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Rating: 
Summary: flaky software, veriable hardware issues.
Review: Note: This is a review based on working with the HP cp1700ps for one year at ~20 pages per week.Strengths: Great when it works, sturdy construction
Weaknesses: Buggy hardware, buggy software, expensive ink. Summary:
Our HP color inkjet printer cp1700ps worked fantastic most of the time, great output, good colors, fast printing but with a slow first page. After two months it started making loud high pitch noises with every head-passing, HP support knows the issue; it's not easy to resolve. After six months of regularly cleaning a specific area, the noise no longer appears, the squeak causing area must be worn out. The postscript option, which I bought as well, is not worth its money, it did work for about a month, printing with it was extremely slow on a system with 1Gigabyte RAM. Since then it keeps crashing on Windows XP at system startup, re-installs have never worked. After six months the printer started complaining that cartridges are empty when in fact they are half full, really annoying when you want to print black only, but the printer insist that you need to replace yellow which you don't have in stock. After 14 months the printer declared that cartridges were missing although they were physically present. Even after replacing all cartridges with brand new ones (that is ~$120), the printer still claims that black is missing. So I ended with non-working printer with expired warranty after 400 days of ownership, because it claims ink cartridges are missing when they are not. The front feed mechanism works well for regular paper and has good allignment. Using heavier paper in the trays results in a very precise dent being made at a very precise spot on the page. Using thicker paper in the tray also results in banding in the printout. The single sheet rear feed causes less banding, no dents and can handle thicker paper but quite consistenly pulls the paper in croocked. The ink is very expensive, the printer seems to waste quite a lot of it, judging by the mounds of dried up ink under the print heads. HP has made it near impossible to use 3rd party ink supplies with this printer, with the chips built into the cartridges, so *only* expensive ink as an option. Legally they should allow one to use other source supplies. In short an ill-behaved machine that works great when it feels like it, and in our case it did it only for about a year with some interrupions. Next printer will be the Epson 2200 or 4000 for large color and some Laser. No more HP.
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