HP PhotoSmart P1000 > Reviews (9)

When I purchased my Mesh computer back in June 2001, I also purchased as part of my bundle, a Hewlett Packard Photosmart 1000printer. This has proved itself to be one of the few things I have not lived to regret buying from Mesh. It cost me £194 including delivery in the bundle.

The printer is black and grey in colour, measures about 15 inches by 16 inches square and about 8 inches high. It’s quite light for its size and fits nicely on top of a plastic filing box I have on my desk.
It comes complete with a cable, a user guide booklet that has 64 pages of information. It also has a large poster size leaflet to help you do a quick install of the machine, one colour plus one black ink cartridge and the relevant software.

Setting up and installing the software was easy. After you have installed the driver you can install some bonus software that is include on the driver CD and a short cut to the HP web site. There is a feature on the CD to help you uninstall the software properly should you ever need to.

The booklet is very well documented throughout. It has an index at the back so you can go straight to any problems you might come across. It guides you though every step of the printer from how to unpack it properly to printing the best photo quality prints and has many illustrations to help you understand it completely.

There is the large paper tray with two sliders so you can use different sizes of paper. It also has a smaller sliding tray to hold small print size photo paper. This you just slide in and out to engage and disengage.

On the front there is a control panel this has:

A power button to turn it on and off. The guide recommends that to get maximum use from your printer cartridges, you do not turn off the power source until the power light is off.

There’s an infrared port so you can aim your digital camera at it to transfer your photos. This uses something called HP Jet Send Infrared Technology.

A tools button. You use this button to change your printer settings. Under this you can print a test page, clean your printer cartridges, select the paper type and size, select the page lay out and adjust the brightness of your prints.

A copies button. This you use to select the number of copies you want to print.

A choose photo’s. This you use to choose which photos you want to print or save.

Photo size button. Use this to choose the printed size for all your photos.

Cancel/no. Use this to stop printing, cancel a selection, or to answer no to a question on the LCD display.

Ok/yes. Use this to answer yes to a question or select something.

Save. This is to save selected photos to your PC.

A print button. Press this to print the photo’s you have selected.

On the side of the printer there are two slots. One is for a smart media card the other is for a compact flash card. One of the things I like most about my printer is that you don’t need to have your PC switched on to print photos from your camera. You just switch on the printer pop in the memory card and use all those buttons on the front to select, which prints you want and what size you want them.

Then press print. It couldn’t be simpler.

I find that the prints are nice and clear. I would not go so far as to say that they are of a professional standard. But as a home user I find them very satisfactory. It can also perform two-sided printing and can tell you just how much ink you have left.

Now for the downside:

When I first bought my printer I did find that it had many conflicts with other programs on my computer. Which at the time I found rather frustrating but HP soon brought out a different driver, which you can easily download from there website. This is fine for me as I have Internet access. My mother who has the same printer (bought because she was so impressed with mine) has to rely on me to down load it for her and pass it on. I am sure though that they are now sold with this updated driver, but that is just a problem for people who bought theirs when they first came out.

The other problem is the cost of the ink cartridges these are amongst the most expensive ink jet cartridges on the market. They cost from £20 to £30. The colour cartridge is a tri colour so if one colour goes, you waste the ink remaining in the other two chambers. You can buy some very good compatibles. I pay £11 for the black and £18 for the colour.

All in all I would sum up this printer as very good for the home user who can afford the ink. It is easy to understand, install and use. I would recommend it to anyone.

Thanks for reading