Customer Reviews

HP PSC 2110 Multifunction

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(23)

 

 

I originally purchased a HP PSC 750 after testing the quality of the copying and printing capabilities in the store, but I couldn't test the scan features until I got home. Well, I do graphics for a living and the quality of the scan (16-bits) wasn't cutting it, so back to the store I went. This time HP had a representative in the store, so we got down to talking scanning spec's. Only he was able to tell me that the HP PSC 2110 scanned color at 48-bits vs the HP PSC 750 at 16-bits, but that I would not find the quality as good as a stand alone HP scanner (64-bits), but the 2110 was 3 times better than 750. Long story short, the scan quality is great and is very close to the quality of the stand alone scanner. BUT, make sure you install the software and add the hardware in the correct order, if not the device/drivers will cause a conflict when you try to load windows and will freeze your system. I have Windows 98 SE.

I was given the HP PSC 2110 multifunction printer after my sister repossessed my highly reliable and well liked Lexmark X-83 multifunction. The story is, my Lexmark was sitting idly for a few months when my sister got it in her head she really wanted a printer. And why go buy a printer when you can just "borrow" her brother's. Well, my sister is a computer neophyte and when I saw that she managed to install the drivers and correctly hook up the printer turning it into a fixture with her computer system, I just did not have the heart to reclaim the printer.

Well, then when my printing needs required a printer, I was given the HP PSC 2110 multifunction. The best way to proceed is to outline the topics.

Speed - Excellent speed. The "fast draft" quality still looks better than previous generation dpi quality and "fast draft" is ridiculously fast. No complaints on speed.

Installation - No problem on the install. It did put some goofy icons on the desktop and they aren't all that useful.

Ink Cartridge - I received a notification that my black ink cartridge was nearly out of ink. I then proceeded to print countless numbers of pages without noticing a dropoff in printout quality.

Noise - EXTREMELY NOISY. One would figure that a printer should make noise when printing but this unit makes noise when it is idle - performing repeated self checks seemingly at random.

Power - The printer also does NOT have an automatic shut off or a power save mode. This is annoying.

Scanner - My scans of black and white pictures came out light and extremely grainy. I used the competent but not spectacular bundled software to REDUCE the sharpness of the scanned pic by 200 percent. This eliminated the grainy aspect. Playing with the contrast will help with the light aspect. The other quirk I ran into here was that I had to have the bundled software running in order for the scanner to send the scanned image to the computer. If it wasn't running, the printer only returned an error message.

Bundled software - Not much to write home about.

Envelopes - The paper tray can be manipulated to print envelopes up to 8 1/2 inches by width. It prints envelopes very well.

Copier function - Works independent of the computer (i.e. the printer need not be connected to the printer for the copier to function).

All in all, I would recommend this printer but not entirely without reservations.

Bought this a few weeks ago to replace an HP DeskJet (still worked but slow). I have been very pleased with it so far. Installed it on an XP system without any problems. As with most USB devices, be sure to follow the directions when installing. We use it primarily as a printer and also make copies. Copy quality is good and you can easily select fast, normal or best quality and copy in black/white or color - all from the devices control panel. Note that the 2110 does not have a sheet feeder. Also, remember to get a USB cable since one isn't included in the box.

If you're doing a lot of scanning, I'd suggest getting separate products. I've experimented a little with the scanner but gave up and used my Epson Perfection 1640 Office (a great scanner) instead which is faster, has a legal size bed and has a sheet feeder. If you're doing much OCR, you'll want to get a program like TextBridge Pro (under $) or if you're really serious, OmniPage Pro (around $).

I've been very impressed with the print quality - particularly on photos. I also have an Epson C80 and this printer does a much better job when printing on premium glossy photo paper. I purchased an optional photo cartridge (replaces the black cartridge) and printed some photos in 6 color - excellent quality - the dark areas of the photos are more natural and skin tones are better.

Several reviews have said the printer is loud - I would disagree. It does periodically "adjust" itself but it's not noisy. Paper feed is reasonably quite (much quieter than my Epson C80). I would probably turn it off at night if it was in my bedroom though.

The reviewer who said you can't put a used cartridge back in the printer is wrong. I did it today when using the photo cartridge without a problem. Perhaps he didn't get the cartridges back in correctly.

Few suggestions for improvement:

Separate tanks for the color ink cartridges (it uses a single 3 color cartridge and a black cartridge which can be temporarily replaced with a 3 color photo cartridge). We have printed several hundred color and black/white pages and haven't replaced a cartridge yet - although, for the last 4 days, it has been warning that the color cartridge is low. More accurate ink indicators would be nice.

In typical HP fashion, it only holds about 50 sheets of paper.

In summary, for printing and copying, I would buy this again without hesitation.

I bought this unit to replace both a UMAX 610S scanner and a Canon BJC-4300 printer, both of which were showing their age, but still worked well. I hate spending money on products that produce bad results, so I compared the HP against the comparable Epson and Lexmark products. I also compared against the newer Canon printers.

To compare print quality, I got sample prints from each of the printers on normal paper and looked for the best one. HP came out on top on the surface. Of course, the print samples are optimized to make the printer look really good. Needless to say, most of my printing would not be optimized samples, but rather just plain text. So I took the print samples and concentrated on the text. The HP had higher contrast, sharper text than the others. OK, time for some magnification. Using a Bausch & Lomb 10x magnifying loupe, I saw that the dots comprising the HP text were in much better registration than with any of the other printers when printing at a usable print speed. Since the Epson, Lexmark, and Canon print samples were noticeably inferior to HPs, HP won the printing contest. When printing in the fast draft mode, the HP was still very clear and nice and fast.

For scanning, I found that it is nearly impossible to compare scan quality without hooking the scanner up to your computer. The only comparison of scanners that can be made at a typical computer store is one of size and perhaps how well it would contribute to the Ch'i of your workspace. Fortunately, scan quality was of secondary importance to me. If I wanted 2400 dpi, I wouldn't be looking for a combo unit like this. My testing of the scanner was accomplished by putting my car keys and some loose change on the glass and hitting the copy button. One thing that was important regarding the scanning was the capability of scanning a three-dimensional object. My UMAX scanner has close to 2 inches of depth-of-field (an object almost 2 inches off the glass is still pretty sharp). Certain scanners (Canon 650U, for example) that use LEDs to scan have ZERO depth-of-field, meaning if the object is not on the glass, it is blurry. To make a long story stop, the HP has good depth-of-field, and make a quick copy of my car keys.

Thus end the accolades.

I have had a few problems with the PSC2110, some operational, some philosophical, but none related to the quality of the result.

First, as is mentioned elsewhere, follow the directions precisely when installing the unit, or you will have to uninstall and reinstall.

The biggest operational problem I am continuing to experience with the printer has to do with my Windows 98 installation. Periodically, the printer doesn't respond to print jobs. The active job shows up in the print queue but cannot be deleted. The only way to print this job is to restart Windows and hope that it works. There is no way of predicting when this will happen. It is documented on HP's support web site and they admit that they don't know why it happens, but blames it on
insufficient system resources, like my 384MB of RAM, or other resource conflicts. I think I know why the problem happens, but you'll have to keep reading.

Another operational problem I've had is with printing envelopes. Try as I may, I couldn't get an envelope to print correctly. As a result, my Canon BJC-4300 is still being used for this purpose. I may get it to work in the future, but the point is that if it is trivial to print envelopes on my 5 year old Canon printer, it should me moreso on a new printer.

The first philosophical problem I have with the HP PSC2110 is the fact that what is essentially the driver weighs in at 160 MEGAbytes, which should be downright criminal for a printer/scanner. This is bigger than Windows 95 and has got to be in the running for most inefficient use of computing power by any software package currently out there, and there are some bad ones. Even when I'm not printing, I can detect the performance of my system being dragged down by this software. This is a
problem that didn't exist before on my system.

Software that big (bloatware) is bound to have many more bugs in it than smaller software packages. HP's decision to make a huge printer/scanner driver contributes to the Windows 98 (and WinMe) problem mentioned above, and is probably the reason they can't find the problem yet. The product is too big. When all is said and done, they will probably find a memory leak of some sort somewhere or will abandon trying to fix the bug because there will be other ones that affect newer OSes.

Another thing I don't like is the scanner interface. Once again, because it was written to be a "designer" UI rather than an efficient one, the response on my system to things like adjusting levels, resolution, scan area, etc., are as if I were communicating with the driver over a 56K modem. My UMAX driver, in comparison, was quick, powerful, and efficient. There are other design problems with the scanner interface. The workflow is very rigid. First you wait 5 seconds for the HP splash
screen to go away. Then you must do a preview scan, after which you may adjust the scan settings, then you can do your final scan, after which the scanner interface window DISAPPEARS WITHOUT SAVING YOUR SETTINGS. After looking at the final scan, if you want to change a setting, you have to start over with the splash screen again.

In short (short?), I am having a love-hate relationship with the PSC2110. The results are great, but I sometimes hate the way I have to get to them.

I know that's saying a lot but I believe it's true. In the last year or so HP has really been getting their printers right. I have a collection of 3 HP printers now. I have the HP 1200 laser printer, the Photosmart 130 photo printer and now the HP 2110. Each of these printers excels at a certain task and so I find them all quite useful.

I bought the HP 2110 because I use Windows XP and my dedicated scanner (an HP 4200) was not getting along well with XP. Also I had a Canon color printer, which never really worked well, finally poop out on me. So this unit takes the place of the color scanner and color printer. As an added bonus I now have a color/B&W copier. All 3 functions work magnificently. I consider this a utility printer so I'm not picky about the specs on this unit. But the fact is it has great scan and print resolutions.

To me the most important issue is reliability. While I'm very happy with the quality of the prints I want to know this printer will be around for awhile. I am very confident that this printer is going to last. I had an HP Deskjet 520 that was somewhere around 14 years old before I finally sold it on EBay. I'm sure it's still in service somewhere today. There was a time when HP printers had declined in quality. I bought a few and brought them right back. But these last 3 printers I bought are all keepers. I'm very impressed with some of the printers HP is putting out right now.

The 2110 works like it's supposed to. You don't have to have the printer connected to your computer (I use a laptop in another room) to make copies. Just push either the B&W or the color copy button and out comes your copy. That alone makes it worth the price I paid for it!

The drivers and software loaded up THE FIRST TIME with no hassles or hiccups and it worked right out of the box. The HP Director software is exceptional. All the features of the printer are made easily accessible. I was also happy with the Read Iris software that came with this printer. It is a document reading package that is fully functional, not a time-limited demo. What I have used most is the ability to create PDF documents from scans. PDFs are great for emailing documents since everyone in the world has Adobe Acrobat. It is works marvelously.

I have not had one single paper jam on this unit--not even close. I haven't printed envelopes because I do that on my laser printer. I also haven't printed 4 X 6 photos because I do that on the dedicated photo printer. I HAVE printed in color and am very happy with the results. If you hear other reviewers complaining about the color quality keep in mind they probably had the wrong kind of paper in their unit. People can't expect photo quality from 20lb copier paper. Garbage in, garbage out! I will say this is probably not going to be a great DEDICATED photo printer. Again I say it's more of a general utility printer. Other printers are going to be better suited for high quality photos. I have not yet found a printer that does EVERYTHING great.

This is the second generation of a very well thought out printer design. My girlfriend has an HP750 and I was so impressed with it that I wanted to get one myself. I ended up getting the 2110 because it had higher scan and print resolutions plus it has a lower form factor. That was important because of the way my computer desk is designed.

The bottom line is you cannot possibly go wrong with this printer. This printer is destined for the "classic" category. To top it off they are practically giving them away at today's current prices. If I haven't made it clear already I also highly recommend the HP1200 and the Photosmart 130. All 3 of these printers are exceptional in their own right and I expect to put them to work for at least the next 5 years. I WOULD, however, part with the photo printer sooner if they double the print resolution for the same price. I have no desire to print documents at higher resolutions than 1200 X 1200 so as long as the other two keep working I'll keep them in service. If that's 10 or 15 years from now, all the better! Unlikely though since newer operating systems rarely get along well with older hardware. It'll be hard to get me to upgrade from XP though. It's the best, most stable OS Microsoft has put out yet.

P.S. Steer clear of Canons. Junk...pure junk. And by the way, in case you think I am biased in favor of HP printers I can tell I purchased a Photosmart 7350. I broke it in the first 5 minutes I had it! If you aren't EXTREMELY careful you'll break it. The drive mechanism is simply too fragile. Not all HP printers are worth their weight in gold.

I almost didn't buy this machine because the reviews were so equally split between those who loved it and those who hated it.
I really wanted the multifunction, so I took a chance. So far, so good. No problems, and I have Windows 98 SE. The installations directions are good, but amazingly I misintrepreted a screen message. BE CAREFUL: DO NOT PLUG IN THE POWER BEFORE YOU PLUG IN THE USB. I did that and had to uninstall the software and begin again. Once I REALLY followed the directions, I had NO problems.

When my XEROX Workcenter 250 and ink cartridges were discontinued, I was forced to look for a new FAX and copy machine, which is what I was primarily using the XEROX for. After spending about a week researching products, I chose this machine, for the following reasons: 1. The price was great for the vast functionality provided, 2. I wanted an inkjet because I liked it in the XEROX for FAX/copy quality, and 3. I liked the small footprint of this capable machine.

The set-up was extremely easy and installed flawlessly on my laptop running XP-home OS. (You need to buy USB A-B printer cable). I tried every function on this machine - here's a short review:

1. Flatbed Scanner - Clear, sharp color scans. The included software allows you to scan the image and then manipulate it such as rotating, etc.

2. Printing - clear, sharp color printing. I would say it's not as good as my HP LaswerJet 5L for plain documents, but the print is of professional standards. I printed a number of color photos from JPG files, onto plain paper (5 x 7), and they printed wonderfully - nice colors, no borders.

3. Copying/FAXing - The flatbed scanner is used for copying and FAXing. You have to scan each page individually (up to 50) before copying. There isn't a way to auto-feed multiple pages, which means you have to be present to scan and copy or fax. You have the choice of making color or B&W copies or FAXes. Scanning is very fast, though, so this compensates for having to be present to scan in individual pages.

4. Accepting photo memory cards - this is an unbelievable feature. You insert a photo memory card (it accepts any type) into a slot in the front of the machine, and it prints a proof sheet with "selection options" that you specify by circling which photos you want, what size, type of border etc. You place the completed proof sheet (indicated by circles on your options) back on the scanner and your photos are printed per your direction. This is done directly from the machine without the need for your computer.

I am very pleased with my choice, and the research was well worth the effort. The technology and capabilities you are getting with this multifunction unit is terrific, and the price for the quality and features you are getting is unbeatable.

Just bought this thing. The first one worked for 1 hour, then made a bzzz sound. That was followed by a burning smell and smoke coming out the side. The replacement one wouldn't even turn on once (I tried multiple power cables... the replacement was DOA). I'm awaiting my third one. On the bright side though, HP customer service is first rate, and they said I would eventually get one that worked and would even upgrade me if this next one didn't work for any reason.

the dishonesty of printer manufacturers continues to get worse with each new product coming out. For years these guys build these machines to self-destruct the day after the warranty expires or when X number of copies have been printed, they have taken it one step further with this machine. The machine uses really expensive and very small ink cartridges that make very few copies before having to be replaced. Should you happen to remove a cartridge when it is still almost full, the only way to get this printer to work again is to buy a new cartridge the almost full cartridge you took out will no longer work in the machine (I can only guess they designed it this way to prevent users from using refill kits). A set of cartridges came with the printer, I put them in and took them out and put them in again without ever even making one copy and then had to go buy two brand new cartridges at a cost of over [$$$] before the machine would work (at the time I thought I had received defective cartridges), a couple weeks later I removed the almost full cartridges to check the cartridge numbers so I could order some backups, when I put them back in they would no longer work, this is when I realized that this was by design and again had to go buy another new set of cartridges before the printer would work, what a rip-off. There are no warnings of any kind on the machine or in the manual that if you remove a full ink cartridge the ink cartridge will not work when reinstalled. This is immoral and should be illegal. I will never buy another hp product of any kind.

Beware - this printer is noisy! And it likes to do self-tests every once in awhile for no apparent reason - that is, if you place it in your bedroom like I did it WILL wake you up at 1:30 in the morning to do its little 30-second cartridge exercises. Very annoying.

The included software is amazingly hardware-intensive. It slowed down my 2.4Ghz Dell like you wouldn't believe. And you can't just install the driver - to use the printer you have to install everything from the included ads to the ocr software no one uses.

The scanning is really bad quality in Windows XP - I don't know if my scanner was messed up or something, but the scans were really light and grainy, and the software didn't help in my trying to fix them (and I'm good with computers).

I recommend going with a Canon or one of those new Epson multifunctions.