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I just bought a new computer and I want to buy a new printer as well.

I’m lookin for (obviously) top performance and would like superior photo printing along with better than average text print quality and speed. I work in a law office and do bring work home, plus a do a fair amount of “publishing” type output for volunteer work and hobbies.

Does anyone have any suggestions – anything you’ve found especially good that you’d recommend?

Thanks.

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Unless you feel that you absolutely have to print photos at home I’d recommend you use any of the photo services such as Kodakgallery.com : Print, Store & Share Digital Photos

--Joe

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I fully agree with Joe on the cost aspect of home printing vs photo service.
I use a Canon Pixma IP 4000 (now succeeded by 4300), which I find excellent in both quality and possibilities. It has seperate ink tanks, a duplexer for automatic double-sided printing and the ability to print directly and full-color on appropriate CD/DVD discs (with a white coating on top). And for a street price of just

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Thanks to both of you for the responses. I’m looking around and have looked at both the Canon you mention, as well as a couple of Epson printers. I used to use Epson back in the days of dot matrix and always found them reliable. I find today that most Canon products are well-made and reliable and the IP 4300 is a strong possibility for what I need. My existing printer – and HP 5550 – has been really reliable and printed color photos beautifully, even though that’s not what I bought it for. I picked it up for $99 at Best Buy and had it for more than 3 years. Gave it to my cousin with the computer system I replaced – only because I want’d a new one, but it handled text and graphics equally as well.

Again, thanks for the help. I’ll let you know what I end up with.

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CD, I’m curious if you from time to time use a remote connection from home to work? We’re a law office with a Citrix Presentation Server for a handful of attorneys who like to have the ability to remote into work on occasion. Because Citrix use terminal server technology, we’ve had trouble in the past with getting some of those attorneys’ home printers to work in the remote environment. It’s just something to consider if you do use a remote connection.

As for color printers, we’ve had good luck over the years with HP Photosmart printers. Our newest one – an HP Photosmart 8450 – goes through the toner licky split but the photo quality is excellent. Several times a month we’re called on to scan in and print photo quality images for things like damaged autos, injuries, property damage, etc.

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My wife has really gotten into photos lately (see picture to left) and the HP printer that I had was not photo quality. I bought an HP Photosmart 8250 , and have never looked back.
It is fairly economical to use as well. I print documents and brochures, and the documents are clean and print relatively fast as well.

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I bought the 8250 – it’s been a real experience. The installation disk didn’t work! I got HP Chat online and it took them 40 minutes to decide they really should send me another disk which they were supposed to send overnight mail – it’s not here yet! I got them back online and they gave me the url to take me to where I could download it. I did and it worked.

HOWEVER, the photo paper doesn’t feed out of the photo tray and other than a size 10 envelope, the sensors are not sensing different paper size so when I want to print, for example, a 9.5 x 5.5 envelope for a greeting card, I get a message saying the paper is too small. I have had two supervisors in Chat online for hours today and it just won’t work. They sent me to two different online articles and sent me another, so I have not printed 30 pieces of paper and still can’t print a 4×6 photo. The good news is that I did print a #10 envelope!

Since you seem to have had good luck with this printer, can you shed any light on this , as I don’t think the HP people even know what they’re talking about. I spend most of the time online waiting until they read whatever they’re reading to then type instructions to send to me!

Thanks

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Sorry to hear that you are experiencing difficulties with the printer. I will admit that this printer is not the most user friendly printer and that their manual leaves much to be desired.
I installed the software on my wife’s PC, and all of that went smoothly. When I first printed out a photo it didn’t print out like it should have either. I then tried to print a document from her computer and that printed out on photo paper even though I changed the settings from their software to document. I read through the manual again, and decided that I wasn’t fluid in jiberish!. I then said to myself: “Self – there has to be a better way” and sure enough there is. All I did was to right click on the printer icon in Printers and Faxes and choose your settings from there, document, envelope, or the default photo. Once I tried that all is well and it works like a charm.

Give that a go and post back to let me know if that helped.
I have used their On-Line chat as well and for small issues it seems Ok. When I have had to call about printer or scanner issues, I have always called their 800# and gotten someone in Boise Idaho.

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>>>>I don’t think the HP people even know what they’re talking about. I spend most of the time online waiting until they read whatever they’re reading to then type instructions to send to me!

Generally, I do agree with your assessment of the HP overseas people. I recently was having a problem with the top cover Scan buttons not working on my HP Scanjet 4890. After MUCH time wasted trying this and that and talking to a number of their techs ( reading from a manual ) they agreed it was a hardware problem with the top cover. ( the TMA adapter ) “we will send you a new scanner”, said they! Lo and behold the FedEx driver brings me a new LOWER part of the scanner not the top! This compares to having a problem with your Auto windshield wipers and getting a new headlight to fix them!

Back it goes, more useless talks with the techs in wherever land. ( who I can hardly understand ) Same decision and the same results: a new LOWER half of the scanner.

FINALLY, after much screaming and threats and so on, they escalate my complaint to a Senior Case Manager in the USA!
She was a Godsend! Recognized the problem and immediately produced a solution that cured all. Not only did she send a brand new Scanner ( that worked ) but also gave me an extended 2 year warranty on it without charge. All is now well, I’m glad to say.

SO…it seems you just have to get to the right person to produce good results.

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We have a HP Deskjet 1220C, 11 inch wide color printer. I works great even on photos. We also have a HP Lazerjet 2100, for our black and white printing. It is worth having both, as the lazer is a lot faster and why waste the ink on a b/w print from the color printer.

DaveA I am so far behind, I think I am First
Genealogy....confusing the dead and annoying the living

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Just wanted to let everyone know how I made out:

Sarah Rose was my Case Manager at HP; she sent me a C6980 and although I wasn’t thrilled about getting a refurbished printer for a new one, she threw in three print cartridges to make up the difference.

So, this thing seems to work well.

I’m not sure what happened but at some point after HP Chat helped me – actually led me all around the mulberry bush – trying to print envelopes – we got it working and then I went back and everything that should have printed on letter size was printing in columns. I ended up restoring the defaults and then printed everything I wanted to by just making the changes in Word which is what I’ve wanted to do all along.

In their effort to help, the tech support people somethings go overboard and cause more problems than you had in the first place. Once I did that, I’ve been changing envelope sizes in Word and the printer seems to detect what it has to do (again what I wanted from the beginning).

So, problem solved and I’m happy with HP; they did go out of their way to solve this problem to my satisfaction and especially grateful to helpful who escalated t his through the ranks of HP people to get me to this point.

Where would I be without this forum!

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