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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Brother HL-5250DN Refurbished Network Ready Laser Printer with Duplex Review

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(More customer reviews)I bought the Brother HL-5250DN printer from Amazon for five reasons:
1) fast monochrome (black and white) printer.
2) network capability.
3) automatic duplexing (printing on both sides of the paper).
4) Enclosed paper tray.
5) Price (and the one-year manufacturer's warranty is nice, even on the refurbished product).
I also like the low toner, paper, and drum replacement indicator lights on the printer. The cost of the toner cartridges is about the same with other printers I've seen.
What comes in the box:
Printer, drum and toner assembly, AC power cord, paper Quick Setup Guide, CD-ROM. The CD-ROM has the drivers, entire Owner's Manual, and animated installation guide.
Note: No cables are provided.
If you are going to connect the printer to a wireless router, you will need an Ethernet cable.
If you are going to connect the printer directly to one computer, you will need either a USB or parallel cable. The printer has connections for both.
Setup
The setup did not go as easily as I hoped.
I had two problems with installation and setup:
1) I was not sure which network to use (peer to peer or shared).
2) After installation, I could not print from one of the two computers on the network.
After easily removing some shipping adhesive tape, inserting the drum/toner assembly (looks like a full toner cartridge, not a starter cartridge) and paper tray, I was ready to proceed with installing the software drivers.
The Quick Setup Guide presents you with choices for Windows 98/Me/2000/XP: USB interface, parallel interface, and network interface. There are also choices if using Windows XP Professional x64 Edition and Macintosh. The manufacturer's website indicates Microsoft Vista has "built-in" drivers but Brother drivers are also available on the website.
Upon clicking "Install Printer Driver" from CD-ROM menu, I was presented with three choices: USB cable users, Parallel cable users, and Network cable users. I chose the network cable users since I wanted to add the printer to my wireless network router. I was presented with a license agreement that I accepted. I then had to choose between "Brother Peer-to-Peer Network Printer" or "Network Shared Printer". I chose peer-to-peer to print directly to the printer over the network rather than to a central server on a shared printer. On Step 8 I had to choose "LPR" or "NetBios". I had no idea which one to choose and I didn't find any useful information to help with the decision. I chose LPR and clicked Next. The printer was recognized. Make sure to write down the IP Node Address (for a wireless router it is something like 192.xxx.xx.x).
Now, I needed to access the printer from my wireless computer running Microsoft Vista. I went to the Control Panel and double clicked on Printers. I then chose "Add a Printer" and selected "Add a network, wireless or Bluetooth printer". The computer searched for and found the printer. A couple more clicks and I was successfully printing from the wireless computer.
Printing from the desktop computer running Windows XP, connected to the router with an Ethernet cable, would not be as simple. The computer recognized the printer but would not send any data to the printer. I went to Control Panel, Printer and Faxes, right clicked on Properties. The General tab did not have the Location of the printer. I added 192.xxx.xx.x and clicked OK and tried printing a document but I was not successful. After two hours of dealing with it and looking at the company's website, I called the company (toll-free phone number right on the box). The company was closed; I called the next morning just after the company opened at 9 a.m. Eastern. I went through a very brief voice prompt menu and I was connected to Robby in all of about two minutes. He was polite but he was not able to solve my problem. He told me second level support would call me within 24 hours. Just over two hours later I got a call from Debbie, who was in Memphis, Tennessee. She was very helpful and quickly identified the problem. When hovering over the printer icon in the Printer and Faxes folder, the little popup message indicated the printer was offline. I don't know how I missed that. To correct the problem all I had to do was right click the printer and select "Use Printer Online". After a few seconds the printer was in Ready status. Problem resolved.
Summary
This is my first Brother printer and I am very favorably impressed. I don't think there is another printer on the market with these features at such a low price, at least at the time of this writing.
The product is shipped in the manufacturer's box, not an Amazon box, so all your neighbors will know what's in the box on your doorstep. The box looks like the box for a new printer, listing many features of the printer but it is clearly marked "Factory Refurbished". The printer itself has a sticker on the back with "Re-manufactured Product". My printer was originally manufactured in September 2005. I bought it in May 2007.
My experience with Brother International has been very positive. I got a great printer with excellent features, a full-size toner cartridge TN-550 (not a starter toner cartridge!), and a one-year warranty. From idle/sleep, the first page took only 20 seconds to print and the text quality is great. The icing on the cake was the technical support provided by Americans. Their promptness and knowledge was impressive. This was easily the best technical support experience I have ever had!Update December 4, 2007:
I am still very pleased with the printer but it is noisy when printing and it does make "tick, tick, tick" noises sometimes. Neither of these issues has effected performance. The only annoyance I've experienced is with envelope printing - the envelope always crinkles. This isn't a big deal for me but it is something to consider if envelope printing is important to you.
Update October 7, 2008:
I purchased another refurbished HL-5250. The toner and drum are also factory refurbished. The drum unit (DR-520) has life expectancy of 22,500 pages, about 90% of new. The toner cartridge (TN-550) has an expected yield of 3,150 pages at 5% coverage. A new toner cartridge has an expected yield of 3,500 pages.

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The EHL-5250DN is a 30ppm network-ready monochrome laser printer with a built-in duplex feature. Designed for busy offices and small workgroups, it is a smart and versatile choice.

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Canon Pixma MP970 Photo All-In-One Inkjet Printer (2181B002) Review

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(More customer reviews)I am an amateur photographer and a professional Software Engineer. I purchased this printer as a general purpose printer and as a low cost photo printer. My home network which consists of 5 Windows XP computers and 1 Mac OS X computer (mine). I connected the printer to my network using the built in ethernet port. All of the testing I performed was over the network and I never tried the USB port. The printer does everything it advertises and does it well. I tested printing, scanning, and card reader functionality using OS X Tiger, OS X Leopard, Windows XP, and the printer worked flawlessly regardless of the OS I was using. You just need to make sure that you download and install the latest and greatest driver for the particular OS you are using. I also tried scanning directly using Photoshop CS3 on OS X Leopard and everything worked perfect.
One of the reasons I purchased the MP970 was for low cost photo printing. I also own an Epson R2400 which is a semi-professional dedicated photo printer. The R2400 is expensive to purchase, and expensive to operate. I was curious how the MP970 photo quality would compare to the R2400 so I directly compared photos printed on the Canon MP970 to the same photos printed on the Epson R2400. The Canon MP970 prints great pictures, but it is simply does not produce the same quality pictures as the R2400. I printed pictures from Photoshop in a color managed environment using Ilford Smooth Pearl Photo Paper and compared the R2400 to the MP970. The Canon MP970 did very well but Epson R2400 was definitely the winner - which was the expected result. The Epson had better highlights, better shadows, and more neutral mid tones. Notwithstanding, the MP970 produced very respectable prints which would be acceptable in all but the most demanding applications. The bottom line is that if you are really serious about excellent photo quality, this is not the printer for you. If you want a low cost way to produce very respectable prints, this printer is definitely for you. I feel that the Canon MP970 fully meets or exceeds my quality expectations for a low cost photo printer. And, as an added bonus, the MP970 is way cheaper to operate than my R2400 because it uses a lot less ink. As an example of how I use it, it's a lot more cost effective to print 25 Christmas cards on my MP970 than it is to print the same 25 cards on the R2400.
I only gave the printer 4 stars because it powers itself off every 2 to 4 days for no reason. Canon technical support confirmed that the printer should not power itself off and sent me a new replacement printer under warranty. Unfortunately, the replacement printer also powers itself off for no reason. I tried several different electrical outlets in my office and it did not fix the problem. Also, no other devices in my office power themselves off. This review has been here for a while now and several people posted comments and said that their MP970 printers also intermittently power off.
Update on Intermittent Power off Issue:
After about 9 months of operation, I ended up moving the printer from my office to my Son's room (for unrelated reasons). For unexplained reasons, the printer stopped intermittently powering itself off after I moved it to my Son's room. The printer has been in my Son's room for roughly 3 months now and it has not powered itself off once. Weird.
I have had the printer for roughly 1 year and I have not had any problems except for the power issue mentioned above.
Here is what the printer does:
- Double sided printing
- Ethernet connectivity
- USB Connectivity
- Initiate a scan from the printer or the computer
- Scan to the disk on your computer, scan to email, scan to PDF
- Copy
- Read camera memory cards. Access the cards via network or USB
- Scanner is compatible with Photoshop CS3 on OS X
- Compatible with OS X Tiger, OS X Leopard, Windows XP, Windows Vista
- 2 paper trays: Cassette in the bottom, open paper tray in the rear
- Will make borderless photo prints
Here is what the printer does not do:
- Does not fax
- Does not have an auto document feeder for the scanner
- Canon does not supply Linux drivers, but I have heard that Linux drivers may be available from other sources (see comments made by others about this review for more information).
- Wireless Ethernet is not directly supported. This printer connects to your network with an Ethernet cable.

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The Canon PIXMA MP970 Photo All-in-One Inkjet Printer lets you preview, scan, copy, and print photographs and documents with one easy machine. This all-in-one printer features a compact, streamlined design that can preview images in high resolution on its 3.5-inch TFT display, scan beautiful images with color resolutions up to 9600 by 2400 dpi, or print photos directly from memory cards, cameras, DV camcorders, or camera phones in seconds. The printer's Easy Scroll Wheel makes operation a breeze. The Auto-Image Fix feature ensures that every photo is clear and vivid--even when scanning difficult items such as thick notebooks or faded images--to result in stunning color resolutions up to 4800 by 9600 dpi. This PIXMA will even allows print or copy two-sided to save paper and space.
Just press the Power button and get to work, thanks to the printer's helpful Quick Start design. Copies come out crisper than ever with the system's Dual Color Gamut Processing Technology. Compatible with Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows 2000, and Mac OS X 10.2.8 to 10.4.x8 operating systems, this printer comes backed by a 1-year limited manufacturer's warranty.
What's in the Box Pixma MP970 photo all-in-one printer, cross sell sheet, easy setup instructions, quick start guide, setup software and user's guide CD-ROM, user's guide, PGI-5 black ink tank, CLI-8 (cyan/magenta/yellow) ink tank, power cord, print head, and sample media (8.5-by-11.5-inch sheets).

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