Eh, have you had a look at Bristol recently, HP seem to have a pretty big
lab there next to the Uni.
Did you by any chance work for HP?
Mike
You see people bashing every company - look at hard disks. But I agree
with HPs. HP was my first brand of inkjet and since then Ive bought 4
more until I wised up. They used to sell really high priced stuff that
lagged in features and performance but the stuff was ruggedly built .
Stuff like their old printers and scanners - I bought one once and
then returned it quickly after I saw the Microteks which had far
better specs at half the price. Actually that was built like a tank
too compared to all the new ones. I stopped buying Microtek because
after Microtek broke the price barrier and were the ones to get -
everybody rushed in with cheap scanners - Epson, Visioneer, Mustek,
etc They were all about the same price Even HP came out with a really
cheap line. They went from super duper expensive with mediocre specs
but really well built to incredibly buggy cheapo scanners in the low
end and still a bit lagging in the higher end though not quite twice
or 3 times as expensive.
Their inkjetprinters didnt even pretend to do photo priniting or even
decent graphics until you got into the $130+ range. The competition
was eating them alive. I always thought they stunk in the photo range
too but recently people have posted Epson , Canon and HP were all good
in the camera groups so Ill take their word for it for the mid and
high end. For the low end - youd be insane to buy one. My 940c is
mothballed it was a $130 printer when it came out. I use my Canon 470d
now . HP also came out with line of cheapo printers that seem
incredibly flimsy - read the reviews at Amazon " A plastic gear fell
off ........and the printer stopped working...." But at least they do
photo printing even in the low end now. I bought someone one when it
was rebated for $20 . The ink is what kills you with HPs though all up
and down the line. What they do with the lower end is really
outrageous. They take their already super high priced ink cartridges
and shrink them down to like half or a fourth of the size on the entry
level printers but only reduce the price from $26 to say 20.
The thing is everyone knows Epsons, Hps Lexmark and others have
outrageously expensive ink cartridges. IF you want to save money you
buy a Canon - the black one for my 470 is $8 and the color $18-23. If
you get the non-official ones they are dirt cheap - $1-2 and $12 or
so. And because the printhead isnt in the cartridge - there isnt any
fancy mechanism for refills etc , you dont have problems even with the
refills. HPs you have to reset them like Epsons and Lexmarks etc and
some sites admit the color refills are pretty shoddy. One place
stopped selling them claiming they were getting lots of complaints.
If you have to have a low end inkjet get a Canon rebated and on sale.
You can often get the $80-100 one for $49. They also have a cheap one
for $49 that pretty much has the same output but looks flimsier and
doesnt have some of the extra features. If you print mostly text get a
laser - there have been some cheap deals recently.
And if you do photos and want to spend more than $150 than you are
going to incur huge ink costs anyway so it doesnt really matter that
much what you get I suppose. There are those dye sublimation printers
that are also an interesting alternative.
Ive had several HP , Visioneer, Microtek and Epson scanners and
actually the Epsons were rated very highly and very popular in the
photo groups and I liked them. If I had to buy one now though I
probably wouldnt get one unless it was one of the higher models
because of the driver problems. Some whine about how they had buggy
software and Ive heard all of them bashed for that. The HPs are
LEGENDARY for being crappy --- especially in the low end. You should
see some of the posts about the problems with the low end scanners. I
finally never got the one I bought on rebate for $30 a year and half
ago - and threw it away. Many others posted about the same problem
just woudlnt work consistently. There were hints of how to get it
working at the HP site but found out that the warranty was only for 3
months and tech support too. You had to pay to get support. A lot of
people called them "door stops".
Anyway - the Epson despite one or two sites that bashed them like most
brands - was actually well reviewed and regarded. I wouldnt buy them
now because they havent updated their drivers in a while and they now
seem to exhibit the same type of erratic behavior that lower end HPs
were famous for. They run fine and work fine with Smart Panel but you
turn your PC off or the PC loses power etc and suddenly your PC cant
communicate with your scanner. You have reinstall the drivers again
and again and again and again and again. This used to be a rare type
of complaint but I noticed when I was surfing the net that I saw more
and more of these type of posting at various places and though some
blame it one variou causes - its annoying the hell out of me. Doesnt
seem to affect other software that Ive tried so it must be Epsons own
smart panel. And yes Ive used the updates - there were complaints
about the early smart panel versions causing problems.
If I had to buy one now Id probably check out the cheaper Canon
scanner.
