Rating: Summary: Warning for Windows 98 users: Stay away from this all-in-one Review: What a disappointment! After two weeks of wrangling with customer service to determine why my new 2210 won't print, I came across a page on the HP website that admitted that for users of Windows 98 who may be "on the low end" of the minimum recommended system requirements, the printer won't print from Windows. My computer is a 500 mhz Intel processor running 192 MB RAM, which according to the manual, was well within minimum requirements. I've thrown everything off my computer just to get this thing to work; I've uninstalled and reinstalled the software six times; I've gotten a new disk (from a neighbor)and tried that; I've downloaded the enormous "new version 2.0" of the software from hp's website ... I've done it all. Something about this software will eat up your system resources, and HP admits that there's a problem and it's "investigating it." If this sounds like a fun adventure for you, then buy the product - but if your processor isn't at the high end, then seriously reconsider until HP works out the bugs.
Rating: Summary: Great Product, Poor Support Review: I couldn't find anything that explained where to get an additional driver (ME) for Windows XP print sharing. This is required when the host is running Windows XP and the remote PC is running Windows ME. The online email response I got didn't address XP and didn't tell me the file name of the driver or where to get it. With home networks becoming common, help loading printer drivers to support multiple computers seems like a pretty basic support task. A phone call to a support tech didn't help either. The support tech was incompetent and borderline rude. His supervisor said they couldn't help and said to call the PC manufacturer. Why would I call the PC manufacturer about where to get an HP printer driver? Great product. Absolutely terrible support.
Rating: Summary: Typical Problem Review: In many ways...this is a great piece of equipment for people who want a basic second set of office equipment...particularly for home. It has already saved me in several situations when I needed to send a fax, make a few quick copies, etc. Nevertheless, the damn thing has a problem with its paper feeder. More often than not, it picks up too many sheets of paper, has a paper jam, or spits out slightly to extremely crumpled pieces of paper. If not for this...I'd say this is great...unfortunately...this is too major a flaw to overlook.
Rating: Summary: Should Have.... Review: purchased the first time I was in the market for a printer. But I went out and bought a ----- and it's no longer in service. I bought this item at 5 o'clock and had it up and running by 6 o'clock(due to traffic, it took a while to get home) The set up instructions were easy to follow, fool proof (and I ought to know, I'm a fool). The colors are bright and printing is fast. I am just very impressed and happy I purchased this printer/fax/scanner/copier!
Rating: Summary: software problems Review: I was really excited to get this machinge, however after an entire non productive working day of trying to install the software and waiting for and working with HP tech service, I gave up. Despite having the recent version of Windows installer, this software didn't install properly on Windows ME...nor will it uninstall the components that did make it to the hard drive. I read an earlier review about this problem before I bought it, but was swayed by the positive feedback of others. Beware of this product if you have Windows ME - this is beyond annoying. Tech did note that they have had problems with this - I'd say they still do!
Rating: Summary: simple to use, packed with features, and a great value Review: I am extremely satisfied with this printer. Plugged it into my iBook for the first time and was printing high-quality color photos from my camera in minutes. The prints-from-memory-card feature is extraordinary; it eliminates the download-from-camera-to-computer step entirely. This printer produces a nice proof sheet which you mark up with photo printing instructions and lay back onto the scanning bed. One minute later, your photos are done. This is the innovation that will wean me off standard print photography for good. Also very useful: you can upload images to your computer from your memory card through the printer. Photo print quality is good so far. You have to purchase more ink cartridges to get the highest grade 6-color printing, which I haven't tried yet. Also provides quick, crisp black text output, easy fax and scanning functions, helpful set-up software and tutorials... all in a reasonably small, good-looking machine. **Remember to buy a USB cable--it doesn't come with one.**
Rating: Summary: worse than I expected from an HP product in this price range Review: HP PSC2210 is an overall decent machine, which may please an average occasional user. However, its performance falls way short of what HP claims in the manual and on the box. I was frustrated with the scanner performance and dissatisfied with the printer, and ended up returning the product and buying Epson Stylus CX5200, which in my opinion performs much better for less money.INSTALLATION: I installed the software on Dell Dimension 4500 (P4, WinXP, 2 GHz, 768 MB RAM) without a glitch. The process took a long time - over 5 min, and occasionally nothing would change on the screen for over a minute, although I could hear some hard drive activity going on. On a slower computer, one can easily get a wrong impression that the installation hangs, although it does not. I did not experience any of the installation problems reported on Amazon earlier. The software package is rather extensive, has basic tools for image editing, optical character recognition, and enables one to create video CDs which can be watched on most DVD players. SCANNER. The scanner works fine if all you need is to scan an image to paste it into Word or post on the web. A 4" by 6" photograph takes 12-14 s to preview, and about 35 s to scan at 600 dpi. This is on par or faster than what you would expect from stand-alone scanners in the same price range. However, if you scan a photograph into Photoshop and look at shadow areas, you will see bluish vertical streaks, which are artifacts of the scanner. Additionally, the scanner tends to emphasize all dust particles and scratches, particularly at 600 dpi or 1200 dpi resolutions. This makes the scanned image looks a lot worse than the original at 600 dpi and horrible at 1200 dpi. 48-bit scanning, although supported, is a total disaster. First, once you turned it on, the preview takes forever - 70 seconds! Secondly, since the bluish streaks in the dark areas are even more visible in 48 bit mode, the scans at 48 bit are as good as useless since you cannot improve the picture in the shadow areas without making the scanner artifacts visible. I have an Epson Perfection 1650 at my office, and could compare the scans obtained from the same photograph with very bright and very dark areas. Sorry, HP, but Epson's scans are incomparably better. PRINTER: I have not tried photo printing, but tested text printing rather thoroughly. HP should be ashamed of its misleading the customers by claiming that it prints up to 17 ppm in B&W. I guess, HP measured this speed by printing blank pages. I measured printing speed of a double-space formatted black and white text and obtained 5 ppm in "normal mode" and 7.5 ppm in "fast draft". This is only 1.5 times faster than my old slow HP710C. For comparison, Epson Stylus CX5200 which I bought instead of this HP printed 7.5 ppm of the same text in "normal" mode and 12-15 ppm in "draft". Ink cartridges are tiny (17/19 ml) which is about half of the size used in HP 700/800 series printers. COPIER: Can't complain, works fine, although it can copy only as fast as it can print. Has a number of useful zoom/brightness/quality adjustments, accessible through the small LCD screen and four multifunction buttons. OTHER GOODIES: It has 4 slots which accomodate any existing type of memory card. Index print can be generated automatically; then you take a pen, check the boxes on the index print which pictures you want, how many copies, and what size, scan the index print again, and the PSC2210 recognizes the marks and does the printing for you. Sounds pretty cool. I have not tried this feature since I prefer to upload my digital images to one of the .com companies which prints them on real photopaper at a lot lower cost than it costs to print them on an inkjet at home. BOTTOMLINE: Many users will be happy with this machine, if they do not expect a lot and had no chance to compare it with other models. The built-in fax and ability to print pictures directly from memory cards may be appealing to some. However, the quality of scanning and the printing speed were a lot lower than I expected from an HP product in this price range, and falls short of what the competitors offer at the same price.
Rating: Summary: Great Multifunction machine, high ink cost Review: I brought this machine 2 weeks ago. The installation was smooth on my XP machine. Copy and scan works great, so is normal printing on plain paper. Photos look perfect on the HP premium photo paper samples included in the package. It is very, very slow when using the 4800*1200 optimized color DPI output setting, though. Don't use Kodak premium photo paper, there is too much red on the printouts. The only major complaint I have is the cost of ink.
Rating: Summary: Multifunction printer for the Mac and OSX Review: I was looking for a multifunction printer that would work with Mac and OSX (10.2). This looked like the right mix of quality and features. I have checked all the major brands and decided that HP had good name and features. I was worried about the driver but my worries were unfounded. I checked the HP site and they said the most recent version of OSX 10.23 worked fine. Indeed the product was shipped timely and I was able to set it up and load the driver from the included CD and it immediately was recognized and added to my printer list without any hitches. True plug and play! Everything works great although I haven't actually tried to fax anything yet. I would recommend it for Mac users wanting an OSX native multifunction printer
Rating: Summary: problem free!!! Review: had to write after reading all the horror stories of installation, they are absolutely not true. Thanks to the guys who posted and said don"t hook up the printer until after software install. Not that you can miss the signs on the printer saying not to. Comes with a step by step install chart and went perfectly. Have tried everything except scanner and it works great on my DELL with windows XP. The guys who took thirty hours to install either cant read or are just disgruntled Ex -hp compact employees!!!
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