Getting the Best With the HP PhotoSmart P1100 Color Printer
Written: Aug 10 '00 (Updated Jan 11 '04)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Great print quality, nice overall look to the printer itself.
Cons: Expensive, and I hope the costs of ink cartridges comes down soon.
The Bottom Line: A great photo printer!
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| firstcontact21's Full Review: Hewlett Packard PhotoSmart p1100xi InkJet Printer |
Why I Purchased a Color Printer...
Back in the fall of 1996 when I replaced my Panasonic dot matrix with an HP LaserJet 6P, I wondered how I ever did without it. The LaserJet gave me the speed and power to print quality black & white documents for work and school, in little to no time at all. I decided to go with the Laser over a color printer at the time, mainly because I considered the Lasers to be a higher quality product in terms of the printing results.
Specifically, my long term plans right now are to assemble my own digital darkroom where I can produce quality images by combining digital photography, printing, scanning and software capabilities.
So late last year, with color printers at a higher level of quality, I finally decided it was time to take the plunge and buy a color printer. I was originally going to buy the HP 930C which boasts quality levels equivalent to the PhotoSmart P1100, but I did end up buying the P1100.
Actually, HP enticed me to buy this printer by offering customers a bundled rebate offer. At the time, when one bought either the Photosmart P1000 or P1100 printer, along with either a HP C200 or C500 Digital camera, they could get $100 US back from HP. Originally, I hadn't planned on getting a digital camera so soon, but this offer made me do it.
The C200 digital camera would allow me to practice the photography I wanted to practice, without the prohibitive costs of film. And the P1100 printer would allow me to practice my love of photography without having to worry about the somewhat prohibitive costs of processing (especially for B&W rolls). With the printer I could print what I wanted when I wanted to (not to mention the fact I could save pictures to my computer with either the camera or the printer - for processing at a future date or direct placement on the world wide web).
Next year I plan to purchase the HP ScanJet 6350C and the HP PhotoSmart S20 negative scanner, as well as a CD-R/RW Disk Drive. And then, my digital darkroom will be complete, and I will be able to work with both old and new sources of photographic supplies in the comfort of my own home.
So was this bundled purchase of camera and printer worth it? Well, yes and no. I will be the first to admit I did have some post-purchase anxieties on whether I made the right decision to buy this model, BUT MOSTLY the answer to that question is YES! And here's why...
Installation and Setup...
The P1100 is easy to set up, as long as you carefully follow the provided instructions. The printer supports both USB or Parallel Port connections and the software for it is easy to install. If possible, use a UBS port as the USB port is the faster port to use for transferring information to and from any electronic device.
Once everything is plugged in, it's easy to start the computer up and pop in the program CD which will instantly help you install the drivers for the device, as well as the additional Photo Printing software.
The Photo Printing software provided has been developed by HP, but it doesn't do a whole lot. The software is good for people starting out, who are first getting into digital photography, but more advanced users may wish to use Adobe PhotoDeluxe or the more advanced PhotoShop, or Corel PhotoPaint, Draw or for more advanced users, KPT Vector Effects for PhotoShop. Other good entery level programs for basic worth looking at include Broderbund's Print Shop Deluxe, or MGI Software's PhotoSuite.
Overall Print Quality...
Overall, the P1100 is great, although I'm not using it as much as I will next year. I don't use it as much because I'm waiting for my negative scanner, when I'll begin to experiment with some real digital photographic printing (That's why, right now, I sometimes look at it and go "why did I buy this?" and then I remember my long term plans for the machine and my digital darkroom, and I just smile to myself and say "oh yeah....")
The print quality, or resolution, is amazing, at 600 dpi for the black ink cartridge (dpi = dots per inch - that is, the number of ink droplets put onto each inch of the paper), and up to 2400 by 1200 dpi (horizontal by vertical dots per inch) in pure realistic, better than Technicolor color. The "imaging technology" used for both black and white printing and color printing is known as RET technology, allowing for a wonderfully smooth, vibrant and fast printing job to be processed by the P1100 and other similar HP printers.
Not only do I use it for photo printing, but I do all of my final copy marketing and business management reports on the P1100, and they look like they have been professionally printed at a store like Kinkos. They help make my wonderful looking, visionary strategic plans that really help separate you from the crowd at university or college =)
Photo Printing Quality...
Yes, so time to talk a bit about the reason one buys a photo printer - for it's ability to print photos!
The P1100's photo quality is amazing. I love being able to whip off 4 by 6 photos instantly. This is really great when family visits and we take group pictures, I can easily print off copies for everyone and they can all leave with their memories in hand and I don't have to worry about processing and mailing them out later on! The colors are rich, detailed and vivid - in some ways, it's almost like looking at a real photo! The P1100 also does a very, very fine job of printing high quality photo quality black & white photos.
The P1100 can use a variety of photo printing paper, and you get the best results if you use the paper that is also manufactured by HP, which actually produces a wide range of papers and specialty project papers to go with its printers.
I've used a number of different types of photo paper, and I've also used some non-HP products as well, including the line of AVERY Inkjet products for color printers like the Photosmart. Specifically, I like to make my own business cards using AVERY business card paper and like the reports, the cards look like they've been professionally done. When I hand them out people can't believe I did it at home. And the nice thing about printing my own cards at home is that I can print off only what I need without wasting paper - this is especially helpful if you like to tweak your cards or need to update the information on them frequently.
Also, over the last year, I've gotten great results when I've tried using Kodak paper. And I'm tempted to try the Epson Panoramic photographic paper, which is a very very cool size for photo paper!
Paper Trays...
The P1100 technically has three trays, the first being for your standard 8 1/2 by 11 (or) 8 1/2 by 14 sheets. That tray will comfortably hold between 80 to 100 sheets. The second tray, technically is the same tray as the one for standard sheets of paper, and you can adjust it to hold various sizes of envelopes.
The third tray that the P1100 does come with is a tray for 4 by 6 photo paper. The only difficulty about this tray is in order to use it you have to disengage the normal paper tray below it (by sliding it right out. It won't actually come right out, but it slides back quiet a bit, and it will stop when it's fully extended out).
You have to do this, otherwise you'll have the whole printer jam up when it tries to feed paper, and this can be quiet messy to clean up, in fact I think you could even break the feeder, as you have to push quiet firmly to get the photo tray in with the standard tray engaged (I learned this the hard way. I never saw this warning in any of the manuals).
Double-Sided Printing...
The P1100 also comes with a device known as a duplexer. What this does is allow users to easily print double sided onto any paper. This is a wonderful feature that I've had no problems with, and is especially wonderful when printing off reports, webpages and anything else to which you want to print something of quickly, and without wasting any pages.
I only wish my HP LaserJet printed double-sided as easily as the PhotoSmart P1100. To get double sided pages printed on my LaserJet I have to manually print the even pages first; and then after reinserting them into the manual feed tray, print the odd pages. This is somewhat annoying to say the least, especially when printing high volumes!
Overall, I also find the trays (but not the duplexer), in comparison to my HP LaserJet 6P, to be less smooth moving. In other words, they are more "rugged" and "rough" in their movement at times, and they are somewhat noisy. At first I thought it was my printer, but then I checked a number of different store display models and found the same roughness.
But HP has addressed this problem in the new versions of the P1000 series. The P1215 and P1218 are newer models that came out in 2001 that have much smoother loading trays that are also significantly quieter in their operation.
Black and Color Ink Cartridges...
The P1100 uses two cartridges, a Black ink cartridge and a Color cartridge. The black cartridges are nice and cheap, I can get a 42ml cartridge for $38.99 Canadian, but the color cartridges are more expensive. They come in two sizes, 19ml which runs you at about $50 Canadian, or the larger 42ml cartridge, which is a better deal at about $85 Canadian.
I purchased the printer and camera back in January 2000, and just last week I installed my third set of cartridges. My second set went quickly due to the fact that I printed quiet a few advertising reports and about 20 pages of full color full final creative that used a heavy mix of photos, text and graphics.
Actually, the price of cartridges for all printers is something I've been thinking about a lot lately, the cost of color cartridges in general. I remember way back when I used to have my dot matrix printer, and I had a nice one by Panasonic which was fast and quiet and had a great print quality for a dot matrix. At that time I paid less than $20 for a dot matrix cartridge.
When the first ink jets came onto the market they were very expensive, and so were the cartridges for these new printers. They started at about $40-50 a cartridge, and the same case was true for Laser printers, their cartridges started anywhere around $75 and up. Now, with dot matrixes themselves mostly a thing of the past, and color ink jet and laser printers themselves becoming more powerful and cheaper almost every day, the costs of the cartridges have not dropped along with the costs of the printers themselves.
Personally, I know for a fact I'd be printing substantially more if the P1100 cartridges were even 30% cheaper than they are now. I truly hope, and think that the costs of these cartridges will drop over the next few years as I at home digital photography becomes more popular. It is the only way to make it more mainstream - these companies have an opportunity to pull people away from traditional photographic processes, and to do that they will need to lower their prohibitively high cartridge costs - cause right now, they're way too high!
Speed...
The printer comes with a 4MB buffer, which is fixed and can't be upgraded as with a laser printer, so you'll find with larger print jobs the printer icon will remain on your taskbar for a much longer time than it would if you were printing to a laser. But nevertheless, the P1100 is still amazingly fast - printing approximately 12 ppm (pages per minute) in black & white; and 10 ppm in color.
Digital Camera Compatibility...
Another reason I bought the HP P1100 Photosmart Color Printer along with the HP C200 Digital Camera was the simple fact that the P1100 is totally compatible with a wide range of Digital Camera Card formats, including Type 1 and Type 2 Compact Flash cards.
The P1100 actually has two slots on the side of the printer to which you can easily slide the cards into. Are you worried about inserting them wrong? Well, don't worry the printer automatically tells you if it's inserted the wrong way and that it cannot read the card in a tiny but readable display right on the printer itself.
This compatibility saves you the prohibitive costs of purchasing a card reader or hooking up the camera directly to the computer to download photos (thus quickly wasting the perfectly good battery power of your camera).
Using this technology is also a lot faster (especially when you're using a USB connection) than hooking your camera directly to your computer or through a card reader (and it's important to remember, one card reader will only read one type of card, so if you want to read both Type 1 and Type 2 cards, you'd have to buy two readers, at a cost of more than $150 Canadian)!
The software that comes with your printer actually installs an icon under the "My Computer" area of all Windows programs, so that you can automatically click on the "HP PhotoSmart Digital Card Reader" icon, to easily view, copy and then delete your photos from your digital camera's card directly to anywhere on your computer that you choose. It's remarkably simple.
BUT! The card readers do more than that - you don't even have to have a computer to print off photos. If you know you're happy with a photo the way it is, you can use the buttons on printer, in combination with the display located on the printer, to help choose the photo(s), paper type(s), size(s) and quantity of photos you wish to print and it will automatically do so! You can also easily print contact sheets (a single sheet or two of all the photos located on a roll - so you can take a look at what you have taken, what you like and what you don't like. Contact sheets are far from being new, traditional photographers use this process all the time). The P1100 utilizes some truly amazing technology and it is very easy to use.
Jetsend...
One last piece of technology that the P1100 utilizes, is something most HP printers utilize, and that is the HP JetSend Technology, allowing you to send via an "infra-red" type technology, print jobs directly from laptop computers or other devices to the printer, as well as to send and receive photos from your smart cards. Personally, I have never used this technology, although it is on both my LaserJet and Photosmart printers. Apparently the feature works very well.
Accessories, Durability and Build...
The HP Photosmart P1100's accessories are fairly basic, but essential for the use of the overall printer. Inside the box you get the printer itself (obviously), the duplex module for double sided printing, a power cord, one black and one color cartridge, a users guide and easy to read setup poster, as well as a photo paper starter pack with coupons for purchasing other kinds of paper (and many packs of photo paper that you buy will come with special deals for getting free sample paper packs in the future).
The only thing the HP Photosmart P1100 doesn't come with is either a USB or Parallel cable. Note that if you buy the printer, you will need to get either a USB A to B connection cable, that is either 6 feet or longer (depending on where you place the printer). And make sure your computer can accept USB cables.
If you don't have a USB slot on your computer, you can always purchase a PCI card that will give you two or more USB slots. This is easy to install, but if you're not sure if you can support this, ask the salesperson. Also, some motherboards have USB connectors that you can use to get what is called a Motherboard to Backpane USB Connector installed that will hook directly up to your motherboard, thereby giving you USB support. Check your user manual or your motherboard manufacturer's website to see if it will support USB. These connectors are significantly cheaper than the PCI card option. And if you go USB crazy, there is nothing stopping you from utilizing both options.
If you are using a Parallel cable to send and recieve information from your printer, make sure you get a IEEE 1284 Compliant BI-DIRECTIONAL Parallel Cord, at least 6ft or longer in length. There is nothing wrong with using a Parallel Cord, although USB is technically much faster, the Parallel cords aren't stone-age slow either. I used one for the first six months of having my Photosmart without any problems at all. But it must be BI-DIRECTIONAL, which means the cord can be used to SEND and RECEIVE information. They make other printer cords that will only send information, and using them can actually damage your printer! So be warned - not all salespeople know this and they may sell you the wrong cord! It must be a BI-DIRECTIONAL parallel cable!
Conclusions...
Overall, other than the at-times not-so-smooth trays, the HP Photosmart P1100 is very durable. The look of the printer is also very smart. It's very smooth and streamlined, giving the product an almost futuristic, out of this world look. You really end up believing you have something special with the P1100 based on it's look alone.
And the printer isn't that heavy either. That's one thing I've noticed with printers over the years - they have become very, very light, making them easy to move and access at all times without much strain from the user.
The buttons are all very nicely labeled and even color coded so they are easy to remember for easy access. The top of the printer easily opens up for easy access to the cartridges themselves, which just pop out when you need to replace them. You can also press a button that will clean the cartridges automatically, making them fresh and new and ready to use, especially after a large amount of printing (one time I thought the black cartridge was out of ink, but it turned out it was just very dirty)!
Final Thoughts, Pricing and Warranty Information...
For me as a student who is into digital photography, the bundled rebate offer of the P1100 printer and the C200 digital camera, helped me take the dive into the wonderful world of digital photography. This combo is a perfect choice for anyone wanting to get into this new found world.
And even though the P1100 is a little expensive, the quality you get with this printer is worth it. The P1100 printer is more expensive than other models, including the P1000 printer.
The basic difference between the P1O00 and the P1100 is simple, with the P1000 being a bit slower, and not coming with the duplexing (double-sided printing) device.
Since I purchased my P1100, the cost has come down with the release of the P1215 and the P1218. The new models are basically the same as the P1000 and the P1100, only they are twice as fast with easier to use trays. However, they lack the nice color buttons.
The P1100 comes with a basic one year parts and labor warranty, along with a 90 day basic warranty on the software and ink cartridges that come with the unit. HP also updates it's website regularly with newer drivers and software passages, and the installation CD also puts a direct link to the HP photo printing software where users can interact with other HP enthusiasts, sharing information, tips and much more on how to get the best use out of their digital photography products.
And as digital photography becomes more and more popular, I'm very sure the prices will drop as well. So keep your eye on digital technology, it's on it's way and it's definitely worth getting into!
Grade: A
For more information on the HP Photosmart P1100, please feel free to visit the manufacturer's website at:
http://www.hp.ca/products/static/c6724a/features-en.html
(c) August 10, 2000, Steven H. Lee
Other Related Technology Reviews...
HP PhotoSmart C200 Digital Camera
Recommended:
Yes
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firstcontact21
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Member: Steven Lee
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
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