Kodak EasyShare 5500 All-in-One Printer Print, Copy, Scan, and Fax (1600105) Review

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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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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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HP Photosmart 2710 All-in-One Printer Review

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(More customer reviews)I was leery of buying HP because in the past they just haven't seemed to have it together as much as Canon and others. But, I was so impressed by the features of this HP 2710, and I couldn't find anything just like it by Canon, so I bought this. The good news is, the hardware part of this works like a dream and is very impressive. The bad news is, the software package that goes with this is a mess and IS bloated. I have WIN ME, and what a disaster...the HP software installation blew up the first time I tried to install it and gave me registry errors. I have installed and uninstalled the software probably 15 times. About half the time you try to install, it blows up without totally installing. Leaving you to once again uninstall and install. And the fix to everything according to HP is to uninstall and install again, which takes about an hour round trip. I never did get the software to totally work with an ethernet (no scanning or file transfer capability), so I ditched that and did USB. After several uninstalls and installs again (which finally corrupted explorer.exe and I had to reload WIN ME), I still cannot scan and HP DIRECTOR is giving me script errors (and no - not any script errors listed on HP support - and I already did what they said to do to fix script errors). DIRECTOR runs the whole show and without it I am without useful ways to use and change parameters on my printer. I'll give really, really high marks to HP support, they were easy to get ahold of and they will sit on the phone for hours with you trying to fix things, but it doesn't do much good, because they cannot fix these problems at this time. I would think long and hard before buying until they update the software, unless you want to spend HOURS working on it and be left with a partially working application. Especially around Christmas...
12/06/04 - I want to add that I did a lot of research on this software installation problem, and at this time it boils down to this: It will either install with very few hitches and run flawlessly, or you will have several problems with installation and be left with an AIO system that doesn't totally work. For example, I cannot scan or change any of my scan resolution settings (or use anything with HP DIRECTOR - not because all the icons are missing - but because of script errors), or use the one button scan or file transfer features of the hardware because it doesn't recognize my computer. And mind you, this is with an installation that at the end said it installed successfully (it went through fax set-up, registration, and everything). I have seen posts of problems very similiar to mine in Windows XP (even SP2 - one guy had one computer it would work on, and one it would not) so it doesn't appear to matter if you have ME or XP. And nobody, including TECH support, seems to have a reason for the problems or a fix for this at this time. The software version I have is 4.2.0 (Photosmart 2600/2700 series) for WIN 98, ME, 2000, and XP. Again, if you want everything to work correctly, I would check the HP web site and make sure they upgraded this software or they have a fix for the problems I described (which they do not at this time) before buying, otherwise from my experience and research, you are playing Russian Roulette as to whether the software installs correctly on your system.
12/07/04 - AND...one more follow up and then I'm done...do yourself a favor and read ALL the reviews for the HP 7410 (which should be using the same software), or the HP PSC 2410, which is a forerunner to the 2710...you'll find plenty of references to the "bloated software" and installation problems. In fact the more I read reviews about all-in-ones in general, the more I read about problems and the "bloated" HP software. My favorite line was "it infects your registry like cancer". Boy, that is the truth, you can see that when installing. I swear it makes 300-400 registry entries. The software is way too complicated and puts junk everywhere in your system. That's why it gets into trouble. I have changed my chipset driver, downloaded VBSCRIPT 5.6 (even though I think I had it already), downloaded WIN Installer 2.0 and MDACS 2.8 (even though both I think come on the software disk), done this and that, and I am completely convinced I am never going to get the software to run right unless by great fortune they update the software and do it right. I've spent a whole weekend and several nights on this, and it's crazy, just to install a printer. And I'm not an idiot, I'm in IT. If you don't need fax, and can hook up USB, I'd look at the EPSON RX600. From reviews their software is simple and excellent. I know this HP 2710 has on paper a lot of cool features, but the other guys will match those soon. HP has proven both to me and via reviews on forerunner products that they write really terrible software. If you buy, I hope you're one of the lucky ones it works for, but if not, don't say you weren't warned...

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Photosmart Network-Ready 2710 Color InkJet All-in-One Printer, Copier, Scanner, FaxHigh quality printing and high speed wireless networking for home and business. View, print and edit photos without a PC. Front panel editing buttons: rotate, crop, zoom and remove red eye before printing. Scan, fax and print simultaneously. Speed:30 ppm black and 20ppm color. Up to 4800 x 1200 dpi.Scanner: 2400 x 4800 dpi optical resolution. Bit Depth:48-bit. Copier Speed: 30 cpm black and 20 cpm color. Reduce/Enlarge:25% to 400%. Fax: 33.6 Kbps. Page Memory:Up to 60 pages.

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HP Photosmart Premium TouchSmart Web All-in-One Printer Review

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(More customer reviews)I wanted to like this, but I just do not think that the Web feature really justifies doubling the price of the prior Photosmart Premium Fax All-in-One Printer, Scanner, Copier and Fax. (Model C309a)HP Photosmart Premium Fax All-in-One Inkjet Printer (CC335A#ABA). Since the C309a is the model I am replacing this review is really a comparison of this new model over the old one. The old one is still readily available for about half the price of this - which is a really big difference. Also, the C309a - at half the price - has one feature missing here - an automatic document feeder. Why is that important? It is important if you want to be able to easily scan multi-page PDF documents. I can put a stack of papers on the C309a and they automatically run through the feeder (never once had a jam) and a multi-page PDF appears on my desktop. This new model is missing that. The lack of the document feeder also renders the fax absolutely useless. To send a fax you have to stand there and "scan" each page of the fax on the glass. It is hardly honest to call this a fax machine.
The specs between the two printers are exactly the same, except the C309a has the automatic document feeder and this one has the web interface. Also, the old model holds 125 pages of regular paper, but this one is down to 100 - a move totally in the wrong direction. Why can't they just design a printer tray (for a non-commercial printer) that holds a ream of paper (500 pages)? Also, this one is missing the special holder for printing CDs, but I never used that anyway.
The new model is smaller (good) and black (instead of a creamy white). The new model also has better drivers - which were (and still are) a MAJOR drawback of the old model. You can finally install a basic set of drivers that don't cripple functions, and don't add a bunch of junk software. This is a MAJOR improvement.
Print quality on both is absolutely amazing. Prints look just like they came from the photomat. Yes. They are that good. (although, unless you use the little flimsy retainer arm, they will drop on the floor once complete.)
I have mine hooked up through wi-fi and that works great. It is easily seen on all computers on my network that run Win7 and XP.
One negative (on this and the old version) is that you still need a computer to be on to do scanning - even to a network drive. The scanning software runs on a computer, not locally on the printer. Copying, faxing and printing can be done without a computer.
OK. What about the web interface? Well, my personal take is that it is a huge gimmic intended to get you to print more and use more ink. Things take forever to find on the touch interface and it would really be about a thousand times faster just to use a computer. Of course, if you - for whatever reason - only have your computer in a far-off room, this might proove handy if the printer is in a more high-traffic area of the house. But is that really a problem? And would you really put your printer far away from your computer? Not likely. I found the touchscreen slow to respond and - although beautiful to look at - I just didn't get the need for the web interface. The only conclusion I can make is that HP wants you to print more stuff and use more ink.
The ink, by the way, goes VERY quickly. I printed a dozen or so 4x6 photos and a couple of 8x10 and the ink light warning started to go off. Of course, I really think the light goes off WAY too early. It does that on almost every printer I have ever used. I continue printing until I notice a problem with the output. I am guessing that the low ink warning is set to go off when you have used 40% of the ink. I was able to print another dozen photos (after the ink warning) before I noticed any ink deficiency. I could probably print another dozen before it wouldn't let me print anymore.
Overall, I really like the printer quality and the interface, but I can't get past the elephant in the room - the old model is half the price and has an automatic document feeder that this is missing.
The printer comes with a standard set of ink cartridges (not just starter inks), every cable you could need (including a massive power brick), and sample photo papers. It is all packaged in an eco-friendly cloth bag.
Overall, I can only give this three stars. If the old model never existed, I would probably give this four or five stars. The fact that they left off the automatic document feeder is a HUGE drawback for me. The "Touchsmart Web" is fun to play with, but really amounts to nothing more than a flashy gimmic. It fixes a problem that doesn't really exist - everything you would do through that interface is easier and faster on a real computer. Of course, I am also a person who would never just plug a memory stick into a printer and start printing - if you are, this might be a good printer for you.

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HP Photosmart Premium C309N Multifunction Printer CD734A#ABA 74

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