hardware good, software bad
Written: Jan 17 '04 (Updated Jan 21 '04)
|
Product Rating:
|
|
| Ease of Use: |
 |
|
| Paper Handling: |
 |
|
|
Pros: Solid design and construction
Great featureset
Easy to use
Cons: Terrible drivers/software
The Bottom Line: Only get this if nothing else has the featureset you want. Like i said, i would go with Canon if they had network options.
|
|
|
| woodpost's Full Review: Hewlett Packard PSC 2510 Thermal Inkjet Multifunc... |
This should be called the HP Photosmart POS 2510 instead, cause it's a serious POS. When looking at the reviews before i purchased, i read one fellow who said that it seems like 2 different companies made the software and hardware. I thought at the time "he's probably just not as PC savvy as i am, since i am afterall in the software industry." So i gave it a go. Boy was he right.
First off, the hardware and featureset is great. it had everything i wanted, and when i pulled it out of the box i was very impressed with how it looked and felt. getting it up on the wireless network was a breeze, which contradicted what some people said, so i'm starting to
feel pretty pleased with my purchasing decision at this point. but then i installed the software .. it's 1.5 GB of pure crap. want to pick and choose which features to install? too bad! it's all (fax, scan, print) or nothing! so if you have another PC on the network that you only want to print from (which is likely if you're considering buying this unit) you can't just install a print driver. you have to install the whole 1.5 GB enchilada, which includes an application that's always running in the background (HP Director), which really bugs me because that sort of stuff always screws up your system. which brings me to ..
the software screwed up my system. now whenever i boot my PC, my system pretty much is locked up for 15 seconds as HP Director tries to figure something out. and whenever i shut my system down, HP Director never terminates itself properly so i have to kill the process myself. really
annoying.
so then im playing with the features. i scan a picture at 2400 dpi .. and it takes a HALF HOUR. it takes 15 minutes to scan and then 15 minutes for the HP Photo application to open it. in the meantime my system is completely unusable. and i have a decent system! 2.4GHz, 512MB RAM. lower resolution scans are fine, but i suggest you go watch tv if you want to scan 2400 or above (i cant even imagine what it would do at 4800, 9600, or 19200 dpi.)
so i tell HP all this, and they arrange for a tech to call me, which is actually pretty cool. the tech guy tells me the 2510 must be on to avoid the system sluggishness at bootup/shutdown, and he says it was scanning slow because i'm on a wireless network (11Mb/s) and 2400dpi makes some pretty big files. well, i've been keeping the 2510 on 24/7 and i still have the boot/shutdown problems, and i've since moved it over to a wired 100Mb/s network and it's still just as slow.
i wish Canon had network interface options, because i would return this in a second if they did. unfortunately even with all its problems, this is still the best solution for my home network. curse you, HP.
** EDIT **
Couple more problems with this unit since i wrote this review ..
1. when I had it using my 802.11b network, i noticed that my other wireless devices would drop connection ocassionally. I didn't think a wireless client could possibly interfere with my wireless access point so I didnt think too much about it. But as soon as i moved the HP over to a wired connection, my wireless network magically stopped having problems.
2. when i set the network link speed on the HP to 100Mb/s Full Duplex, it only does half duplex. No matter what i try .. half duplex.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): $399
Operating System: Windows
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
woodpost
|
|
Reviews written: 2
Trusted by: 0 members
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.