographers and designers.

HP Color LaserJet CP1518ni Printer

It's inexpensive but also a lot slower than like-priced models.
HP's Color LaserJet CP1518ni is a low-cost ($400 as at July 11, 2008) color laser printer with a decent design. Compared with such similarly priced printers as the Brother HL-4040CN and the Dell Color Laser 1320c, however, it's a lot slower and has limited paper handling. It's best suited for use in a home or a fairly small office.

In our PC World Test Center tests, the Color LaserJet CP1518ni produced plain text pages at a paltry 11.2 pages per minute and graphics pages at 2.0 ppm or slower. At least the results were pleasing: Text looked black and crisp. Though a little dark, photos looked reasonably natural. Grayscale images were free of the green or pink overtones that we often see. HP's own image enhancement technology, called ImageREt 3600 technology, might have helped here: Among other tricks, it manipulates the size and position of the dot within the usual resolution grid, to give images a smoother, more natural look. (In connection with its use of this technology, HP long ago ceased quoting dots-per-inch resolution specs in favor of the vaguer ImageREt designation.)

Besides being slow, the printer has design and configuration shortcomings. The 150-sheet capacity of its main paper tray is below average. When extended to accommodate legal paper, the tray sticks out the front of the printer; technically, this occupies the same amount of space as the more common rear extension, but it looks odd. Duplex (two-sided) printing is unavailable. The front control panel (with a two-line, monochrome LCD) is unintuitive: There's no clear indication that you must use the 'OK' button to summon the menus. Access doors and other parts feel flimsy or move clumsily. On the brighter side, the Color LaserJet CP1518ni comes with five photo card slots on the front and has an easily accessible side door for accepting a RAM upgrade (maximum 352MB).

As on many low-cost printers, the toner cartridges are low-capacity and high-priced. The printer comes with starter supplies of each color good for 750 pages of output. A 2200-page replacement black cartridge costs $70 (which works out to 3.2 cents per page), while each 1400-page color cartridge costs $65 (the equivalent of 4.6 cents per page).

HP's documentation is thorough. The wordless setup sheet for unpacking and installing the cartridges looks more like a page ripped out of a comic book than something official, but the instructions are clear. The installation routine relies on animated wizards. Inside the printer, illustrated stickers help you perform routine tasks without consulting the manual. The HTML-based documentation is comprehensive without being overly technical. HP's ratings in our recent Reliability and Service survey were average overall.

For individual users or a small office, the Color LaserJet CP1518ni's minimal paper handling and toner supplies are probably adequate. Only extremely patient people will find it easy to tolerate the slow engine, however, especially when similarly priced models are much faster and have better features.

HP Officejet Pro L7680 Color All-in-One Printer/Fax/Scanner/Copier

HP Officejet Pro L7680 Color All-in-One Printer/Fax/Scanner/Copier (C8189A#ABA) Experience unsurpassed productivity with fast color speeds at a low running cost. Reduce time spent waiting for documents with breakthrough color speeds and proven HP performance. HP makes business printing faster and more efficient and convenient than ever, while reducing your operating expenses. Fax, scan, and copy up to 50-page documents easily, using the integrated automatic document feeder (ADF). The ADF eliminates the need to stand by and manually feed your document, saving time for other important tasks. Copy Speed (letter/A4) Black - Up to 35 ppm Draft; 16 ppm Normal; 5 ppm Best / Color - Up to 34 ppm Draft; 15 ppm Normal; 5 ppm Best / Resolution Up to 1200 x 1200 dpi Scan Resolution Optical - up to 2400 by 4800 dpi, enhanced - up to 19,200 dpi; 48-bit color bit depth, 256 grayscale levels Fax Speed 33.6 kbps, 3 seconds per page / Resolution Up to 300 by 300 dpi Photo memory card slots - CompactFlash Type I and II, Memory Stick, Secure Digital/MultiMediaCard/Secure MultiMediaCard, xD-Picture Card 64 MB RAM, 4 MB Flash memory / Processor - 192 MHz Dimensions (W x D x H) - 20.91 x 25.43 x 14.02 inches / Weight - 34.94 lbs HP 1-Year Warranty
Customer Review: “HP” is an abbreviation for “Hard Printing”
Too many others did a better job listing ALL THE FLAWS of this piece of junk, let me contribute my part:

Inconsistent quality, our company installs these in our field offices and everyone one has a unique set of frustrating idiosyncrasies.

ALWAYS fails when you need it the most ! When one of our reps is prepping for their overnight presentation and has to print copies before leaving for the airport….. it always jams, or has ink errors despite the fact the cartridges are new and less than a day old.

NEVER, NEVER, GET A PAPER JAM, because even if you clear it, the HP still reports a Jam error, we had to ship one back for this reason and often have to flush all the factory settings to clear the jam !

Keep a flashlight near it, because the card slots are impossible to discern and it is easy to break an SD card being plugged into an XD Micro slot.

HP Photosmart A630 Compact Photo Printers Reviews

The HP Photosmart A630 Compact Photo Printer is one of the best gadgets our family has come across in a long time. It’s really small, lightweight and with it’s built in handle, it’s designed to be portable enough to carry along with you on vacations, at parties or any kind of gathering where you’ll be snapping pics.

The setup on this printer took about 2 minutes. Just unpack it from the box, plug it in, install the print cartridge, put paper in the back and you’re ready to go.

I have to admit that it took me a few minutes to figure out how to access the paper input tray. It turns out you have to lift the handle to see the little place where you can grab the back cover with your finger.

I have 2 different digital cameras, so I was glad to see the slots in the front can accommodate 4 different sizes of memory cards: xD-Picture Card, Compact Flash I and II, Memory Stick and SD, MMC cards. My cameras use CF and SD, so that worked well for me.

The menu on this little printer is a 4 x 8 touchscreen. It comes with a stylus, but I found it wasn’t necessary for most functions. The screen was very response to finger tip touch, which made editing the photos very easy. This was bit different experience than I had with the touchscreen on the Photosmart A826, which responded much better to the stylus.

The menus on this new portable printer were the same as the A826, so there was no learning curve there. Even if you haven’t used an HP Photosmart touchscreen in the past, you won’t have any problems.

The menus are intuitive and easy to navigate. Here are just some of the functions you have access to: frames, captions, albums, freehand drawing, clip art, special effects, photo stickers and greeting cards. There’s also a function that allows you to print still photos direct from your video camera. I haven’t tried that one yet, but plan to soon.

The print quality is excellent and this little guy moves along quickly. The HP literature says you can print a 4 x 6 in as little as 27 seconds, but my 5 x 7 prints took about 45 seconds each.

We liked this printer so much that my daughter plans to take it to her next 4-H special event so each club member can take home their own set of photos. That’s what’s so wonderful about it – instant pictures. No more waiting for someone to email you or get extra prints. It will even operate on battery power, which makes it totally portable.

Like the Photosmart A826, the prints are ready to use as soon as they come out of the printer, a feature that fits well into the pace of my family. J

One last thing I would have liked to see with this package is a carrying case. The touch screen folds down under the handle, but the screen is still exposed. I’d feel much safer carrying it around if it was in a case.

It looks like HP has another winner with the Photosmart A630 !

HP Laser Jet 3050 All in One Printer/Copy/Scanner reviews (White/Black)

Product Description
Box Contents: HP LaserJet 3050 All-In-One, 250-sheet media input tray, control panel overlay, power cords, ADF input/output support, phone cords, output bin support, Readiris PRO text recognition software, HP LaserJet Q2612A Black Print Cartridge, CDs containing device software and electronic User's Guide.

The HP LaserJet 3050 is an affordable and compact all-in-one that makes printing, faxing, color scanning, and copying easy and dependable. Space-saving simplicity and easy office integration combine in this black & white printer, copier, fax and scanner. Hi-Speed USB port and HP Jetdirect external print server connections

Fax Specs - Fax Resolution - Up to 300 x 300 dpi (halftone enabled) Transmission Speed - 3 sec/page Fax auto redial PC interface (software included) Up to 120 numbers; up to 120 speed dials & 119 group dials Broadcast faxing Fax forwarding Delayed sending Junk fax barrier Polling Distinctive ring detection

Copier Specs - Copy resolution (black) - Up to 600 x 600 dpi Copy settings - Contrast(lighter/darker), reduce/enlarge 25 to 400%, resolution copy (draft, text, mixed, film photo and picture), copy collation, number of copies, paper size Max. copies - Up to 99

Scanner Specs - Sheetfed scanner Scan resolution - Up to 600 x 600 dpi; (up to 19200 dpi enhanced) Bit depth - 24-bit 256 levels of grayscale

General Specs - Feeder Capacity - 30 sheets Max. Input Capacity - 260 sheets Max. Output Capacity - Up to 100 sheets; up to 10 envelopes Paper Trays - 1 tray plus 10-sheet priority slot Media Types - Paper (plain, preprinted, prepunched, bond, color, glossy, letterhead, light, heavy, recycled, rough), envelopes, vellum, transparencies, labels, cardstock Media Sizes - letter, legal, envelopes (No 5 1/2 Baronial through No 11), index cards, postcards; through ADF - 4.13 x 5.83 to 8.5 x 15 Window

Customer printers reviews

Nice printing, never jams, poor Mac support, expensive per copy (2008-02-15)
I've had this printer for nearly a year. Very good quality output, pretty speedy, scan and fax work fine. Super reliable, and out of tens of thousands of copies, I think I've had one jam. That's the good news.

The bad news comes in two types:

1. Mac support is essentially non-existent for Leopard users. Cannot scan without weird work-arounds that you don't want to try. Manual duplex causes every other page to print upside down. The drivers have not been updated for Leopard.

2. The cost of toner is high. You get 2,000 sheets from a cartridge, which costs about $60 (Costco) or more. To make this worse, the printer never gives you warning when toner is low. If you are, for example, printing 50 copies, the toner could run out after copy 2, giving you 48 misprinted sheets that are destined for the recycle bin. Since the sheets exit face down, you cannot see this happening until it is too late.

I've been trying to find a highly-rated equivalent printer (laser all in one) that works well on the Mac, and when I do, this 3050 will be gone.