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HP PhotoSmart 7550 Inkjet Printer

HP PhotoSmart 7550 Inkjet Printer

List Price: $362.00
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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Pretty Sweet Printer
Review: I got this printer a few months ago, and I've been pleased with its performance. Setup and installation on my Win98 PC was a breeze (contrary to another reviewer's rather bizarre saga). I later hooked it up to my WinXp Pro PC and again, no issues.

The printer has slots for most of the popular types of memory media: secure digital, compactflash, smartmedia, memory stick, etc.

Printing on this machine - It's quiet, as long as you put it on a stable surface. (put it on a three legged table and you're getting what you asked for) Don't be too fooled by the posted PPM count-- it's a fast printer, but you'll only get the maximum # of pages per minute if you set the properties to 'fast draft' mode. Fast Draft is perfect for printing content off a web page, and has served to save more than my share of ink cartridges.

Now, photos.. wow. Superb. If you have a digital camera, I recommend you print directly from your card, inserted into the printer. I've found my prints to be just *that* much better when I don't get the PC involved. (I'm not sure if that's because of my camera to pc transfer settings, since I haven't tweaked that setting yet.)

I will say that the bundled software (like most bundles) is rather so-so. I like the image transfer software for when you're printing directly from a card inserted into the printer. The photo album software is nice for making album prints or even a sheet of the same print.

In contrast, the image cataloging and editing software leave much to be desired. Non-intuitive interfaces that leave you wondering just what you were doing and how the heck you got there in the first place. Install the minimum software and just get another program for image manipulation.

Oh yeah, and printers have *never* come packaged with USB or parallel cables, so always purchase the appropriate cables for your PC, mmkay.

*Special note if you're using WinME: upgrade your operating system. WinME is the red-headed stepchild of the Windows family, and you never know if it's going to embarass you at your next family reunion.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: My First Photo Quality Printer
Review: After doing quite a bit of research...I found for the money I couldnt beat the HP7550. This printer performs as advertised. It is simple to install, the ink cartridges are simply plug in as well...three ink cartridges allow you not to have to take them in and out for B/W document vs photo printing....ink consumption seems reasonable...but I have already ordered replacements here to keep one set on hand....I have a sony DSC85 digital camera and this printer accepts the memory stick directly into its own port.....I found it very easy to simply print one pic directly from the memory stick...If you are reviewing several pics...I found it easier to manipulate with the computer however, then printing. The one gotcha is the printer does not include the USB A/B cable required to connect it to the computer...nor did any of my research mention that....otherwise Im extremely happy with this printer after one months use and probably 50 pics printed, mostly 4X6 and some 8X10s.....some have complained the printer is noisy.....I compare it to other inkjets and find it the same or less...if you want a "quiet" printer...go laser!!! I would highly recommend this printer!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Great printer for a reasonable price
Review: I am really happy with my HP photosmart 7550 printer. The pictures are unreal and it was very easy to hook up and get started. A 4 x 6 picture prints in about a minute and the colors are amazing.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: I'm impressed
Review: I bought this printer for Christmas (for my wife, heh-heh...yeah, right...), and I (uh, we) been having fun using it since then. No, seriously, she uses it too, and we both love it! The quality of the photographic output is on a par with my friend's top-of-the-line Epson and just as good as my father's Canon i850. It has more nice features than I can list here, so I won't try, but I do love the fact that the paper feeder is right under the output tray so you can fit this printer on a book-shelf with low overhead clearance. Why don't all printers have that? The quality of text and graphics is indistinguishable from a laser printer without magnification. Most of all, color gradients are the smoothest of any ink-jet I've ever seen, and there is absolutely no sign of the horizontal striping that so many ink-jets put down. On the down side, saturation is slightly less vivid than the Epson, and the Canon leaves it in the dust speed-wise.

You may read some less-than-enthusiastic comments from other reveiwers, both here and at ZDNet and Consumer Reports, and I think there are logical reasons why this could be. For starters, I'm much more concerned about quality than I am about speed. Others seem less patient than me. Their choice. In real life, I'm getting almost two text pages per minute under CUPS with hpijs set to 600DPI, which I think most would consider overkill for all but resume printing. I don't think that's so slow for high quality output on an ink-jet. "Wait a minute", you say..."CUPS? hpij...what was that?". This brings me to my other point.

I have decided to wean myself from the inferior products that The Monopolist (Microslop, that is) is trying to force down everyone's throat. I am using Linux as my main OS, and I'm loving every minute of it. You should give Linux a try, too--you'd be amazed at how much better it is. No more crashes...no more viruses...tons of software, most of it free--it works, and it's great.

Anyway, HP has decided to allow open-source programmers access to the information they need to write high-quality drivers for their printers. Basically, this means that Linux fully supports my HP printer. The other printer I was looking at--my father's Canon, does not. While this is very unfortunate, I'm sure it is no accident. The Monopolist will do anything in its power to kill off competition, even if that means paying peripheral vendors to not grant access licenses to developers from competing organizations. And no, I'm not being paranoid. Check the news.

So some people are reporting less than stellar output quality. Indeed, what I saw coming out of the printers in a demonstration in Albany, NY would have seemed to corroborate that printers like the Canon i850 edge the HP out somewhat in terms of quality. But the reviews I read were conflicting, and I wanted to buy a company that supports open source software, and so I took a chance. Wow!! The quality I saw when I got it home was much better than what I saw at that demo. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's the high quality of the renowned hpijs Linux printer drivers. Maybe I just got a really sweet specimen. Maybe they were using the wrong type of paper at the demo. Who knows?

Oh, and by the way, when other users report that they were out of ink after their first day of printing, keep in mind that the "starter set" of printing cartridges included with the printer (at no extra cost) are only half full. So the HP isn't really an ink glutton, after all. It's about average, in fact, although it's cartridges are slightly more expensive than some because the print heads are part of the cartridge and not built into the machine. This means that if one should get gummed up, you're out [money] for a new cartridge instead of a hundred or more for a new print head.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: hpphotoexpress
Review: My daughter gave me a digital camera for Christmas. I was quite intimidated by the idea of printing with a USB cable off my 6 year old Gateway P.C. with a HP 722 printer.
Nervously, I went shopping at several local electronics stores to get educated and before long realized that a photo printer was the way to go never expecting that the HP photosmart 7550W would easily and economically make my anxietity go away but I'm very relieved & happy to say that it did.
This thing couldn't possibly be any easier to use and the photo quality so far is, incredible!
The digital camera is a 2.1 mega pixal & I can't imagine that a better camera would make much noticeable difference in the picture quality.
I almost bought a Epson but for just a few more dollars I'm positive that I made the right choice. Thank You HP.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Broken right out of the box!
Review: I will try not to judge this printer that likely has very fine print qualities too harshly, but when I got this out of the box and the first thing I get is a jammed printer cartridge error it was very disappointing. I called the HP help number and was waiting for about 15 minutes before a tech got on. It took him another 10 minutes or so to finally tell me it's broken and to take it in for a replacement where I bought it. So much for a great experience and fun Christmas present. I hope the new one works better.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Looks great, but NOT for Wireless networks
Review: I opened the printer packaging excited for an improvement over my existing HP PhotoSmart 1215. Unfortunately, I found out that the new PhotoSmart 7550 does not come with a parallel printer port. This would not normally be a problem since most all PCs these days come with a USB port, BUT if you wish to have the printer connected via a wireless printserver -- which come only with parallel port connections as far as I know -- you're out of luck. To me, having a wireless connection trumps the need for an upgrade to an already decent photo-quality printer. So, the 7550 is returned. Alas...

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: TOP OF THE LINE!
Review: This printer far exceeded my expectations. We had been looking for a good quality photo printer since I take mostly digital photos. We did a lot of searching around and checking reviews and finally settled on the HP 7550. We were a little hesitant because of the price, but it is well worth every penny! We bought it on December 27th, and I've already printed quite a number of photos. The installation was seamless and very simple, and the printer was ready to go within minutes. The photos print very fast, and they come out with no layering of ink as was noticeable with our old Epson. There is no waiting for the photos to dry, either.....a very nice improvement. These photos look like they were printed in a photo lab!!! The 4x6 borderless photo printing is very easy and looks great. Other pluses include separate paper trays for your HP 4x6 photo paper (200 sheets of HP Premium 4x6 paper come with the printer) and regular 8-1/2" x 11" printer paper.....no switching, and there is even a separate slot for envelopes. This printer is a little wider than average because it will hold all three ink cartridges, photo, tri-color, and black, and you never need to switch out cartridges depending on what you want to print. The door is also on the front, not the top, so it's very easy to access the cartridges.

Another great feature is the ability to print directly from your camera's memory card.....no more cords and downloads to deal with. It takes several different types of memory cards. Just pop the card in and your pictures come up on the LCD screen in seconds. You can toggle through your photos, select the ones you want to print, and even adjust the brightness, zoom, rotate, add fancy borders and frames, etc. You can also press the "save" button and the photos are automatically saved over to your computer. Browse to select the file you want them in, and it will even sort into separate folders for the month in which they were taken!! I can't say enough about this printer. I was able to download, print, and save my photos while my daughter was busy on the computer. What a time saver! The quality of the photos is excellent, and everything prints VERY fast. I would recommend this printer to anyone!!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: What a pleasant surprise
Review: I got this printer for my wife for Christmas. I was looking for two primary specs - it needed to make excellent, photo-like prints, and it needed to be very easy to use, since my wife is not remotely technical.
On the first score, this printer makes beautiful prints. Let me qualify that statement. Using HP Premium Photo Plus Glossy 4"x6" paper and files from a Canon 2.1 megapixel camera, and printing directly from the memory card inserted into the printer - the prints look very much like they came from a photo processing outfit.
On the second score, this printer is very easy to use. We haven't hooked it up to a computer yet, so I can't speak to that aspect of the printer, but to me that's the beauty of it. You simply insert your memory card from your digital camera and it;s loaded onto the printer. You select that file you want to print on the small LCD screen on the printer, and if yoiu want to you can also enlarge the photo and/or crop it as well as a few nice enhancements like contrast and brightness tweaking.
I was surprised at the high picture quality and ease of use as I previously had been taking my digital picture files, tweaking them in PhotoShop and printing them on a high end Epson printer. Since the quality is higher with the HP Photosmart and it's ten times easier to use, the Epson might be getting tossed into the eBay soon.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great Photo Color
Review: The color for the Photo Prints rival any that I have from my Nikon SLR camera. I can't believe the color and quality of the prints using the HP Premium Plus Glossy Photo Plus Paper. Whether I am using pictures from my computer or using a compactflash card from my Kodak Easy Share Camera.
I don't have the HP Digital Camera, but the pictures from my Kodak Digital Camera, via the compactflash card, or the pictures I scanned with an older model HP scanner into my computer, all came about as if they were printed at a camera store directly from my Nikon. In other words, I am amazed at the quality of the color prints.


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