Great color; poor SmartCard reader
Written: Sep 15 '00 (Updated Nov 27 '00)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Great photo print quality; fast print times
Cons: Troublesome photo tray; slow card reader
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| johnmeyer's Full Review: Hewlett Packard PhotoSmart p1000 Ink-jet Printer |
My first color printer, four years ago, was an HP Deskjet 855C. It was a marvelous printer for its time, but the results could never be mistaken for a photograph. One year ago, after seeing the HP P1000 Photosmart at Although I have a few reservations that I note below, I have been very happy with this printer and definitely recommend it. The P1100 printer is the 1999 Seybold trade show in San Francisco, I decided to buy one. the same except that it has additional paper handling that permits duplex printing.
Installation
I am running Windows 98 (first edition). The printer installed quickly. Very good out-of-box experience. I connected the printer via the USB port, and since this was the first USB peripheral I'd installed, I didn't know whether it would be difficult or easy. The installation program immediately recognized the printer and asked for the installation CD. I put in the CD, and waited. Installation took several minutes because this printer installs LOTS of software. When I say lots of software, I'm not talking about application software, but rather just the software necessary to drive the printer, and read the memory cards. I personally don't like products that take over my system the way this did, but having said that, other than taking up lots of disk space, nothing seemed to break, and the printer immediately began working flawlessly.
Printing
I printed a test page and was immediately struck by two things:
How fast the paper moves through the printer
How quiet the printer operates.
The speed of the paper through the printer is, of course, dependent on the quality settings. If you use the maximum quality settings, a standard 8.5 x 11 page can take several minutes to print if it is a photo, and close to a minute even if it just contains text. On the other extreme, if you use the draft mode, the paper flies through the printer at an amazing rate. As a test, I just printed a blank page just to see how fast the paper handling mechanism works, and from the time the paper started moving until it was through the printer was only about two seconds.
The quality of the printing in draft, normal, or best modes gets progressively better. Like all inkjet printers, the biggest variable in print quality is the paper you use. On ordinary inkjet bond ($8 for 500 sheets), the print quality is roughly comparable to what I was accustomed to getting with the HP 855C, but the print times were much less (perhaps half the time).
I then put in some photo paper, changed the settings to "Photo Paper" and "Best" and printed out a page. The quality was (and still is today) stunning. The picture is truly difficult to tell from a traditional silver halide print.
Waterproofing Tip
Of course, as is true with most inkjet printers (except the brand-new Epson printer that costs $1,000, but promises waterproof, archival prints), the ink will smear when wet, even weeks or months after printing, and it is likely to fade over time. However, I have found that I can completely waterproof the print by spraying the dried print with "Tuffilm Final Fixative," which is available at most art supply stores. This may also slow the fading, although only time will tell.
Print problems
The one problem I have had with this printer has to do with its "photo tray." The photo tray is a holder designed to accept about 20 sheets of 4x6 glossy paper. When you want to print a 4x6, you engage the photo tray by pushing it in, and then print. I have had two intermittent problems with this. The first is that the paper kept refusing to feed from the paper tray. After several calls to HP's tech support we finally diagnosed the problem as having something to do with the way in which I was pushing the tray in and pulling it back out. They advised me to "sharply" pull the tray out and then "firmly" push it back into place. I did this, and the problem cleared up. According to the tech, there is some problem with the mechanism for feeding individual envelopes (which is directly above the photo tray) not releasing when the tray is pushed in. The rough treatment of pushing the tray in and out frees the mechanism. While I wasn't too thrilled that the printer has this quirk, I've learned to live with it and haven't had any problems since.
One other problem with the photo tray is that once in a while, for no good reason, the printer decides to print about two inches to the left. This results in a good deal of ink being sprayed down into the printer rollers. The three or four times this has happened, I've always caught it right away and was able to clean up the mess fairly easily.
Consumables
I do much of my non-critical printing in draft mode, and only use the Best mode when printing photos. As a result, I have found the ink cartridges last a long time (for me, at least four months). However, I'm sure that every person that uses this or any other printer is going to use it so differently that my experience won't help you much. Perhaps a more helpful statement is that if you've had other HP printers, like the 855C, the rate at which consumables (inkjet cartridges) are used up seems about the same as the older printers.
Card reader
One of the nifty features of this printer is that it includes two card readers, one for CompactFlash and the other for Smartmedia. I have had several digital cameras, and have read both types of media from this printer into the computer. It reads both flawlessly. One nifty feature is that once you insert the card, you can press a button on the printer marked "save" and this immediately pops up a dialog on the computer screen. If you then click on the dialog box "Start" button, the copy operation begins immediately, and the entire contents of the card are copied to a new directory. This sure beats messing around with Windows Explorer every time you want to copy some pictures.
You can also print directly from the card to the printer. To do this, you preview the images in your camera and write down the number of the picture(s) you want to print. You then insert the card and use the front-panel controls on the printer to specify which pictures you want to print, and what size prints you wish to create. The printer than scales everything to fit and does the rest. Because I like to fiddle with the pictures, I haven't used this feature much. However, it worked flawlessly for me the few times I tried it, and it has been very useful a few times when I wanted to do a quick "Polaroid" print for a visitor.
The one downside to the cardreader is its speed. While it is very fast compared to a serial connection, it is only about 25% of the speed (or less) of a standard USB cardreader like those made by Sandisk. I called HP and asked if there was a driver upgrade or a setting I could change to improve performance and was told that the card reader speed was indeed slower than dedicated readers, and there was nothing I could do about it. Bummer.
Summary
The main reason for getting a printer is to print, and the HP Photosmart P1000 produces gorgeous prints in remarkably fast times. I would give this product five stars if it weren't for the photo tray problem and the slow card reader times. If the rating system allowed for it, I would give it 4 1/2 stars.
Recommended:
Yes
Operating System: Windows
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Epinions.com ID:
johnmeyer
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Member: John Meyer
Reviews written: 17
Trusted by: 5 members
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