Apple Reviews

I recently bought the hp scanjet 3570c to work with my OS X Mac only because my old scanner was no longer combatable with the new operating system. I have been less than pleased with the performance of my scanner. The interface is clumsy, and I feel that I have much less control over scanning preferences (i.e., descreening options) than I use to with my last scanner. The one button scanning never seems to work right. Spend a little more and get something that is going to work well.

An awesome scanner for the money. Paid $39 at Circuit City (Sorry Amazon). Works like a dream. Of course you could get a higher end scanner but it would be a higher end price to boot. Does everything that the model replacing it does for about $50 less.

I paid $40.00 for this scanner at Circuit City. I got it home and about 5min after I took it out of the box I was scanning and printing some very old photos (yes I did install all the software). I have used other scanners (school, work, kinkos) and this has got to be the simplest to use. Fool proof. Just press a little button, if you want to email your scan just press the button with the envelope picture, just a simple scan just press the scanner button. Like I said Fool Proof. I have no idea what others are saying about white space being cropped out and the guy that says you need 4gb to install the software is a total lie. I guess he must have something against the HP brand. I will admit that the lamp takes some time to warm up (30 sec.) but that is really no problem. I will admit that the scans that it makes are not as good quality as some high end scanners but it is really great. I have scanned some old photos that are like 3x4 and have printed them up to 8x10 with great quality. I give it 5 stars because of the price I paid, the ease of use and the quality I get from it with my experience.

I just replaced my old HP Deskjet 722c with the Photosmart 7550. I am sorely disappointed in the fact that I've had to replace the ink cartridges 5 times since I got it last week - Buyer beware - the tricolor ink cartridge for the 722c is $35 and contains 30ml. The tricolor cartridge for the 7550 is also $35 - but contains only 17 ml - major difference when you do a lot of high-quality color printing. Next time I will know to check the size of the ink cartridges. Mind you, I was printing at a higher than usual resolution - "Normal" resolution for HP brochure/glossy paper. There are a couple of lesser resolutions and then the "best" resolution. The copies so far are extremely nice, but what was supposed to be a reasonably priced Christmas present (calendar) for 28 of my closest friends because more expensive than if I'd just taken the project somewhere to be done professionally. Would I buy this printer again - probably not since my reason for wanting it is for high-quality printing and at a reasonable price. Final note - I had the "photo" options turned off.

I have owned several HP and Epson photo quality printers.
Each has been pretty good, but had one or two annoyances
that grew more bothersome over time. Particularly as
consumer digital cameras have improved to the 3 and 4
megapixel level, it was necessary to do something about
the quality of home photo printers. I think HP had the
farthest to go and they have closed the gap and taken a
wide lead with the 7550. The move to seven inks (from
HP's usual 4)in this model and the ability to go as
high as 4800 X 1200 dpi, has answered my concerns about
larger prints from my 4 megapixel Canon camera. This
printer also has a simple loading mechanism for 4x6
snapshots and I really like the new print cartridge
access (to the right of the paper trays), which means
I no longer have to drag the printer out from under the
shelf to open its top and change a cartiridge. This,
plus the front paper loading mechanism, makes the 7550
a real low profile machine. The LCD and controls allow
you to print pictures without the computer, though that
is not a big deal to me. The printer is quiet and fast
and I haven't given it a picture yet that it hasn't
handled with beautiful results. HP claims the new inks
and papers it is releasing with these new model printers
will last 65 years. I'll get back to you about that
claim in 2067.

After doing quite a bit of research...I found for the money I couldnt beat the HP7550. This printer performs as advertised. It is simple to install, the ink cartridges are simply plug in as well...three ink cartridges allow you not to have to take them in and out for B/W document vs photo printing....ink consumption seems reasonable...but I have already ordered replacements here to keep one set on hand....I have a sony DSC85 digital camera and this printer accepts the memory stick directly into its own port.....I found it very easy to simply print one pic directly from the memory stick...If you are reviewing several pics...I found it easier to manipulate with the computer however, then printing. The one gotcha is the printer does not include the USB A/B cable required to connect it to the computer...nor did any of my research mention that....otherwise Im extremely happy with this printer after one months use and probably 50 pics printed, mostly 4X6 and some 8X10s.....some have complained the printer is noisy.....I compare it to other inkjets and find it the same or less...if you want a "quiet" printer...go laser!!! I would highly recommend this printer!

I purchased this printer about a month ago along with the hp scanjet 5500c Scanner and the Olympus C-50 digital camera (both also were good decisions) for my Mac OS 10.2 system. It has turned out to be an excellent decision. This printer prints both text and pictures very well without problems. However there are some things to consider:

1, if you are planning to use it only by your camera's memory card, it does not work with xD, but if you have a computer don't worry about it.

2, it can take a while to become familiar with its controls

3, for high quality pictures it can take a while to initialize and print, sometimes up to 5-8 minutes for an 8 x 10. However, it's well worth the wait, and you can easily print ordinary quality/smaller pictures.

4, The photo or color ink cartridge may run out more quickly than you might like (remember to replace the photo ink cartridge with the B & W when not printing photos)

This is definitely a good printer for the cost. I have a PC and a Mac OS X 10.2 and it works well for both.

I purchased the HP PhotoSmart 7350 mostly to print out digital pictures. I already had a decent color inkjet, but I wasn't satisfied with the quality of the prints. I debated between getting the 7350 and 7550. The 7350 is slower and doesn't have the LCD screen for previewing pictures, ..., so I had no problem trading price for performance.

The prints I have made from my digital camera are fantastic. I have printed out both 4x6 and 8x10. Many of the people who have seen my prints from the 7350 couldn't tell that they were from a digital camera.

The setup is very easy. I had it connected to my PC and running in less than 5 minutes. The photo software that comes with the printer is very good. It is easy to use but also has a lot of more advanced features.

The printer isn't perfect. The 7350 holds 2 print cartridges, one for the tricolor cartridge and one for the photo or black cartridge. The printer comes with a tricolor and photo, but no black. I print out non-photo documents as much as photos, so it is a bit of a hassle to have to switch the black and photo cartridges.

Another issue is the size of the printer. The 7350 is considerably larger than my previous HP color inkjets and takes up a lot of desk space. If you have a crowded desk, I'd measure first to be sure you have the space.

Overall I am very happy with my purchase and the photo prints look great.

There is so much to recommend about the HP 7350. Printing is extremely quiet and professional in appearance. You have the option of either hooking it up to your PC or Mac (USB cable must be purchased separately) or operating it as an independent unit by simply inserting your smart card into the slot on the front. If you want to print 4x6's, there is a separate tray/slot for this size of paper. The controls have a nice feel, and the screen displaying the options is angled up slightly, making it easy to read for most people. You can print out an "index" or proof sheet of the photos on your card for preview.

The unit comes with 57(color) and 58(photo) cartridges that are about 1/3 full. If you want to use this as a regular ink jet as well, you'll have to buy a #56 black ink cartridge. It also comes with a few sheets of glossy photo paper to get you started.

The photos that come out of this printer look as though they were professional printed, with high resolution (of course, the resolution of your digital camera has a lot to do with this) and a clean look. The printing itself is rather slow, especially if you are used to a laser printer as I am, but the results are well worth it.

I highly recommend this printer to anyone with a digital camera. You won't regret it.

My HP 7150 prints nice photographs. The quality is very good, but I have had a lot of difficulty getting 4x6 sizes of paper to feed properly.

Also, business letters are important to me and I can't get envelopes to feed properly.

It has been frustrating not having availability of free customer service.

I will probably replace this unit with an Epson in the near future.

Recently I have purchased this Printer and being a perfectionist
as well as a Computer Tech I will relate my findings. About a year ago I got into Digital Imaging, and purchased a Nikon
Coolpix 995 camera and was using the Lexmark 3200 with Photo
Cartridge to print out my pictures.This printer allways printed well but was slow as sin and noisey.
So I started to research all possible resources online for input on purchasing a new higher quality Photo Printer.
The Cannon S900 was my intial choice due to it's excellent quality prints, but it had problems printing text documents,and
the Print Head/Nozzels were not user replaceable,which means if you do alot of printing they will eventually wear out and degrade print quality.On the other hand if used it to little the nozzles tend to clog up meaning an expensive trip to the repair shop for Printer Head replacement if the printer cannot be cleaned thruthe nozzle cleaning function in the software.

The new improved HP Photoprinters as well as the Deskjet 5550
have regained their six colors for printing buy using a Photo
Cartridge which can be swaped with a Black ink Catridge for accurate text printing.Also the HP Printers have the nozzles built into the Ink Cartridges, meaning if they cannot be cleaned when clogged up you can simply purchase a new Cartridge
which will resolve the problem as well as getting better print quality via the new nozzles.
Unless you would want to print direct from the printer without a computer, which you can do in the 7350 and the 7550 via thier
Card readers, and thier Printout Previews mode, and dont forget the giant size 1.5 inch color LCD Monitor built into the 7550 which obviouslly cannot show much detail.(I would rather veiw the photos on my 19 inch monitor and adjust them if need be thru software.Also all three Photsmart printers can print directly from Some newer HP Digital Cameras from the front USB connection.
The 7150 has the same Excellent print quality as the two more expensive units without the expensive options as mentioned above.The only faults found on my printer are a touchy 4X6inch
Photo paper holder,hard to load just right, and on some 4X6 Borderless prints the printer does not stop printing at the end of the photo and paper does not release.This problem if found is fixed by updating the Drivers from HP website.
Definitely do not pass up checking out this printer,the results are gorgeous.Puts my Lexmark to shame.

This is my third HP and the results just keep getting better. The 7150 is stylish and well designed. The printer has a 4 x 6 photo tray that allows 20 sheets of photo paper to be loaded and printed in a batch mode directly from HP's excellant photo printing / album layout software. Even with the 20 sheets of 4 x 6 paper loaded you can still print on regular paper via a lower paper tray. Prints using the photo color cartridge are stunning. I have to say I sold my Epson 820 in no time flat and even made my Canon friend blush when he saw how incredible the prints are. As always the big advantage to HP is the quality. These printers don't jam, don't need head cleaning and don't require tweaking to get the results you see on screen.

Considering that this is an older model from HP (HP discontinued this model and suggest to buy Photosmart 145 as an alternative), this is a good printer. It does pretty well what it promises to do - print quality 4x6 photos. The printer is easy to set up and easy to use. It accepts different types of digital memory cards and is pretty fast in printing - less than 30 seconds to print one photo. The quality of the prints is as good as regular camera prints - your friends wouldn't tell the difference unless you tell them. The one inconvenience with this printer is the non-availability of print preview facility on the printer - you have to note down the serial number of the image (by viewing on the camera) before inserting the digital memory card into the printer. Overall, this is a good printer for the price you get it.

The hp photosmart 130 has the quality of a photoshop. I got it for 150 dollars thinking what the heck. But when I tried it out it was more like wow, this thing is tight. It prints fast, crisp, clean pictures off your memory card. It's very simple. You stick your card in the correct slot, and the printer will read the images. The only bad thing is that the pictures are numbered by the order that they are on the memory card. So you have to know that. BUT, there is an alteritive. You can select a range of pictures that you think the picture might be in, ex:(1-27) and then it will print out little thumbnails of those pictures with a number under it. Then from that you can decide the picture number you want to print. BUT, it is sometimes hard to determin what picture it is that you want because it is so small.

PROS-
-Inexpensive Ink
-Great Price
-Easy to use
-Quality
-Quikness
-Sturdyness
-size

Cons-
-thumbnails are often too small

i got this printer to start a photo studio in my house, and i live out of te city and all the people i took a picture, are happy whit it. i am workin whit this printer so, i tink is one of the best i have. also have lexmark 6170 all in one and works great too. the ink last me a lot. have more than 100 shots and still almost at half. i sold all the pict. and share whit some family , all are in love whit this printer. another thing. i dont use glossy paper. starting using ferrania profesional satin is the best paper for photos. try ferrania and youll remember me.

I had an HP Officejet 1170 and gave it awa for this piece of junk! Not only does this All-in-1 have small ink cartridges that seem to run out way before their time...HP also includes an obnoxious popup software to tell you it's time to blow some more money on their bottom line! This feature is unrelenting and leaves me wondering if the cartridges have an internal battery designed to last 30 days regardless of use! Plus, I have never been able to successfully refill these...even the black ink...a great way to mess up the whole device...artfully designed to screw you. In my neck of the woods, adjacent to the second largest city in the USA, no one seems to carry #14 cartridges and when I do find them...what a rip-off! Also, when the fax is used on tone dial, it never works...when HP was made aware of the problem within warantee period...their fix was to have me set it to rotary dial! No repair, no replacement of the disfunctional internal modem...just disable it and go back to 1960's!! What a bunch of crap HP!!! You are theives in the night and I will never buy another HP All-in-1 anything!!!

The HP d135 is a wonderful printer. It has everything a home office needs. It prints, faxes, copies and scans as well as any moderately priced, separate copier, fax machine, printer or scanner. The front panel is intuitively designed. It even has cool features that allow you to print or copy multiple pages on 1 sheet, or reduce/enlarge photos or copies effortlessly. I also like the automatic document feeder. The best part of the printer is that it's fast. I generally use the "fast" setting because it saves time and ink.

This is, by far, the best multifunction machine on the market. And, of course, it's an HP. I only gave the printer four stars because the machine is loud and the CD-ROM that came with my machine was corrupt, so I had to download the driver from the HP website. Otherwise, setting up the printer was no problem. I also think it should come with a USB cable (you have to buy it separately). A machine that does everything should include everything you need in the box to hook it up.

NOTE: If you do a lot of two-sided printing, you should consider the HP d145 or d125. Or you can purchase the two-sided printer accessory separately.

ADDENDUM - I had to exchange my first d135 printer because it was leaving streaks on the page and it was putting large yellow drops on the pages. Because of this, I downgraded this printer to 3 stars. Hopefully, this new printer will work better.

I was hoping for the best, but I guess there's no such thing as an all-in-one product that does everything perfectly....

Overall the D135 is a great multifunction. All the functions work very well and in many cases rival the quality of individual components. Uses HPs new print engine with separated ink cartridges and print heads. The print heads are user replacable and are rated at 3 years or 50000 pages (not bad!!). This should be an economical machine to use.

The scanner has been upgraded from the G85 and is better in every way. The document feeder is much better than the G series and the scans are now optically 600 x 1200 48 bit color (unless you have a Mac which is limited to 36 bit I believe).

The fax is also 33.6 color (assuming you find someone else with a color fax)....Plenty of memory for preprogrammed numbers and 10 one touch keys.

Overall The D135 is quite easy to use with good ergonomics and tons of usable features. Also watch for the forthcoming D145 and D155 which add CF, SM and Sony Memory stick slots for digital camera users, a duplexer to allow two sided printing and copying and, in the case of the d155, a second paper tray for power users.

Pitfalls, and there's always a few....

1) Typical for HP printers, prints are often skewed just a little bit on the page. About 1mm off when comparing left to right. This seems to be an HP trait. I tried 4 different D135 machines, all with a similar problem.... Many users won't notice the slight skewing, but I found it quite easily when printing borderless photos.

2) The WinXP software isn't ready yet so the functionality is limited a bit right now. PC faxing yet not enabled yet and sone scanning functions don't work yet (including OCR unless you buy an off the shelf Twain compliant OCR program).

3) The scanner head is a bit noisy. No biggie, just thought I'd bring it up. Don't expect to use it in the bedroom while the wife is sleeping!!!

Despite the quirks, overall HP has a winner!!

I am using this product with a JetDirect print server. It scans, faxes, and prints over my network with no problems.BUT, the scanner carriage wastes time traveling to the opposite side for ADF scanning. It wasted even more time when the carriage would doulble pass per page using the ADF until I upgraded to the lastest firmware. The scanner carriage has a nervous twitching habit for no apparent reason. For faxing, this product is snobby when it come to socializing with other(COMM ERROR 321)fax machines, whereas the competitive products talk just fine to all fax machines using my same senario. YES...I have a clean phone line. YES...I've tried all possible combinations of V.34 and ECM being either on or off. I've been into the Developer's Menu. Have no clue on solving the fax issue in here. PRINTING IS FLAWLESS. If this poduct could digest some attention deficit disorder medication, then it would have some potential.

I have had my HP Laserjet 3330 for a couple of years now. Despite its fairly bulky size, I enjoy being able to get my separate printer, scanner, and fax machine off my desk, so I save a lot of space. The flatbed scanner was a must-have feature, and I love the automatic document feeder. Print quality is consistently speedy and high quality and I save bundles compared to an inkjet-based multifunction. (Those may cost less initially, but you'll pay for it in those overpriced ink cartridges!).

My primary use for this device is as a printer, my main complaint is the paper tray is very cheap and poorly designed. Try to remove the tray without removing the paper first and you have a big mess on your hands.

As a fax machine, this is a huge step up from my old dedicated fax machine, since I can fax directly from my computer, with the flatbed scanner, or with the automatic document feeder. I do have a couple of gripes with the fax software, though (see list of gripes below).

As a scanner, I love having both the automatic document feeder and the flatbed scanner for scanning oddly-shaped documents. When I first purchased it, the ADF was horribly slow because the scan head would have to go all the way over to the left edge to reach the adf, then returned all the way to the right edge between each page. It made it slow and tedious. HP fixed that bug with a BIOS update available on their web site in early 2003. Otherwise, I love its ability to put a big stack of documents in and walk away. I have scanned thousands of black-and-white documents and the speed is adequate and the ADF rarely misfeeds. Do NOT, however, purchase this scanner for its ability to scan photographs. Color scans are of dissapointingly poor quality. (pretty much unusable for high quality scanning of photos).

I have great success networking this printer in a peer-to-peer environment. I think there was some comment about being able to use the scanner and fax functions from networked computers, but I have never attempted this.

Gripes:

I had hoped to clear up my desk with a multifunction that could do everything I wanted to do with a printer, fax, and scanner. Now it appears that I need to purchase a scanner for scanning my color photographs since the quality is so poor. I get streaking lines through all darkly-colored sections of a photo. The scanner is fairly slow, and the maximum DPI is 600 dpi. There is no available transparency adapter for this scanner if you wanted to scan negatives, although with the color scanning quality problems and low scan resolution you wouldn't want to try.

The software that ships with this, and all HP products, IMHO is of very poor quality. My third-party scan drivers that work with most TWAIN-based scanners won't work with this scanner, either. The fax software is fine if you want to send pages from all one application, but it lacks the ability to temporarily store pages if you want to fax some sheets from, say, Excel, with a cover page from Word. You have to print some of them out and put them in the ADF, which seems kind of wasteful, but I don't fax a huge volume so it hasn't affected me as much as it might affect others.

Overall

At the time I purchased this unit, I felt it was the best laser-based multifunction on the market. When you purchase a multifunction, you are sacrificing your ability to get the best of each product; fax, scanner, and printer. Of course, you don't have to have three pieces of equipment on your desk, either. In this case, recognize that the scanner is probably the weakest link in this product and I would emphasize that if you are purchasing this product for scanning black-and-white documents, you will probably be happy with it. If you have hopes of digitizing your photo albums, keep looking.

I've had the 3330 for about 6 weeks and am very happy so far. Two concerns so far, one is with using odd sized paper, and the other is the scanner function. If scanning is an important function, you will want a different machine, I've never had a dedicated scanner that was so very slow. Making copies and sending faxes goes well, not sure why the scanner is so slow.

I use Windows XP Home and had some trouble with using odd size paper, e.g. small envelopes, 5 1/2" x 8 1/2" paper, etc. HP Service wasn't very helpful, just suggesting that I reinstall the drivers. Did get it working by defining custom paper sizes in my MS Office suite, so now it works fine with any paper I want to use.

Except for the paper problem, and the slow scanning I would have given it 5 stars

This is a cute little printer. It has what all of the other mini-photo printers lacked. The LCD monitor. I picked one of these up for a client who traveled all over the world and didn't want to buy 20 memory sticks for her digital camera. This little machine does the job. With 4800x1200 line resolution and the fact that you do not need a computer to run it, it is a great pick for anyone who wants quality while he or she is on the move. The one disadvantage (I can't call its inability to print text a disadvantage, it was designed as a photo printer), is the fact that it uses the number 57 color ink cartridge instead of the 58 photo tank. . . The 57 is like 10 bucks more, and the photo tank has longer lasting ink. But overall, for the purpose of mobility, this printer does what it is supposed to do. It is a good piece of equipment and I think that it is pretty sturdy. The face folds into the printer for easy transport and so the print tray doesn't sustain damage in transit. It takes all of the major digital media: Compact Flash, Smart Media, Sony Memory Stick, and Secure Digital. Thus far they do not use the new format used in Fuji Film cameras.

If you have the money, and space is not a concern, consider the HP 7550. It is a fully functional printer and uses the number 58 photo tank in conjunction with the 56 black and the 57 color. If cost, space and transportability are a concern, then this is your printer. My complaints are actually pretty minor in comparison to the quality of the product, they just happen to stand out a bit, I still give it four out of five stars. . . It does exactly what it is supposed to and the quality of the pictures is top shelf!

epc

I purchased an earlier version of this printer last year along with my first digital camera. It is identical to this with one less port for memory cards. My camera was a 2 megapixel Olympus D510 so I did not intend to enlarge my photos beyond 4x6. This printer offered small size and ease of use, which appealed to me at the time. The printer does not need to be connected to a computer to produce high quality 4x6 images - as close to photos from film as you can get with 2 megapixels. I now have a three megapixel camera and the prints are even better.

This printer is so easy to use. Just plug it in, add paper, insert the smartmedia, compact flash, or memory stick into the appropriate slot, select the number of the photo you want to print, press the print button and watch a beautiful photo emerge from the printer. It weighs only 3 pounds and can be easily transported anywhere. I take it on vacation with me (in a soft sided, padded lunch box) and surprise my friends with instant copies of photos.

The are only a few drawbacks for this printer. First, photo paper and ink cartridges cost a lot so your photos will not be cheaper than outside processing. I try to purchase in larger quantities to reduce the cost and I use cheaper paper for less important prints. The second drawback is the inability to view the photo on the printer prior to printing. You'll have to jot down the photo's number from your camera screen. And, of course you can't crop or modify your prints on this printer, but that's not really different from developing photos at the store.

As for durability, as I said, I've had this printer for almost a year, have taken it everywhere, printed hundreds of photos and never had the slightest problem. It's a great little printer!

If you want to print a few high quality 4x6 photos on the spot without a PC, this is the printer for you. I recently attended a family reunion and before the punch bowl was empty everyone had a photo in their hand and a smile on their face. It is very easy to use. Just load any type memory chip and press print, or you can select the photo, adjust the contrast and crop the photo using the color screen. Get near photo lab results in a little over 2 minutes per photos.

I bought a 7490c scanner mainly because I needed to convert paper documents to PDF files.

Unfortunately, even if the scanner works quite well without using the ADF or preparing PDF documents, I could not succeed in doing what I needed.

The Automatic document feeder is not reliable for scanning A4 papers, since while taking the papers it often rotates them giving a rotated image as a result.

Moreover the Hp precision scan pro 3.0 software has a bug in producing black and white PDF files , and HP does not know how to fix it.

Therefore, if you need to have a large number of pages scanned , avoid this scanner and go for a fujitsu.