Leaving the Bubblejet Graveyard
Written: Dec 12 '02
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Pros: beautiful design, rapid quality printing, paper treatment, toolbox / diagnostic options
Cons: DOT4_001 errors, driver updating
The Bottom Line: The Photosmart 1000 makes a successful move into the next generation of printing needs and demands. You'll keep it longer than your PC.
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| deeblackthorne's Full Review: Hewlett Packard PhotoSmart p1000 Ink-jet Printer |
I grew tired of bubblejet printers while enrolled in college. I spent a good lot of ink and patience on an antiquated Canon bubblejet from my first PC several years ago. I only needed to print writing assignments since it's taboo to turn in handwritten things. That's all.
It died on me, and while browsing the Wal-Mart shelves, my friend Brandon stood for several seconds in front of the HP Photosmart display. Even with the store's discount, the Photosmart initially came off as expensive to this poor college guy's budget. I could find something for less, I reasoned, until Brandon pointed to the credit card in my wallet and urged me to go for it. So I acquiesced.
Once I got it out of the bulky packaging (HP tends to over-box things, in my opinion), "a snap" greatly understates the ease of setup. Perhaps it helps to have a HP Pavilion, but I plugged the Photosmart into the USB port and turned the computer on. Plug-and-Play active, it only took a few clicks and a prompt for the driver software before I got started. Needless to say, the instructions are thorough enough for anyone -- even my mom who just started surfing the Internet as of recent and doesn't know a thing about PCs -- to get started with relative ease. I know I appreciated the Photosmart the more I used it; it could crank out a top-quality full essay (7-10 pages) in a very short time, a matter of minutes. Color documents print out a bit slower but deliver rich and vibrant results as promised.
(A tip to users: Turn your printer on and leave it for a few minutes before you do heavy-duty printing, to ensure that your cartridges are warmed up enough to fully release the ink.)
Although the Photosmart printer could use a larger tray for paper storage, the approximate 75-sheet capacity can easily accommodate users without -- thank goodness -- many popular annoyances: paper jams (that require you to open the casing and pry out the garbage), smeared and runny ink, printer "gobbledeguk" (lines with undecipherable symbols, characters, and numbers because of communication errors), and so forth. I can expect my reports to run cleanly through the machine with little hassle. Seldomly does the printer an extra blank sheet through -- and that's it.
I browsed through the included Toolbox program for the Photosmart and was impressed at the thoroughness of the tool functions. While it's as easy to press the "Tools" button on the printer and scroll through the LCD's options (print test page, clean cartridges, etc.), you can perform the same tasks with a few clicks of the mouse. Most important among the function is the test page, of course -- it indicates whether or not you should clean your print cartridges and how much ink is left before replacement. Again, smart and useful tools help ensure Photosmart as a good choice.
The Photosmart is versatile enough to deal with the grand scheme of printing needs out there. Sensible and organized printer-related menus can yield documents produced to scale, dual-sided printing, reverse and labeled printing, banners, reports and presentations, and many other tasks.
Only one central flaw: On occasion (once a month, perhaps), I'll try to print a document and a pop-up warns me of a DOT4_001 error when communicating through the USB ports. More often than not, the error can be dealt with by restarting the computer; if problems recur, perform a cold boot -- shutting your computer down, letting it power off and wait a short while before restarting. I haven't yet figured that error out, and while it does no significant harm to my system, it's still an annoyance. It's about as annoying as the caution icon popping up in your system tray, claiming that your Photosmart is no longer connected even though you just turned it off for the meantime.
In doing regular driver checks to make sure your system is up-to-date, your best bet is to find Google results for Photosmart drivers. The HP site is of little use.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 149
Operating System: Windows
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Epinions.com ID:
deeblackthorne
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Member: Dee Hill Zuganelli
Location: Tucson, AZ, USA
Reviews written: 130
Trusted by: 13 members
About Me:
yo! :D
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