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26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Overall, I like it., July 2, 2005
This review is from: HP Photosmart 2710 All-in-One Printer (Office Product)
I bought the 2710 to replace an aging Brother MFC model that printed too slowly. Indeed, the 2710 prints amazingly fast, both in B&W & in color. The other features of this HP were just extras, but tempting enough to lure me in to buying it.
The wireless connectivity appealed to me because I love to decrease the tangle whenever possible. My printer sits 2 feet from my PC & my wireless router, but that little area has more than its share of cables & wires. Unfortunately, the wireless connection proved unreliable, making it often impossible to access the HP from the desktop software (a "not connected" message would show up). In the end I trotted out a USB cable and plugged it in and all has been well since.
As other reviewers have noted, the software is the work of a diabolical fiend. Okay, maybe it's not that bad, but it is a really clunky, user-unfriendly and wholly unintuitive interface that takes an hour to install even on a really juiced PC! As if that weren't enough, it self-corrupts now and then and requires a full reinstall, while it is virtually impossible to fully remove the old install (trust me, it's still there). Therefore, when I wish to use the software now, I must select from its drop-down box "copy 3". Sheeesh.
Another gripe was that my original 2710 would reset itself every week or so, an event that meant that I'd walk into my home office and find the thing flashing every button on its panel like mad. Of course any faxes that had been sent in that unknown interval were lost. Only unplugging it for a minute would resolve that problem. After trying tricks like isolating its power supply and making sure it had its own UPS and even disabling its wireless output, I just returned it and installed the new one in its place. That problem has never recurred, so it was clearly just a defective machine.
The major disappointment for me is one that I should have realized when I bought it: a flatbed scanner means a flatbed fax, which means you can't load up a multi-page document and just dial and send. In this case, you have to scan each page and then send the whole thing afterwards. Fortunately I get a lot more faxes here than I send, but it's still annoying.
So what are the good points? Well it prints very fast and very, very well, including photos which when done with the photo ink cartridge and photo paper look pretty much like lab prints. It also scans and copies quickly and beautifully and the software does make archiving the scans quite simple. The fax speed is excellent and unlike the Brother, it prints faxes out without much noise. The design is pleasing and the incorporation of a large, bright, and easy to read LCD screen makes operation simpler. Also, the built in memory card reader is highly functional, allowing you to preview your photos on its LCD and to print directly from the card without the PC even being involved.
I gave it 4 stars because the poor software issue comes into play very little on a day to day basis and because the defective 1st machine doesn't necessarily mean QC is a problem. Others in my house are accessing it via their wireless connections, so that does indeed work and is of some value. Lastly, that there is no fax feeder is obviously not their fault, it's just a design feature of all flatbeds.
In the end then, this is an attractive and all around very competent printer that also handles scanning, copying and (at least incoming) faxing quite well. I would buy another if the need arose.
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29 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Software for this totally stinks..., December 5, 2004
This review is from: HP Photosmart 2710 All-in-One Printer (Office Product)
I was leery of buying HP because in the past they just haven't seemed to have it together as much as Canon and others. But, I was so impressed by the features of this HP 2710, and I couldn't find anything just like it by Canon, so I bought this. The good news is, the hardware part of this works like a dream and is very impressive. The bad news is, the software package that goes with this is a mess and IS bloated. I have WIN ME, and what a disaster...the HP software installation blew up the first time I tried to install it and gave me registry errors. I have installed and uninstalled the software probably 15 times. About half the time you try to install, it blows up without totally installing. Leaving you to once again uninstall and install. And the fix to everything according to HP is to uninstall and install again, which takes about an hour round trip. I never did get the software to totally work with an ethernet (no scanning or file transfer capability), so I ditched that and did USB. After several uninstalls and installs again (which finally corrupted explorer.exe and I had to reload WIN ME), I still cannot scan and HP DIRECTOR is giving me script errors (and no - not any script errors listed on HP support - and I already did what they said to do to fix script errors). DIRECTOR runs the whole show and without it I am without useful ways to use and change parameters on my printer. I'll give really, really high marks to HP support, they were easy to get ahold of and they will sit on the phone for hours with you trying to fix things, but it doesn't do much good, because they cannot fix these problems at this time. I would think long and hard before buying until they update the software, unless you want to spend HOURS working on it and be left with a partially working application. Especially around Christmas...
12/06/04 - I want to add that I did a lot of research on this software installation problem, and at this time it boils down to this: It will either install with very few hitches and run flawlessly, or you will have several problems with installation and be left with an AIO system that doesn't totally work. For example, I cannot scan or change any of my scan resolution settings (or use anything with HP DIRECTOR - not because all the icons are missing - but because of script errors), or use the one button scan or file transfer features of the hardware because it doesn't recognize my computer. And mind you, this is with an installation that at the end said it installed successfully (it went through fax set-up, registration, and everything). I have seen posts of problems very similiar to mine in Windows XP (even SP2 - one guy had one computer it would work on, and one it would not) so it doesn't appear to matter if you have ME or XP. And nobody, including TECH support, seems to have a reason for the problems or a fix for this at this time. The software version I have is 4.2.0 (Photosmart 2600/2700 series) for WIN 98, ME, 2000, and XP. Again, if you want everything to work correctly, I would check the HP web site and make sure they upgraded this software or they have a fix for the problems I described (which they do not at this time) before buying, otherwise from my experience and research, you are playing Russian Roulette as to whether the software installs correctly on your system.
12/07/04 - AND...one more follow up and then I'm done...do yourself a favor and read ALL the reviews for the HP 7410 (which should be using the same software), or the HP PSC 2410, which is a forerunner to the 2710...you'll find plenty of references to the "bloated software" and installation problems. In fact the more I read reviews about all-in-ones in general, the more I read about problems and the "bloated" HP software. My favorite line was "it infects your registry like cancer". Boy, that is the truth, you can see that when installing. I swear it makes 300-400 registry entries. The software is way too complicated and puts junk everywhere in your system. That's why it gets into trouble. I have changed my chipset driver, downloaded VBSCRIPT 5.6 (even though I think I had it already), downloaded WIN Installer 2.0 and MDACS 2.8 (even though both I think come on the software disk), done this and that, and I am completely convinced I am never going to get the software to run right unless by great fortune they update the software and do it right. I've spent a whole weekend and several nights on this, and it's crazy, just to install a printer. And I'm not an idiot, I'm in IT. If you don't need fax, and can hook up USB, I'd look at the EPSON RX600. From reviews their software is simple and excellent. I know this HP 2710 has on paper a lot of cool features, but the other guys will match those soon. HP has proven both to me and via reviews on forerunner products that they write really terrible software. If you buy, I hope you're one of the lucky ones it works for, but if not, don't say you weren't warned...
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24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Hours of My Life Lost, May 12, 2005
This review is from: HP Photosmart 2710 All-in-One Printer (Office Product)
I am a software professional, and if I wrote software like this I'd be standing out on the corner with one of those "Will Work for Food" signs. I'd have scraggly whiskers and a cigarette hanging from the corner of my mouth, and even if you wanted to help me, you'd basically know I was no good.
Urghhhhhh! What a crappy piece of software! It is HUGE, takes over your system, disables non-device related software components, and then HP refuses to support you with an intelligile person or at all. Shame, shame on HP. Not great thoughts about offshore support countries, either.
I spent 3 hours trying to get my "wireless" 2710 to connect and could never get past the WEP key. I gave up and plugged an Ethernet cable into it. Then I spent another hour installing the software on a single PC (it's HUGE). Then I printed a sample page. Then I scanned a document. Cool, other than having a wired wireless all-in-one, everything was working.
What happened next was like gangrene. Suddenly, every time I restarted my PC, I got a warning that my Windows Firewall was off. I'd check it and it was on. Then, periodically, I'd get error dialogs from anywhere with a svchost.exe exception with pretty hex code. Then I couldn't print at all, or scan, or anything. Then it took 3 minutes and 45 seconds just to open a browser. Then my Adobe Photoshop software wouldn't work. Then it took over 6 minutes to start my high end PC each time.
Luckily the Add/Remove Programs option still worked, so I uninstalled the 3 HP programs listed. Now everything is back to normal, except HP has about $400 of my hard earned cash, and I can't make any more because now I can't print a stinkin' invoice. Ironic.
I should have read the reviews first. Gotta admit I screwed up there. If you're reading this and it's not too late then Run, Forest, Run! Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what offshore English-as-a-fourth-language 3 dollar an hour support representative you're gonna get.
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