Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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64 of 68 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Works Wirelessly as Advertised, January 10, 2006
I've had this printer for about 6 months and its been great. I'm not very technical but I got a wireless router going in the house for a laptop that we move around. I assumed getting this printer to work on the wireless network would be a problem, but the setup went fine using a wireless laptop (running the HP setup CD) and the printer hard wired into my ethernet connection per the instructions (they include the cord to do this). Once it was all lined up, I simply unplugged the printer from the ethernet and it worked great wirelessly. We have it tucked into a cabinet where it's hidden and the wireless laptop prints to it without a problem. One time it wasn't working so I pulled it out and ran throught the set up again with it plugged into the wall and its run fine wirelessly ever since. The print quality seems great also, but all we have printed are web pages and a few word documents.
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68 of 74 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Painful installation, April 17, 2006
Considering how long and difficult it was to set up and install this printer, it better be the best device ever invented! I have installed hard drives and loaded operating systems in less time with fewer headaches than setting up this printer.
I wanted this printer to work on my network which is wired and wireless, with a PC and a MAC. According to all my research, this was do-able. I did get it all to work, but it was a painful ordeal that took two days.
The documentation is terrible. It comes with about six manuals and pamphlets, and not one of them accurately represents any of the true set-up instructions, screen shots or procedures. With enough trial and error, you eventually figure out what works and what doesn't. You cannot allow any program of any type to run in the background while you are installing the software. Nothing. If you have automatic updates scheduled that you've forgotten about, they will crash the install. If you aren't disconnected from the Internet, you will crash the install. If you breathe wrong, you will crash the install. And crashing the install will require at least two re-boots to remove the software and start over. Even after you get the software installed, if it isn't configured EXACTLY EXACTLY EXACTLY right, it won't work, and no diagnostic will tell you what you did wrong. The only way to fix it is to un-install and start over.
OK, point made. My other complaint is that there is no output "catch tray" for printed copies. They just kind of fall out onto the desk or whatever. Dumb design.
The buttons on the front of the printer are not explained anywhere in the manuals that come with the printer. The only way to figure them out is to go online and look them up in the online documentation. Even that documentation is sorely lacking. It goes into great detail about the difference in the types of wireless frequencies, but doesn't tell you nearly enough about how to configure the communications parameters to work with your wireless router. Imagine looking up a recipe to bake a cake and halfway through, it starts telling you how flour is made.
It is indeed much quieter than my previous HP printer, and even has a "quiet mode" to mute it more. The envelope function appears to work better, although you do get an error message when you use it. Once you click through it, it prints fine, so I'm not exactly sure why the error message.
Is it a good printer worth the money? Too soon to tell. I'm still licking my wounds from setting it up.
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28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Nice printer, but not without problems, May 26, 2006
I couldn't tell you what to chalk it up to, but I had none of the installation woes of some of the other users of this or the previous wi-fi model, the Deskjet 6840. Maybe it's that I wasn't connecting it to a full wireless network/router per se? Using the setup for the ad hoc wi-fi connection between just my laptop (ThinkPad, if that's relevant) and the printer, the instructions in the included setup guide worked flawlessly (and as another user noted, I didn't even have to turn off the firewall). Installation took no longer than my CD drive copying the files from the driver disc.
Printing wirelessly is pretty handy; a little slower than a wired connection, but the difference is almost negligible, and a full 8x10 photo print didn't seem like it took more than a minute or two. Print quality's about par for the course for the cheaper HP printers these days (this being HP's low-priced wi-fi printer, I guess) - it doesn't *WOW* you exactly, but images are nice and crisp, comparing favorably to my old DeskJet 940, not too grainy at all. I do, however, shudder to think 1. how little ink must be in these tiny ink cartridges (Vivera 96 and 97) and 2. how much replacements of these tiny cartridges will probably cost.
One oddity I did encounter in installation, though, was registering for product support. It kept trying to point me to an HP URL that apparently isn't there, giving me an error a few times until it gave up trying to connect, and suggested I visit the HP support site and register manually. Other than that, though, I've encountered no problems, and gotten pretty much exactly what I wanted: a fairly inexpensive printer that I can print to wirelessly, printing text documents and the occasional 8x10 photo of reasonably sharp quality. Overall, I'd recommend it.
(Update 6/8/06)
It's still working pretty nicely, but I figured I should note that when I close my laptop having been wirelessly connected to the printer and later reopen the laptop without the printer present or turned on, it seems like one or two of the computer's background operations pertaining to the 6980 crash occasionally. It doesn't result remotely in any sort of system instability, and I usually can still print without any issues, but I wasn't able to today. Opening the hpqtra08.exe file in C:\Program Files\HP\Digital Imaging\bin seemed to fix it, though.
(Update 7/31/06)
Perhaps this printer isn't as good as I initially thought. In the intervening months, I've discovered many a little issue. If you use a laptop, and you open and close (hibernate) it with any regularity, the printer will just keep adding more and more memory-draining copies of the same two programs, and on multiple occasions, I've woken up to find that while I closed my laptop the previous night, it hasn't shut off due to a printer spooling program preventing it, regardless of whether or not the printer is even ON. To boot, many of the apparently vital background programs for the printer have a tendency to crash for no apparent reason. Beyond that, there have now been countless times where I've been in a rush to get something printed out (which is why I bought the printer in the first place: convenience in printing quickly from a laptop), and the print queue just hangs and hangs, never doing anything until I restart the print job (if I'm LUCKY). I'd really like to love this printer, but if I were shopping, I'd hold off. It seems like HP needs another couple of years to work the kinks out of their low-priced wi-fi printer models. Their software and drivers may be updated occasionally, but that hasn't solved any of the problems I've had yet. Cartridges are indeed small and pricey!
Oh, and just for reference, I'm using XP Home, ThinkPad T42 laptop, Intel wireless, used the ethernet cable for the intial connection.
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