I picked the c5550 up at Sam's Club. I needed an all in one that would print on Cd/DVDs. I was replacing an Epson r200 printer that handled CD printing but ate ink and had constant head clogging issues.
So far, the C5550 has exceeded my expectations. Having separate paper and photo paper trays is great. It makes printing trouble free.
Print quality is excellent. Text is very sharp and dark black. Much blacker than the Epson I had been using.
Photos are truly beautiful. I was a bit concerned about this as the c5550 is a 4 color printer, while my old Epson was 6 color. I read that when printing photos on the HP that the three colors in the color cartridge are the only inks used. This means that I was going from 6 colors in the Epson to 3 in the HP.
No need to worry as photo printing is at least as good as the Epsonon photo paper, much better on regular paper. The Epson was very good on photo paper, but did not do well on regular paper - ending up with visible lines in photographs. The HP does phots on regular inkjet paper that are very usable. There is no substitute for photo paper, but there are no visible lines in the HP's output on regular paper.
CD and DVD printing is also excellent. Both the Epson and the HP use a special tray for CD/DVD printing. The tray goes into a special slot in the printer.
The Epson's tray was very flexible and the front edge wore out after time. This made it a chore to feed the tray into the printer. Once you got it to feed, it did a great job of printing directly on the printable CD or DVD.
The HP's tray is much more substantial. It has it's own storage slot in the printer, which will keep it from getting either lost or damaged over time. It seems to feed very smoothly and the printed product is excellent.
HP provides some software for printing CD/DVDs, but it is pretty basic. I found that a shareware program called Sure Thing Labeler v5 works with printer and gives more flexibility in design. If you print a lot of CDs or DVDs, this might be worth the minimal cost to purchase. A 15 day free trial is available to try, and is worth doing so.
Like all inkjets the printer does eat ink. I have read that the supplied cartridges are starter sets, containing less ink than the retail versions of the cartridges.
One advantage that I found with this printer is that the print head is part of the cartridge. As a result, it gets replaced when you buy a new cartridge. As the print head has been the weak spot in every ink jet printer I have ever owned, I liked this feature - even if the cartridges ended up costing a bit more to replace.
From an ink cost perspective, I don't think the cartridges are too bad. The C5550 uses the HP74 (black) and HP75 (color cartridges. These come in regular and XL sizes. The XL versions contain about 3 times the ink at about twice the price of the regular sized cartridges.
You cannot buy after market cartridges for this model, due to the print head being part of the cartridge and HP holding a patent on that part of the ink mechanism. You can, however, easily get refilled original HP cartridges that are cheaper and are supposed to print like the HP originals. I have ordered some refilled carts, but have not yet used them.
I did find that the HP 74 and 75 cartridges are the same size and design as the HP 94 and 95. I ran across an ink refill station for the 94 and 95 cartridges at a local Meijer's store and picked up a black and color version for $20 each. They work and work far better than any other inkjet refill kit I've ever tried to use.
This was the 1st time I ended up with the ink in the cartridges and none on my hands. These refill stations are easy to use. You basically snap a guide on the cartridge, poke a guide hole into the cartridge, snap it into a cartridg holder and insert it into the refilling station. The ink station has the filling needles build in and go to the right depth in the cartridge. You flip the whole thing over and let gravity feed the ink into the cartridge. It takes about 10 minutes and it is full.
In the color cartridge, all three colors fill at the same time. No mess or leakage, and it supposedly will refill them at least 5 times.
After 10 minutes you flip the whole thing back over, remove the cartridge and install it in the printer. I wiped the top of the cartridge off, but there was virtually no ink present on the outside of the cartridge, and it printed fine when inserted back into the printer.
Supposedly you will need to replace the cartridges after 5-6 refills due to the print head wearing out. This still makes refilling a very cost effective was to use this machine.
When I refilled my original cartridges, I took the additional step of removing the labels from them. They just pull off and stay in one piece. When the refilling was done, I put them back over the top of the refill holes. They are working fine using this method.
As others have mentioned, this printer is bluetooth wireless. This means you can print directly from a bluetooth enabled device, such as a camera phone. You can also get a USB-Bluetooth adapter for about $20 if you want to print wirelessly from another computer.
I have two computers on a wireless network. I just enabled printer sharing for the 5550 and it prints fine from either the wireless computer, or, the wired one.
To scan you need a USB connection. This didn't bother me as to scan you have to be at the printer to put a document or photo on the scanner anyway.
Overall, I'm completely satisfied with this machine. The software istall went smoothly in an XP machine and all features seem to work as advertised.
Ink costs can be controlled. At the high end you can control costs by buying the original XL versions of the cartridges. You can cut costs considerable by buying refilled cartridges on-line, or really print on the cheap if you're willing to refill.
The only issue I have found with refilling at home is that the printer memorizes a serial number of the ink cartridges installed. When you refill the cartridge it remembers that it had been in the machine and does not reset the ink level.
I have printed from many applications and only get low ink warnings for my refilled cartridges when I'm prpnting from the HP printer software. The software just tells you that ink might be low in the cartridge but lets you continue printing with no problem.
There is apparently a workaround for this that involves the printer's ability to only memorize 2 sets of serial numbers for the cartridges being used. If you have 3 sets of cartridges, you can insert them one at a time and by the time you get to the third set, it will recognize the refilled cartridge serial number as new and set the ink level at full.
I'm not sure this is worth it, as the printer does not seem to nag you about the refilled cartridges, and it prints fine.
I was a bit concerned about
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