Customer Rating: 
Summary: Starry Eyed Over This One, But Lets Me Down
Comment: Upon the joyful news that we were having a girl, my husband decided to invest in a new digital camera and a photo printer. The digital camera still works great--the printer is another matter. While this one prints beautiful pictures, the cost of ink far outweighs the beauty of them sometimes.
As we all know, this is how printer companies make their money, through the ink. Replacing every cartridge at once will run you about $75 (U.S.) at a time, give or take a few. The gray ink is used up the quickest, and has also been one of the hardest for us to find here locally. The main problem I have with this printer is that the quality is excellent after you replace the ink, but for only about the first 50-70 pictures. After that. The pictures take on too much of a magenta cast and start to get out of register--very frustrating when you're printing out any pictures, let alone ones of your child. Yes, we do what the manual sugests for such occasions, and the main one is to clean the printer cartridge heads, but this has only actually worked for us on one occassion. Every other time get us no results and we are still stuck with pictures that resemble something a third grader took a crayon to. In the long run, I will not be buying a photo printer for home use, but will rather take them to a store for processing.
Quality-wise, it gets you in the beginning, but doesn't hold out for the long run. We have fiddled with it for two years. Enough's enough.
Customer Rating:
Summary: great printer with some niggles
Comment: HiI saw this recommended in 'Personal Computer World' as best buy inkjet. I would have bought it from amazon, but a special, one-off offer from another supplier was cheaper then. The price at amazon is now much more competative, so its a good buy now.
The printer is physically bulky, much bigger than the other 5 HP printer's i have owned since 1991. With my computer 'XP-Home' i had to install the drivers first, then connect the printer and wait for it to be detected. It worked first time.
The screen is there to give visual feedback, and to allow selection of images via buttons on the printer facia, when this is free-standing i believe. The colour screen is vibrant, though it turns itself off after a few minutes when unnatended so save power.
The print quality of text or photograph's is superb. The ink cartridges supplied are on the small side, but on the 'HP' website, there are other sizes of cartridges combinations available, for say long print-runs or lots of colour photos. All combinations of cartridges work, but it can be confusing as there's so-much choice. A brilliant use of the printer is as a photocopier with a scanner, the whole process is around 1-page a minute.
The printer driver software can be updated automatically by the current driver checking 'HP' website every month or so. I have had three updates in 3 months, but of late it seems to have been content with its present driver.
A niggle-which HP know about- is that sometimes, when activating the printer, the software/button combination seems to go into an 'indeterminate state', and the image on the printer screen on the printer becomes corrupted. You just need to restart it, and its fixed. It has done this a few times, its a bit annoying, but its one of the 'features' of the printer. I would have given it five, but for the above niggle.
All HP printers i have owned- the five previous to this one- would do this once a year; produce several blank pages and not stop. This common fault has, so far, been removed from the computer.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Superb Quality at a price
Comment: It is certainly not cheap. You are paying for two things. Top quality colour printing and the ability to download, edit and enhance pictures straight from the camera without the need for a pc.I have been using an Epson Stylus photo 870 printer with superb results and reprinted 2xA4 colour photos on inkjet paper with the HP machine to compare the results. The HP won hands down. Contrast was greatly improved, colours more vibrant and it creates a wonderful 'depth' of colour that adds life to the pictures
Usefully it offers a range of presets for types of printing with the ability to add ones own custom presets. The simple day to day setting churns out text documents in just a few seconds
If there is a fault, it is in the documentation. The set up poster leaves much to be desired and the illustation actually shows the power cable being plugged into the usb socket! Also the user guide cd gives only the most basic of information. Considering the price of the machine and the numerous functions I would have expected a detailed manual. Nonetheless I would not hesitate to recommend it to anyone wanting top quality photo printing
