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#26 2005-11-24 8:46 am
Re: HP Printers good or the suck?
The reason I replace my Epson C86 I think it was was because of clogged heads. That was my own fault. I used some crappy asss discount ink instead of the Epson brand or a Staples brand ink. The thing worked perfectly up until then. I stand by my claims, buy an Epson.
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#27 2005-11-24 5:51 pm
Re: HP Printers good or the suck?
I got an HP PSC-900 All-in-one awhile back, for use with my PowerBook G4, and it was...and still is...the worst printer & software I've ever tried to use. It printed slowly, or only if I continually clicked the trackpad button. The copy function itself is unreliable. For me, Epson's the boss. I've had consistent good luck with three Epson all-in-ones.
Tom in Texas
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#28 2005-11-25 1:50 pm
- Ra
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- From: US (way up North)
- Registered: 2003-10-05
- Posts: 1434
Re: HP Printers good or the suck?
I had an Epson Stylus 600 a few years ago, and even though I only used Epson inks, I had to clean the heads quite often. The printer would automatically go through a head-cleaning process every time I turn it on (that was a normal feature with this printer). Finally it just plugged so bad that I could not get it to print clearly. It was incredibly loud, too. The printheads (one color, one black) would cost more than buying a new printer, so I decided to buy the HP office printer I talked about (HP 6127). That was four years ago, and this printer is still working fine. It produces beautiful color or black and white photos . Approximately 30% of the time I use it to print digital photos, and the rest of the time my kids use it to print school work. It's network ready (has an Ethernet port), but I have it connected to my iMac's USB port. This is the best printer I have ever had, except for the HP laser printers I use at work.
"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."
- Albert Einstein
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#29 2005-11-25 9:08 pm
- mattm
- Member
- Registered: 2004-07-08
- Posts: 21
Re: HP Printers good or the suck?
I have a HP PSC 1610 and it has worked fine for me. I have had is since July 05 and it has worked without a hitch on 10.4.x.
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#30 2005-11-25 9:17 pm
- Czachorski
- Member
- Registered: 2002-12-20
- Posts: 5585
Re: HP Printers good or the suck?
I have an HP scanner, and while the scanner has been excellent, the HP software and drivers are flaky and bloated. They installed all sorts of crap that I don't need and the sofware is very poorly design, not intuitive and clunky.
I researched HPs printers very carefully when looking for a low-cost color laser. They had some pretty sweet deals on sub-$400 color lasers, but I ultimately concluded that they cut too many corners to lower the price and went with an OkiData instead. On the inkjet front, I tried a cannon, epson and lexmark and concluded that they all sucked. I wish my last one (the epson) had actually been the comperable HP. I would have liked to try the HP out. I will stop rambling now.
Tracking the Tech
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#31 2005-11-26 4:47 pm
- linerider
- Member
- Registered: 2005-11-26
- Posts: 1
Re: HP Printers good or the suck?
I had an Epson stylus 86 and the ink head permanently clogged within less than 6 months, using only real Epson ink.
So then I bought an HP OfficeJet 5510 all-in-one. None of the functions on it work most of the time except basic printing (I have a Powermac G5 with OS X 10.3.9), and in order to get THAT to work from Classic applications, I have to use the workaround involving (1) setting up a PostScript translator using the OS 9 Desktop Printer Utility, (2) print to a postscript file, then (3) drag the file onto the OS X Printer setup Utility icon in the Dock to print the file to my default printer.
It prints fast using that method and has never worked better, but who needs to go through all that simply because these companies can't write software to run their printers (but they still sell them as Mac compatible). First thing HP told me on the phone first time I called for help was: "oh, the multi-page scanning only works with Windows". They tried to be helpful, but that printer is not one I would recommend any Mac user even thinking about.
If it gets confused for any reason, you have to plug the power cord into it holding down #6 to do a factory reset. It also seems to collect old print jobs in memory when printing in Classic, so you have to cancel the last job that printed out each time and re-start the print queue to print the current job.
Next I might try a Canon or some other brand; anyone have any recommendations?
Tom
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