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and I think next time I will go back to an Epson. This printer is way too expensive, and in my opinion, total junk. I have used printers since 1989 and this is definitely the worst.
I have had this printer for over 2 years and the only reason I am writing a review now is because I just tried to put regular paper in it and print a single page word document and it jammed yet again and it was just the last straw. My husband bought it because of the memory card capability, but as far as I can tell that is the only redeeming quality of this printer at all. Don't waste your money.
This printer is GARBAGE. It also will not do envelopes without hand feeding it one at a time, hand printing would almost be faster. I will take great pleasure in smashing this one to bits whenever I get around to buying another Epson.
I owned a few Epsons with no problems at all, I only upgraded as the technology improved, not because any of them were broken or didn't work. The hp is a "photo" printer, but if you put more than 3 pieces of photo paper in it at a time, it will jam and waste your paper and ink.
I print around 30 to 50 photos a month, mainly to sell to customers and this is a lot more economical than a lab. But if you are looking for professional quality I can not say enough about the HP 8450. I purchased the HP 8450 about a year and a half ago. If you are looking for Wal-Mart quality go to Wal-Mart. I see complaints in other reviews about the speed and the cost of ink, but if you were to send photos off to a photo lab, not only would it take more time and money but the quality would not be any better. I find the print quality as good as and professional lab that I have used, if not better.
For those of you with a little more computer skills you can edit your start-up and nix the offending HP app. What this means is that you can take out the black cartridge and snap in the photo gray.While this is not hard, you don't want to make the mistake of always leaving the photo gray cartidge in for all print jobs - it's for photos. It was a little more expensive than some of the others, but not the most expensive photo printer that was on the shelf. So we talked a bit more and I decided to go with it.It should be noted that we generally use HP premium paper and HP photo paper for our printing. That also does not hurt anything.The ink cartridges can be filled with kits, so if you like to do that then you can save some money over the long run.If you aren't in a hurry or in a high-output business environment, this has been a very dependable printer for us and since we have bought it for photo printing we have not been disappointed at all, but with the cost of ink and quality paper someone might be better off getting their prints done at Wal Mart (or wherever) if per-print cost is a major issue in their personal usage. Large color photos are also excellent but as some reviews have noted that there is a slight curling sometimes near the edges on no-border printing (that prints all the way to the edge of the page).
We have had this printer for over 20 months now and I figured that it was enough time to test it before writing about it :)When I originally went to buy a photo printer the CompUSA store that I was in had an HP Rep there for the Christmas to answer questions about their product lines. It is a little more expensive but the quality of your printout shows when you need it most.When printing small pics on 4x6 sized photo paper you cannot tell the difference from what you get at a local Wal Mart (or whatever). that catches your fancy then you will be pretty unhappy due to having to replace the ink cartridges. It will be empty and the other print cartridges will still be about 1/2 full.The editing software, like most bundled software, is [.]. If you leave it in then you will notice that the printer will go through it pretty quickly. If you print a lot of black and white pictures this thing does them beautifully. Being that I have worked on and with computers for many years we had a pretty good no-BS discussion. Eventually I asked him what printer he would buy if he had his choice and was going to use it for his personal or family use.
Go ahead and block it, it doesn't hurt anything. You don't want to waste it just printing text. If you want to print photos then you can change your "text" black ink for the photo gray ink. It's great if you don't have anything else but it can be flaky on some computers. However, if you aren't in a business environment then it shouldn't matter.
If you have a personal firewall running and set to alert you when things try to get on the internet, then you will see this pop up. For us, we like being able to create and frame photos from home. After installation it does try to contact HP for regular updates but there is no option to turn this off. This was the one he selected. It's better (and cheaper)to use the black cartridge for text.
I would NOT use this in a high-output environment even though the quality is excellent.The inks are not cheap, and if you like to print out every piece of [.]. After testing other brands I can testify that if you want to get the best out of this printer then go with the HP paper. However, this is not a show-stopper.Speedwise it's not even close to what you can get today.
Upon the joyful news that we were having a girl, my husband decided to invest in a new digital camera and a photo printer. After that. 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. The gray ink is used up the quickest, and has also been one of the hardest for us to find here locally.
Quality-wise, it gets you in the beginning, but doesn't hold out for the long run. 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. Every other time get us no results and we are still stuck with pictures that resemble something a third grader took a crayon to. We have fiddled with it for two years. 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. The digital camera still works great--the printer is another matter.
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. Enough's enough. Replacing every cartridge at once will run you about $75 at a time, give or take a few. 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.
Yeah, that's covered in the troubleshooting. AND now, without warning, the printer now needs repair - no abuse to it, no special printing - just one day decided to malfunction. Troubleshooting guides not that great, doesn't go into a lot of the problems. HA.
Yes, it has excellent quality photos - worth the slow printing to get - not really all that slow. But receive a special error code on the LCD display. Got a paper jam. BUT.
costs more to repair than replace, but reliability on this hasn't been all that great in my HP experiences with several printers. Nah, can't let the customer know what that code means.So, if you can buy this CHEAP, then it's worth it for the quality of the photo printing, but plan for it to have a short life. I have had to re-install the software several times in the year or so that I have owned it - fickle. HP on-line technician says it is internal hardware problem and I will have to pay to get it fixed.
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