Cheap HP PhotoSmart P1000 Inkjet Printer (Electronics) (Windows 98, Windows NT, Windows 2000 Server, Windows XP, Windows Me, Windows NT 5) Price

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Customer Reviews of HP PhotoSmart P1000 Inkjet Printer

Mostly Great - Used for 3 years now, but...
I LOVE this printer! I've owned one since a few months after they became available, and bought a camera (HP 618) well-matched to it. Here's the good, the bad, and the ugly - and I've experienced all three but still love the printer enough to be getting a new one right now.
Beautiful quality pictures, great features, easy install but drivers for XP may be challenging to find. Can be used to make prints without the aid of a computer. Front panel with LCD display and all controls available to select paper and quality options, multiple copies, etc. Big 45ml ink tanks seem to last a long time. I saw another reviewer say 50 to 75 8x10 color prints can be produced on a set of ink tanks, and I'd say that's probably pretty accurate. If you do a lot of general everyday printing of webpages and letters & stuff as well as photos, you'll get many more pages, especially if you use draft mode when you don't need the high-quality pages you get from the default settings. Can accept type I & II memory cards, and uses USB or parallel port to connect to a computer. Also can use infra-red data connection IF your camera is HP JetSend compatible, but this is difficult to find in a camera now, even if you get a camera from HP.
Now for the bad. Some documentation as well as directional symbols on the printer make it easy to insert envelopes incorrectly resulting in upside-down orientation. Paper jams can be tricky to clear, and may cause frustration which in my case possibly led to more printer damage. Difficult to operate 4x5 special photo tray, which can contribute to paper feed errors if not positioned correctly when not in use. Ink cartridges (when they do finally run out) can be expensive if you use the genuine HP cartriges, about $... for the tri-color, and $... for the black. Cheaper ones are available in smaller volume (HP genuine, half filled), and substantially cheaper full-size refills (from Staples) are available for about half or less these costs.
And the ugly: If you start getting frequent paper jam errors, good luck getting this printer fixed since it has been discontinued and parts are unavailable. I didn't have paper jam problems until after a couple of years and probably around 2100 pages. The test print you can run from the front panel shows my total pages printed to be 2985.
I tried to get repairs from two local authorized HP service centers in Toledo, OH as well as from HP customer service, and the best they (a local place) could do for me was to replace the printer with a reconditioned one at about $.... HP could only offer me - get this - a reconditioned unit for about $... OR a swap for over $... (?). Their replacement parts page lists a "printer replacement" option for over $...!!! What's up with that? They recommended a "trade up" to the 7150 photosmart, a terrible idea to me since it has none of the features of the P1000 - no IR, no memory card options, not standalone, smaller ink tanks - for around $.... "Trade-UP" must be a reference to the money THEY will make from more frequent ink purhcases by consumers. Plus, instead of a tri-color and a black cartridge, the 7150 uses a tri-color and a "photo" color by default, and if you want to do a lot of black they expect you to buy an "optional" black cartridge which you swap out with the "photo color" cart.
I guess the P1000 line just had too many nice features for HP to allow it to survive, so if you want one get it while you can. Even with the problems I've had I want another, it has EXCELLENT bang for the buck!

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Don't buy if you have XP as your OS
This printer is terrible if you're running XP. Trouble getting it to operate, problems once you do, and very little help from HP. Good luck even getting the proper drivers to download from the HP site.When it works, pic quality is great...although there are feeding problems once in awhile.

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Great but can be tricky to set up.
I've had this printer for about 8 months, and I am finally happy with it in general. When I first set it up, it was via parallel connection on a PC running Windows ME. Total set up time was 10 minutes and text and graphics printing was very good. However, loading photo paper, which requires some tricky maneuvers and varies among the different sized papers, is enough to discourage a lot of photo printing, especially on 4" x 6" paper, which uses a separate tray for loading and is finicky on a good day. I then moved the printer to my laptop and tried to set it up via the USB port. This was rougher and required uninstalling the printer and then reinstalling it and selecting USB connectivity. Not a big deal except nowhere does it say to do that; you just figure it out by trial-and-error. The big deal came when I upgraded my laptop's OS to Windows XP. The original driver for ME or even Windows 2000 does not work with XP. Try finding the driver via the HP website and you're in for the run-around of a lifetime. It turns out their FTP site in the U.S. is so overloaded that you'll only be directed to that site at weird, off hours. Otherwise, you're redirected to the Twilight Zone. My success finally came when I located (via a Google search) HP's Euro FTP server, which at midnight here was quite responsive. Quality remains quite acceptable and noise is very good. Ink usage is a bit high, but as I rarely am in the mood to print photos anymore, it's less of an issue.