My wife and I got an HP Photosmart C4795 something or the other that was on sale at Best Buy 2 years ago. It's the one with the gold/bronze trim and it uses HP 60 ink. It has been a headache from week 1 but, we hesitate to get something else in the same price range to be disappointed again. We are both in grad school, and need to print out papers, journal articles, scan articles, and copy forms. I liked that the HP was wireless, but that has never worked consistently from the time we got it. We resort to plugging our laptops in when we need to do anything with it. Additionally the HP60 ink tho conveniently priced and available everywhere, runs out quickly even the XL size.
At this point it is more obvious what kind of characteristics would make a great device for our needs, but not what that device is specifically.
- I would like the wireless to be less of a headache in some way. We both have macbook pros, and mine has the burden of containing the excessive HP software required to use the device. As with most things in life, less is more.
- A healthy cartridge. Efficient ink use would be preferred. Im considering those office printers with large black toners, as most of our printing only needs black ink. Another reason I considered an office level device is for:
- Speed. The HP is not that much of a slouch, but it is a photosmart, which tend to sacrifice speed for precision. Once again not needed. Mostly because:
- Less maintenance would be greatly appreciated. The Photosmart requires that an alignment sheet be scanned every single time the ink is replaced. I've dealt with a lot of HP printers and this is the most i've ever had to do that with one.
- A great scanner. Today was the last straw for me, honestly because I needed to quickly scan a 28 page journal article before I return it to my advisor. At one point I could've done this wirelessly with Automator, but instead I had to plug the computer in and use HP's bundled scanner software. The software is actually not bad, it allows for combining all pages into one file on the fly. But upon closer inspection the scanner seemed to degrade in clarity with each subsequent scan! Halfway thru the pages are completely illegible. What the heck!
- AirPrint would be awesome, with two MacBooks, two iPhones, and (count em) two iPads in the house.
