Apple Reviews

This printer prints very well but I wouldn't recommend it for the Macintosh OS (any Mac OS). I spent over 50 hours of troubleshooting and talking to their support team only to find out that this printer wouldn't print multiple digital camera pictures on a page using the network connnection. *I've been testing printers for the last 19 years.

The printer prints fine using the USB port but that defeats the purpose of buying a printer with a built in network card. They wouldn't take it back. I tested it on 5 different Macs without success but support said they couldn't duplicate the problem.

It works great on Windows XP.

No more HP products for me, ever.

Purchased this printer online and performed install in mixed (i.e. Mac & PC) environment office using wizards on install CD. Installation was virtually automatic. Even our IT people has no complaints about it.

Have experienced no difficulties printing with either Mac or PC printing. I think this is a great printer for the price given the features (built-in networking, duplexing, etc.). It give good ouput at standard settings and great at normal and above. Of course as with most HP inkjets the ink is pricy.

I have two computers and wanted to a network one printer for both. This proved to be the best solution! My only problem was that I run XP and forgot to shut off the firewall that blocks network activity. Once I got that sqaured away it worked like a charm! The print qulaity is excellent! Since each compuuter has a firewall product installed with the virus program there was no problem in turning off the built in XP one found in My Computer Properties.

This is generally not a bad printer however it does tend to overheat paper so that it comes out curly, which is very annoying if you print large documents or want to print high quality.
The support desk said to resolve this by setting the paper type to 'transparency' for normal paper printing which indicates that this is a typical problem. It also doesnt solve it. Overall Im not very impressed with either printer or support and wouldnt get another Brother printer.

This printer is all right, but I just had to replace it after a year due to a paper jam that I couldn't clear, and ultimately resulted in black pieces of plastic (probably a gear tearing up inside) falling out the bottom. When paper jams it is difficult to get out, and in this final case, a piece got lodged someplace I couldn't even see. I tried to take apart to see and remove the jam, but this is totally impossible as well.

The printer prints very slow if you send any major chunck of graphics to it, or use the high resolution settings. I had maximum memery too, so memory wasn't the issue.

First I bought an HP LaserJet 1300. I liked the printer and it was fast, but my wife's business' letterhead gets printed on a slightly textured paper and I just couldn't get the LaserJet's toner to adhere well to the paper. After trying every conceivable configuration of print settings, I finally conceded defeat. So back the HP went and I skeptically went with my second choice, the Brother HL-5050... I didn't have high hopes that a cheaper printer would do the job since the HP couldn't handle it... Although it is somewhat slower than the HP (especially for graphics), it has handled everything I have thrown at it, without having to even mess with different print settings. It printed beautifully on the slightly rougher paper, something I could never coax the HP into doing... I am very happy with my "second choice" and the fact that it worked out better and yet me less is icing on the cake...

This scanner has probably good hardware but you can expect big problems with software. The colors of photos scanned from negative film depend on the other shots on the same strip. Unfortunately even if you tell the scanner not to use color correction it does it anyway. Scanning 20+ negs with 3200dpi takes more than 5 hours. It was more or less acceptable for me if I could expect normal result. Unfortunately it happens often that after hours of waiting you have to delete pictures with heavy blue cast and put strips into the scanner in another order and hope that it will work (sometimes it helps).

I have asked from Canon customer care if there is another software or a way to configure this one somehow. They answered that I have to ask from Adobe. :-)

I assumed that, having a Firewire interface, this scanner would have really good Mac OS X support. Boy was I wrong. The CD came with no obvious installer, but a bunch of unintuitively named installers deep inside folders with no clues about the order of installation. I was able to download better installers from Canon's web site, but even so, the installation was painful. The installer would actually install another installer and then launch Internet Explorer to give you instructions on what to do next. There were several pieces of software to install, each one using this Byzantine method. At least the instructions in IE were clear.

The scanner driver is quite bad. The layout of the interface is poor (not to mention ugly) and the software sucks up all available CPU power when idle (strangely, CPU power goes down to 5 or 10% during scanning). Also, the installers load daemons that watch for button presses on the front of scanner. These suck up 5 or 10% of the CPU when the scanner is disconnected and output error messages continually to the system log files (they to grow to hundreds of megabytes and it becomes very difficult to find anything useful in them.)

Now, scanner software has a reputation for being bad and I just assumed that if Canon's were terrible I would buy the fantastic VueScan shareware program. I should have done my homework: Canon uses a proprietary communication protocol with this scanner, so it will only work with THEIR awful software. I recommend checking carefully and only buying TWAIN scanners, unless you KNOW the software that the scanner comes with is good.

Finally, I keep having a problem where, in the middle of a scan, the driver tells me that it has lost communication with the scanner and to check the cable. Once this happens, only a reboot will restore communication. Disconnecting the scanner, power cycling it, changing the cable, etc have no effect.

I sent tech support queries to Canon several times about these problems and never received a response.

On the hardware side, the negative scanner insert is pretty flimsy (though it hasn't broken yet) and does not hold the negatives flat. The lid does not quite close all the way. I usually have to put a small book on it to get it flush with the glass.

The scans that I have made are quite nice. But the pain associated with them has meant I have not used the scanner as much as I intended and have spent far too much time making those few scans.

I bought this unit to scan old b/w negatives & pictures. I had to increase my RAM from 128M to 512M and upgrade my USB to 2.0. Once I did that, things worked better. However, I still couldn't save a bmp file directly without it crashing. After speaking with Canon tech support--which was far more helpful on the scanner side of the house than their copier side--I found that the ArcSoft software had some issues. I began to use the included Adobe Photoshop Elements program exclusively and, what a difference! The truly extraordinary ability of this program to take a faded, discolored photo and, via auto color correction, restore it to vibrant, rich colors is astonishing! Even b/w pictures can be easily enhanced with the auto contrast feature. Have been able to scan old box camera negatives (120, 620, 116 & 616 formats) using the carrier, to my great delight. One caveat, the large format carrier for negatives is not as robust as the 35mm negative carrier. My normal scans of positives is at 400 or 800 dpi. It's impressive that a photo the size of a quarter can be effectively enlarged with great integrity. I have pulled out subtle details in photos that had escaped my notice even with the aid of a conventional magnifying glass. If you scan your photos at a minimum of 400 dpi you'll be amazed at how much they can be enlarged with little to no visible pixelation. I haven't tried batch scanning. None of my local retailers carried this unit. As one explained to me, the general buying public tends to go for the cheapest, low resolution scanners. Am so glad I went for this more powerful, utilitarian unit. Its versatility to work with negatives from 35mm to large format 4x5, as well as 35mm slides, and photos or documents makes it a great choice. The Canon program Scangear is easy to use and even a novice can quickly master it in short order.

We have tons of these drives, as they were the only ones originally available. Unfortunately we have nothing but troubles with them. They constantly stop working and the drivers do not make these drives as easy to use as a normal floppy.

Thankfully the poor product's problems are (usually) easily solved. Every time you use the floppy you have to uplug it from the USB connection, wait, then re-plug it in. This seems to reset it and allows it to work for another 5 minutes. I would not reccomend this drive at all.

On top of all of this, this is the ugliest contraption I have seen! It is HUGE and heavy for just a simple floppy drive.

We now use VST's USB drive and have had much better luck with it. This drive is small, light, and seems to be much more robust.

In our current modern age of tiny computers with immense space and incredible speeds, 3x5 floppy's were kind of left in the dust.Although I was surprised to see that there was no floppy drive in my iMAC. I do use my uDrive occasionally to transfer small files or documents, maybe even pictures. but now with cd-r's, zip, jaz, tape, and superdisk drives holding anywhere from 100mb-14gb, 1.44 megabytes is not very useful. the only reason it is so popular is because besides the internet, it is the only common platform for people to transfer data because everyone has one. also, since a floppy holds so little, i can't tell any difference between the speed of the old internal floppy and this usb one. but hey, i figure at least i have some way transfer files with other people and as long as i get one, it may as well be usb and match my computer to look cool! so if you have an iMac, this is always a good thing to have, but if you already have a floppy and you just want to upgrade to usb or get a matching one, i suggest keeping it and getting something useful like a cd-r or a superdisk.

iMac's do not come with floppy drives, so if you want to use floppies with your iMac you will need to buy a floppy drive. This alows you to use your old disks on your new computer. You may need to move files from your old computer to your new one, and this can be cheaper than buying networking equipment. You really do need a floppy drive, and this one is a good choice. You can hook it up in seconds and be useing floppies again in no time. It's simple and easy to use.

When I tried to burn a CD with the max. number of songs (74 minutes), the first two songs were recorded, but then it just stopped recording. The computer also froze after a while, because I was waiting to see if it would resume recording. After many frustrating attempts at recording, and then restarting my computer I am ready to return this to the store.

The included software for Mac is very disappointing, especially since far more is promised than included. However, for what I want to do with it (backups and occasional easy CDs), it's a great drive, cheap and fast. If you have a Mac and want to cut CDs, you really need a big hard drive to read off... don't try CD -> CD on this drive, the Mac IDE controller will choke. If you want to do that, spend the extra money and get SCSI.

I will say I am a little bit lucky coz I never meet the problems mentioned as above, except a small bug during the installation while I fixed it readly. This burner, compared with HP9150i, is much more quieter and smoother. The writing speed seems faster than other 8x burner, (i.g. HP8250i, plextor). So far, I burned 0 coaster of 19 CDR. Well, it perhaps has buffer deficiency, if any. The burnings make my PIII/128Mb to P166pro.....The reading is 24X, but nonsense for me even if it were 2X or 4x. I have a DVD for reading..

Anyway, recommended!

Iomega disks have to be the worst form of storage media ever created. They are easily corruptable. I can't tell you the number of disks I've had to throw away because they have died on me. They've destroyed projects that I've saved on them. Projects that were unretrievable because all of a sudden the disk cannot be read by the computer or even worse freezes the computer.
On top of all this, Iomega disks are way too expensive for being such a bad product. I even had to ask an Iomega technician what I was doing wrong. After going over possible scenerios of what I've might of done, we both concluded it wasn't me but indeed there was something wrong with the disks.

My advice is to stay away from Iomega disks and all other Iomega products and go with CD-RW disks of any brand. They store more info, are much cheaper and are much more reliable.

The disk space is as advertised. You need to be intelligent about formatting and the idea that file systems require space too. Best used with USB 2.0 or Internal drives.

Great for backing up those important files. It is also much faster than a cd-writer and its easier to erase files than a cd-writer.

I am using this product with a JetDirect print server. It scans, faxes, and prints over my network with no problems.BUT, the scanner carriage wastes time traveling to the opposite side for ADF scanning. It wasted even more time when the carriage would doulble pass per page using the ADF until I upgraded to the lastest firmware. The scanner carriage has a nervous twitching habit for no apparent reason. For faxing, this product is snobby when it come to socializing with other(COMM ERROR 321)fax machines, whereas the competitive products talk just fine to all fax machines using my same senario. YES...I have a clean phone line. YES...I've tried all possible combinations of V.34 and ECM being either on or off. I've been into the Developer's Menu. Have no clue on solving the fax issue in here. PRINTING IS FLAWLESS. If this poduct could digest some attention deficit disorder medication, then it would have some potential.

I have had my HP Laserjet 3330 for a couple of years now. Despite its fairly bulky size, I enjoy being able to get my separate printer, scanner, and fax machine off my desk, so I save a lot of space. The flatbed scanner was a must-have feature, and I love the automatic document feeder. Print quality is consistently speedy and high quality and I save bundles compared to an inkjet-based multifunction. (Those may cost less initially, but you'll pay for it in those overpriced ink cartridges!).

My primary use for this device is as a printer, my main complaint is the paper tray is very cheap and poorly designed. Try to remove the tray without removing the paper first and you have a big mess on your hands.

As a fax machine, this is a huge step up from my old dedicated fax machine, since I can fax directly from my computer, with the flatbed scanner, or with the automatic document feeder. I do have a couple of gripes with the fax software, though (see list of gripes below).

As a scanner, I love having both the automatic document feeder and the flatbed scanner for scanning oddly-shaped documents. When I first purchased it, the ADF was horribly slow because the scan head would have to go all the way over to the left edge to reach the adf, then returned all the way to the right edge between each page. It made it slow and tedious. HP fixed that bug with a BIOS update available on their web site in early 2003. Otherwise, I love its ability to put a big stack of documents in and walk away. I have scanned thousands of black-and-white documents and the speed is adequate and the ADF rarely misfeeds. Do NOT, however, purchase this scanner for its ability to scan photographs. Color scans are of dissapointingly poor quality. (pretty much unusable for high quality scanning of photos).

I have great success networking this printer in a peer-to-peer environment. I think there was some comment about being able to use the scanner and fax functions from networked computers, but I have never attempted this.

Gripes:

I had hoped to clear up my desk with a multifunction that could do everything I wanted to do with a printer, fax, and scanner. Now it appears that I need to purchase a scanner for scanning my color photographs since the quality is so poor. I get streaking lines through all darkly-colored sections of a photo. The scanner is fairly slow, and the maximum DPI is 600 dpi. There is no available transparency adapter for this scanner if you wanted to scan negatives, although with the color scanning quality problems and low scan resolution you wouldn't want to try.

The software that ships with this, and all HP products, IMHO is of very poor quality. My third-party scan drivers that work with most TWAIN-based scanners won't work with this scanner, either. The fax software is fine if you want to send pages from all one application, but it lacks the ability to temporarily store pages if you want to fax some sheets from, say, Excel, with a cover page from Word. You have to print some of them out and put them in the ADF, which seems kind of wasteful, but I don't fax a huge volume so it hasn't affected me as much as it might affect others.

Overall

At the time I purchased this unit, I felt it was the best laser-based multifunction on the market. When you purchase a multifunction, you are sacrificing your ability to get the best of each product; fax, scanner, and printer. Of course, you don't have to have three pieces of equipment on your desk, either. In this case, recognize that the scanner is probably the weakest link in this product and I would emphasize that if you are purchasing this product for scanning black-and-white documents, you will probably be happy with it. If you have hopes of digitizing your photo albums, keep looking.

I've had the 3330 for about 6 weeks and am very happy so far. Two concerns so far, one is with using odd sized paper, and the other is the scanner function. If scanning is an important function, you will want a different machine, I've never had a dedicated scanner that was so very slow. Making copies and sending faxes goes well, not sure why the scanner is so slow.

I use Windows XP Home and had some trouble with using odd size paper, e.g. small envelopes, 5 1/2" x 8 1/2" paper, etc. HP Service wasn't very helpful, just suggesting that I reinstall the drivers. Did get it working by defining custom paper sizes in my MS Office suite, so now it works fine with any paper I want to use.

Except for the paper problem, and the slow scanning I would have given it 5 stars

This screen is a marvel - outstanding colours, much better than any CRT I've owned - much better than my laptop TFT! The sounds is clear and the foot print is a fraction of a CRT. However like many others (that I've read about elsewhere on the net) its suffered the fade to black to white problem. This is a fault with the build, and appears to be receiving little input from Sony as even replacements are faulty!
Buy something else, not this.

I've been a big fan of Sony monitors. So, when my old Sony monitor got old I decided to get this one. I'm not disappointed. The picture is sharp, bright and incredibly clear. It beats my old monitor Sony Trinitron monitor by a mile. I see details that I missed before. It has brough new life to my digital photographs. What I also love is that it's flat. It takes up almost no room on my desk. My old monitor dominated my desk. It as huge, and my desk wasn't. Now, I have more than enough room. You might think that being 15 inches means that his monitor is too small, but I just bring it in a little closer. And, because it's bright and clear, I'm not straining to read even the smallest text. There is a 17 inch version of this monitor, which might be better for some out there. But, when it comes to picture quality, I haven't seen a better monitor out there.

This monitor has great refresh rates and image quality. Definetley worth it. Game play is awesome.

My first P225f monitor arrived with dust particles behind the flat glass panel. It took a week of effort to get it replaced by ViewSonic (they wanted me to pay for shipping). The replacement monitor arrived with a clean screen, but has image distortion on the right-side. No adjustments, repositioning or change of computers will allow the right-side of the screen to be focused as sharply as the left side. Also, the image curls up at the bottom corners, which the purity control won't eliminate completely. This monitor is a major disappointment. It is not good quality.

I initially read the PC WORLD review of the Viewsonic P225f in making my decision about purchasing this brand. I then read reviews and found that some descriptions of the P220f and P225f were the same. It appears that the P225f reviewed in PC WORLD June 2002 has a .25 pitch center focus and .27 pitch on the sides. But the newer P225f is .24 pitch throughout. It appears that the PC WORLD review is closer to the P220f which I recently bought. This has the .24/.27 pitch sizes.

That said, a number of reviewers commented that the Viewsonic seems great on graphics (which it is) and only mediocre on text. When I brought this monitor home, I was initially disappointed. I run at 1024 x 768. Much of my work is text only. Text on the edges seemed a little fuzzy and the text below Window's icons was not very clear. I was considering returning the monitor when I began playing with the menus and found that the factory default for contrast is 100%. Once I turned this down to the lower 90s, the text quality improved dramatically. Now I am very impressed with the monitor. When I looked at the Sony 540, which is in the same price range, the colors looked faded. Not so for the Viewsonic. This is a vibrant monitor. It also has a lot of controls, including focus, which the Sony 540 lacks.

For those reviewers concerned by the aperture grill lines, you obviously have only had shadow mask monitors in the past. My last monitor was a Dell 21 inch shadow mask. These are perhaps a little bit better on text, but they lag behind in graphics and color display. ALL aperture grill monitors have faint lines. You can't blame Viewsonic for this anymore than Sony or others using this higher end construction. The lines are really a moot point if you want the better color display that aperture grill affords.

I recommend this monitor for those wanting a large 22" screen without paying the $800 - $1000 for the P225f.

Viewsonic is absolutely correct in stating that the lines are necessary parts of the aperture grill. Every monitor with this type of technology (which is an excellent technology, by the way) has these lines, including my Mitsubishi Diamond Pro 1000. They are nothing to worry about, and you will not notice them.

I ordered this floppy drive in order to save data to an external media with an iMac running OS X. The drive itself seems well constructed, although I was disappointed that it did not come with a grape "skin".

OS X interoperability is poor, however. OS X recognizes the drive when it is plugged in to the usb port, and recognizes the disk if it is inserted when the drive is plugged in. HOWEVER, ejecting a disk after it is connected to the computer doesn't work.

Some of this may be because OS X is expecting software-controlled ejects, but it is still disappointing. VST still doesn't have an OS X driver available (as of 7/30/01). Unfortunately, this seems to be the only game in town.

We have an iBook and an iMac, both running OS9. We installed the VST external floppy in minutes and were up and running, easily moving the drive from one computer to the next (although, as the documentation warned, the floppy drive must be directly connected to the USB port or a powered hub, for example daisy-chaining off the iMac's USB keyboard does not supply enough power to the drive). Unplugging the drive while the disk is mounted on the desktop automatically dismounted the drive too. This drive was simple to setup and and is easy to use - just what we needed!

Great product. I installed the software without issues on my g4 and was up an running in a few. Also it recognizes both pc and mac formatted discs!!WOW its about time!!