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(More customer reviews)I WAS in the market for a replacement for my aging Lexmark X6100 All-In-One so I was very up beat when I found out that Kodak has come up with "cheap ink" AiO printer line.
I got the 5500 at Best Buy for what I though was a decent price of $199.
I set it up, printed a demo page, calibrated the printer and printed a diagnostic page. Printer was pretty slow and noisy but worked fine so far. Then I sent to it a 4x6 photograph and got the familiar and popular error saying that "the print head is missing or needs to be replaced". After reinstalling the print head over and over as suggested by the diagnostic message, I gave up after loosing 4 hrs of my life. Next day, I called the Customer Support at Kodak. The person with a very high level of certainty diagnosed my issue as a 'faulty print head' - seemingly a very popular cause with this printer. The print head was to arrive overnight - It arrived 3 days later. Replacing the head did not help. So, I went to the Kodak website and learned that there is a new firmware for this printer. After uploading the new firmware to the printer it went dumb. It was spitting out two sheets and then wrinkling up and spitting out more pages. No way to stop it except pulling the plug. So, I did. Next day, convinced that it must be an isolated issue, I went to Best Buy to replace the printer. I went through the exact same initial steps again and even got further this time. I was able to print 8 4x6 color photos in the "Best" mode, which looked pretty good as far as color saturation, but were a bit skewed. They also used up close to 50% of my color ink cartridge! So, I estimate that I can get probably only about 20-25 such prints out of a full color ink cartridge, which is much much less than the advertised 35. Then I tried the double sided print from a network computer and found out that the duplex option is disabled on every computer except the one to which the printer is physically connected. This is of course not advertised anywhere. So, I decided to test the double sided printing on the host. It was sloooooooooooow and not printing out a large part of the top of the page. So, I said to my self - Ok, there must surely be a good reason for the new firmware to be offered on Kodak's website. So, I uploaded it again and...the printer went dumb again...
I actually read the reviews on Amazon and still decided to give this printer a try "because it looked sooo nice and offered sooo much". I said to myself, what the heck - I am a pretty savvy techie - I can certainly do better than these "Amazon amateurs". Well, now I am joining what actually turned out to be a pretty wise Amazon crowd with my tail and ears curled all the way down in my disappointment.
Next day, I returned the second printer and am sticking to my old Lexmark for time being.
Kodak 5500 and especially its software and firmware are of poor quality. Endless errors, less than ideal prints, DON'T BUY. Consider yourself warned.
And...please read more interesting reviews of its sibling - the 5300 series.
One more thing - "friendly Kodak guy". Please spare me your comment...
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Kodak EasyShare 5500 All-in-One Printer Print, Copy, Scan, and Fax (1600105)Print Copy Scan. 32ppm text print speed.28 second best quality photo speed. Best in class print speed in most common print modes for both documents and photos. 20 sheet 4x 6photo tray. 100 sheet main tray. High performance 3840 nozzle dual drop print head. High quality CCD scanner.Make up to 99 copieswithout need of a PC. 2.4 LCD display, memory card slots. Pictbridge and USB drive for singleclick stand alone photo printing. Optional Bluetooth. Fast Black and color faxing at 33.6kbps with one touch speed dials and 100 page memory buffer. Crop photos or copiesto the imagesize and brightness you want from the front panel(No Pc required). Two sided document printing.
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