The HP design Jet printer, was purchase from the dreaded PC world complete with stand.
**Looks**
It's about 1500mm wide, so it's not suitable for a standard PC desk.
It has a 50mm x 40mm display with three easy to push buttons.
It has an ocean blue strip on the lid and the receiver tray is the same colour. The large lid lifts to show the internal parts, all printing stops if this is lifted - good safety feature.
To the right hand side is where the cartridges are held.
The stand is an optional extra but well worth it as it takes up a lot of room. This is matt dark grey, with a foldable paper catcher. The catcher is ideal for large A1 prints when leaving the room. (This is because if the prints fall the paper becomes creased, no good for issuing to others)
***Cartridges***
This printer takes an array of cartridges, which aren't the cheapest.
The large in brackets indicate that these cartridges are double the size that the others.
The cartridges do not last very long especially on lots of heavy colour printing.
Re-ordering the cartridges is difficult too. This is because as HP have numbers on there cartridges such as the common HP45 to enable ease of reordering.
Some of the cartridges have the same number, EG the magenta and cyan (pink and blue, to everyone else) are both HP11. Can become confusing when phone ordering - beware.
Installing the cartridges is really simple, peel of the protective tape and push into place. Very easy, thanks HP.
For everyday A4 word documents, use and alternative printer, the text just doesn't have the definition like other smaller DeskJet's e.g. 940C, and it's a waste of ink.
For colour A4 photo pictures, it lacks quality like a photo smart 7550. It does accept photo quality paper, but if you're interested in photo prints use another printer.
You might be thinking its not worth buying but...
I use it for CAD drawings, and for this it is rather good.
I would expect it to be lost in a large corporate company but for the smaller business it is ideal. The prints are fast (especially just black copies) and the lines are true and don't waiver.
And it can be linked to a server for a few people to send prints to.
***EASE OF USE***
It auto feeds up to A3 but manual feed is required for larger prints- which can be a drag if you mass printing A1's.
Installation of the software, is very easy on XP, but had difficulty with Win98 with the parallel connection, but worked fine with USB connection.
***OTHER INFO***
*Can be noisy especially in an open plan office, seems to be worse on smaller prints.
*Nightmare to de-jam. Happens very rarely though.
*Expect to pay around £1000 for a unit - you might get the stand for free a PC if you mither.
*Cartridges range for £25 - £35
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
very helpful by (91%):
helpful by (9%):
