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HP DeskJet 3650 Color Inkjet Printer

HP DeskJet 3650 Color Inkjet Printer

List Price: $98.00
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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Terrific Little Workhorse For This Student
Review: The HP 3650 Deskjet is a terrific little workhorse for my needs, I'm a student & I've never been interested in producing photos off an inkjet, therefore, just a simple unit for printing my school papers & projects--including charts, graphs, diagrams will do. As I'm in IT, I'm very critical regarding straightforward installs & processor hogging print-monitors. Due to space, I prefer a compact design, I'm not picky about noise but fairly quiet is a good thing, & good print cartridge life is semi-important. Regarding the lack of a USB, big deal--how many printers actually have a USB in the box?

I connected the unit to my proprietary machine running Windows 2000 (W2k)--no partitioning--w/all service packs, updates, & drivers installed. Universal Serial Ports (USB) are 2.0, BIOS is flashed current, 1.5 gig of RAM, 1.5 Ghz P4, & wide pipes on the Bus. Ergo, an ideal environment for most off the shelf printers.

Install was a dream, especially as compared to the nightmare of the C80! Simply follow the instructions on the convenient quick install poster & go. Drivers installed off the CD, W2k behaved exactly as described by the instructions--popping up the standard plug n'play dialogue & wanting to install a Windows driver. The only thing I don't care for is the lack of control over *what* is installed. If you want drivers only, prepare for deleting several HP folders automatically installed. Further, if you're like me & *not* into printing photos, then you'll need to remove several entries in your registry. However, as I'm comfortable w/hacking that beast, I'd no issues tailoring the printer software.

Aside from uncontrollable software installation, print-monitoring software is right there on my list of things I detest w/printers. Don't believe me? Check out your task list sometime, the C80 had no less than 5 running processes eating up my usage time, the smallest being 3k of resource. ACK! The 3650 has 3 background processes that once removed from the HK_RUN folder are very easy to manually engage. Further, they're not hungry hogs, the largest is 2k in allotment & doesn't even run @ normal priority. As I'm rather fastidious about these things, the software is gone from the registry so I can start on demand rather than the software demanding on start.

My previous printer--an Epson Stylus C80--produced good text-only prints. My school papers looked very nice w/clean, crisp readability; but only when the high print quality option was selected, thus eating up ink. The great downfall of the C80 was its quirkiness w/attempting to install its drivers & once installed, it fell down on the job of printing even passable charts, graphs, & diagrams--highly important for my major.

Conversely, w/the HP 3650, draft quality prints are pretty darned good & the high quality option outputs very professional papers. The 3650 is a champ when it comes to these important documents. For instance, I needed a flowchart, Gantt chart--totalling 6 pages: 3 pages across, 2 pages deep--& a network diagram along w/a paper that ran 25 pages for my final project. Using the high quality output option the unit took its time producing the assignment--considering I don't wait to the last minute on my work load, I've plenty of time to print &/or deal w/any technical problems that might arise. The results were lovely! The flowchart was crisp & laid out perfectly, the Gantt text was easily readable despite its small font size--& most important, the legend & key matched up flawlessly!--& despite the size of the Gantt, *everything* was aligned to perfection, the network diagram rendered neatly, & last but not least, the text was almost mid-grade laserjet quality!

I'm rather fond of the design; it fits nicely on top of an older tower next to my desk. As a front loading unit, the potential for the tray to catch on someone's leg, or appear as a perfect landing point to one of my cats is high, ergo, I was quite pleased to find the entire tray folds neatly up into the printer housing w/no fuss or muss! Brilliant!!! Granted, whenever I want to print something I must reopen the front cover & unfold the tray, insert paper, & the reverse when finished. Yet, for space economy & protecting the investment from my furry family, it's well worth the minimal effort.

I'm impressed w/the quietness of the printing mechanism, a hushed hiss while printing & the standard gear rotation sound upon page ejection. However, loading the first page is noisy, but not the prolonged lock n'load sequence I experienced w/the C80 & others. Feeding of further pages is a couple of clicks & nothing else until the last page is ejected, & the resulting reset of the print head & guide arm is a short & sweet. Thus far, I've had to realign the head twice, but doing so is simple & painless w/plenty of good examples for proper alignment, not to mention a friendly GUI for the step through.

I've owned the printer since late June & considering the print load & print quality options I've used, very pleased to say the in-box cartridges lasted to 14JAN04. Granted, the cartridges are expensive for such small things--10 ml black, 8 mm colour. Yet, by choosing wisely among the limited print options, I've managed to extend them a month beyond their expected life cycle for my needs.

All told, I've not regretted one penny of the price tag. While I could've waited a couple months for the price to drop or pick up a slightly used model, when the very troublesome C80 cost me an entire letter grade--worth far more than money to me--I bought this unit almost upon release. The HP 3650 is a terrific little workhorse for my student needs & I've no issues recommending the HP 3650 to anyone who fits the same profile.

Joe Vaughn

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: About the ink cartridge costs
Review: There were several mentions of the ink cartridges not lasting long for the 3650, so I looked it up at HP. My old 882C workhorse's cartridge is 42ml (in black) and lasts a very long time using draft mode. Cost? $29.99 HP retail price. The cartridge for the 3650 is 10ml and costs $17.99. You can do the math.

So, this may not be the best printer for you if you do a lot of printing and will be replacing ink often. I thought some folks might like to know the story if they are computer shopping.

The photo ink cartridge (not included with the machine) is about $24.99 if I remember correctly.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Fine Printer for the Price
Review: This is a good printer for the price. It has a low, unobtrusive profile. It's fairly quite, and has a fairly average print speed. Black text is nice, and photo printing is very, very good.

This uses three cartridges: "27" which is a dedicated black, "28" which is dedicated color, and "58" which is a mixed color/black used for printing photographs. Unfortunately, you have to remove the black to use the photo cartridge. The whole process takes several minutes, so this is a poor choice for someone intending to do a lot of mixed black and high-quality color printing.

I do not recommend doing any sort of quality image printing without the photo cartridge. I printed the same image using just the black and color cartridges, and then with the color and photo cartridge. The difference was incredible. In the first image, a tree trunk looked like a solid dark-brown smudge. The leaves were a solid green with brown smudges, and a bird house looked like a drop of blue ink somehow fell on the page. After printing it with the photo cartridge, everything was very clear and nice, but a bit too light. I reprinted it for a third time on photo paper and the result was indistinguishable from a real photograph. The colors were vivid, and every detail was clearly visible.

The power adapter is bulky, and could easily block your outlets, so make certain you have room before buying this. Also, this connects to the computer using a USB cable, which is not included.

This uses ink fairly rapidly, so someone who intends to do a lot of printing should look elsewhere. For someone who will only print occasionally, and is tech. savvy enough to swap cartridges on a regular basis, this is a fine printer for the money.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Best Deal Out There
Review: This is a great printer. Its speed and quality is just as good as that of my office's laser printer. Its sooo easy to install with Windows XP. (I have XP Pro SP1.) It looks nice and the X cancel button on it is great. Just press the button to cancel a job, and without wasting that piece of paper like some do when you have to go into the print que on your computer. I only have three minor issues: 1. Came without USB cord, just a bit of a hassle. 2. The power plug is twice the size of a normal one. 3. Eats ink. (Ink cartrages are relatively well priced.) This printer is great! These few problems are far outwieghed by the benefits! Good luck with your search!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Good printer for the money.
Review: This is a very good printer for the money. It's very fast in Draft mode but more surprising is how good the black and white print quality is in Draft. In the Normal and Best mode I can hardly tell the difference between the 3650 and my Laserjet 6L. Others have commented on my two major complaints: (a) the "hidden" cost of the USB cable you have to buy separately and much worse (b) the VERY short life of the print cartridges. My first black ink cartridge only lasted a few weeks with only moderate use. Plan on finding an ink refill kit if you plan to use this baby much. One other nuisance; if you run out of ink the last document can get "stuck" in the printer without printing and XP won't let you cancel it. It's stuck there until you replace the cartridge.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great Buy For Any Pack -Rat. Thank you Hewlett Packard!
Review: This scanner is wonderful. I fell in love with this scanner at work. My experience with scanner wasn't good. I didn't like the quality and the flimsiness of the previous scanners but the HP DeskJet3650 is so easy to use and if you are a pack-rat like me you can scan documents on to a disk and depending on how you saved it you can go back and edited them. It is great for photo storing and you can edit and fix the quality of the pictures and scan on your "disk of picture memories" what you want. 10 Stars!

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: hassle
Review: Tut!. Didn't like this. Hard to use recycled paper with this. I'll miss my 640C.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Worst printer I ever used
Review: Won't feed paper in straight. Jams any paper heavier than plain white. Took back to store and given another one which does exactly the same. It's going back tomorrow for a refund after ruining a lot of expensive photo paper tonight by jamming! I will NEVER buy another HP printer.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Less than 250 pages on a cartridge
Review: Yes this printer is pretty cheap and prints well, and the ink cartridges are cheap. That said, I wouldn't recommend this one to anyone because the ink runs out really really fast. The cartridges it takes only hold 10ml of ink (most hold at least 17ml and some out there hold up to 50ml) and won't print more than 250 pages of text.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Less than 250 pages on a cartridge
Review: Yes this printer is pretty cheap and prints well, and the ink cartridges are cheap. That said, I wouldn't recommend this one to anyone because the ink runs out really really fast. The cartridges it takes only hold 10ml of ink (most hold at least 17ml and some out there hold up to 50ml) and won't print more than 250 pages of text.


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