HP Photosmart D5160 User Reviews:
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Customer Rating:  
Summary: Don't Expect Support
Comment: This printer would be a nice item, if it didn't faint at the first whiff of photo paper.
I bought mine primarily to print on DVD's and all went well for a little while. But just 3 months after purchase I decided to print a photo and the machine jammed, then refused to do anything but flash a light at me ever again.
After going through the reset procedures given on line, all the 'help' department could do was give me a UK help number which is apparently in India. After being questioned by an unfriendly 'support' person I was instructed to fax proof of purchase as they had me down as out of warrenty although I bought it in March and there is supposed to be 1 year warrenty on it. Not having a fax machine appears to be a criminal offense.
Luckily I had a scanner and we agreed I could email proof, as a photocopy by post was not acceptible.
2 months later, I still have an almost new machine that doesn't work. I won't buy HP again.
Customer Rating:
Summary: NICE PICTURES BUT IT IS NOT ALL SUNNY
Comment: I have owned a number of printers over the years, but this is my first HP for almost a decade. Picture quality is very good, excellent even, and the ink usage is also very respectable. However, the ink monitor is very suspect. Both tanks have been showing empty for 3 months and the prints are not lacking in any of the component colours. The paper feed for A4 works well, and paper jams are very rare which suits my children who have struggled in the past. The strange feed in system for A5 photo paper is, at best, irritating and normally totally unusable. It shuffles the plastic carrier backwards and forwards, but rarely picks up the paper and attempts to use it require a great amount of attention and luck.
If you just need basic functions then this printer delivers, it is fast with quality output and excellent running costs. It is the peripheral aspects that struggle to keep up.
Customer Rating:
Summary: DO NOT BUY -> WORSE THAN USELESS
Comment: I've been buying computer equipment for maybe 15 years, and this is the most unreliable, bug ridden, inefficient, poorly designed pile of scrap metal I have ever encountered. It flatly refuses to print anything but gibberish from anything but the cumbersome, bloated non intuitive rubbish they include as printing software.
I just threw mine in a skip, after finally giving up.
Do NOT buy this rubbish.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Superb printer
Comment: My last 3 printers were Epson. The problem with Epson is that the print heads are part of the printer itself, so over time they get dirty and gummed up, and with each cartridge change more and more expensive ink is used to clean them. So I decided to get an HP because the print head is part of the ink cartridge, so every time you change a cartridge, you get a fresh, new print head.
The results on this printer are fantastic. Its very quiet, smooth, and fast, and the output crisp and clear. I haven't tried the DVD/CD printing yet. One feature I particularly like is that supports double sided printing (the paper is manually re-inserted, but the software prompts you).
I'm very pleased with this printer and highly recommend it.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Prints well on Cds and photos are excellent.
Comment: When I was considering this product there were lots of conflicting reviews on this page. Most of the conflict was about the quality of the Cd/DVD printing facility, and this was very important to me because as a home recording musician the ability to print directly onto Cds was the main reason for my interest in this printer. Some reviews claimed the Cd/DVD printing was very good and others said it was very poor. After checking the price in town (where it was over thirty pounds dearer in one shop and over ten pounds dearer in the cheapest shop), I ordered it via Amazon.
It arrived on time and was well packed. I particularly liked the way it was covered in black plastic so no nosey neighbours etc, or dodgy delivery persons knew what was being delivered.
It had been dispatched from France and contained a mains adapter/converter so it could be plugged into English sockets. This works well though it looks a little strange.
I found the print quality to be excellent for ordinary paper, photo paper, and importantly for me it also printed very well on my Cds. The cd/dvd designing software by HP and another similar one provided were both very limited in that they seem to only provide some print boxes for you to type into, but the HP one does allow you to print a photo (bmp/jpeg etc) that it resizes and crops to the correct sized circular shape. This means that you can produce designs in photo editing software or a design/publishing program that allows you to save designs as bmp/jpeg etc.
Unfortunately my photo editor has limited text manipulation, (I need to print in a circle aroung the circumference of the Cds)and my otherwise excellent microsoft desktop Publisher doesn't let me save designs as images, so at first I was a little stuck. I got around this by designing in Publisher, printing the design onto good quality paper at a high resolution, and then scanning the printed image back into the computer as a bitmap.
I then inserted the bitmap image using HP's software and ignored their text boxes (they don't print if you don't type anything into them). The result was very good. I am pleased with this for now, but I am thinking about getting a proper drawing/design program.
Overall I am very pleased with this printer, and would recommend it to anyone who wants excellent photos, and wants to print directly onto Cds and DVDs.
The only problem I have had so far is that i find it difficult to switch it off. As I use it with a laptop and have to pack everything away after each use, this is annoying. Double-clicking on the disconect USB icon is always met with a message saying the printer can't be disconected because a program is accessing it. This happens even though I have no programs running. Eventually I ignore the message and switch the power to the printer off and unplug the USB lead. It doesn't seem to do any harm, but it's still worrying - Hence only 4 stars, but it's excellent in all other respects.
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