Printer Reviews

For the love of God, do not buy this printer. I have nearly broken my knuckles several times after taking out my frusterations upon it. This thing only prints when it feels like it, or else the paper will get jammed. Sometimes it'll take 10 sheets of paper in at a time. It's just un-reliable and I just wanted to save you all the trouble of buying this multifunction piece of non-printing trash. Thank you.

I have had my Xerox All-In-One for over 2 years now and absolutely love it. I had a temporary problem with the paper feed, but it cleared up and I have not had any problems since. It is a great machine and extremely convenient. Only down side to me is that it prints just a little too slow for my liking.

The install disk would not install the unit. It took me 3 days of fussing over it. I finally went to the Xerox website and downloaded drivers needed to install it, only to find out that I had to install the scanner features seperately! Now, all is installed and working. However, when I power down my computer, it sometimes turns itself back on. I will come home from work to find my computer on. I have compared the printing to my Epson Stylus Color 440 and there is no comparison. This machine prints beautifully! Love the product, hated the install.

For the money, don't expect much. The black ink printing is actually very good, and the printer prints very fast. It's the color where it runs into trouble. It prints deathly slow and the picture quality isn't so good. If you're looking for a standard, good blank ink printer with optional color, then I reccomend this. If you're looking for a good color printer move up and buy a more expensive printer. My last Epson color printer was excellent, and unfortunately, I moved from that to this. Don't get me wrong, its fine, but don't expect to be wowed by it.

I also bought this printer as part of a bundle (came with a scanner) at a pretty decent price, but not quite this low. I've been a geek for over 10 years now, so I'm pretty good ad judging cost vs. value when eyeing new peripherals. This printer is exactly what I expected it would be. Decent printing at a very reasonable price. The setup (including reboot) took about 3 minutes (USB) on my WinME system. All of the other computers on the network picked up the driver and were instantly able to print without having to install any additional drivers (except the Win2K machine, which I did have to download and install separately). I haven't had any bleedthrough with my paper, but I also have the printer set to print using "less ink" (printer properties). Anyone who purchases this printer will be using it for casual home use, so there's no reason not to. It saves a lot of ink! Don't expect photo quality from this printer (or any printer for this amount of money). If that's what you're buying it for, go look at the 900 series.

I bought this printer a year ago and it's still going strong. This was my first time buying a product from HP. If you want a good printer for the home you can't go wrong with this printer. This printer prints both Text and Photos great. I have this printer hooked up to my Webtv and I love it. If you want this printer for a business or office I would recommend buying a more updated printer but this one is great for the home or for that collage student. I will deffently buy another HP printer when mine dies.

I have had this printer for a little over a year now. I got it ...last fall and hoped to use it for color printing mainly, but also to print small black and white documents (I have access to a laser printer for most black and white). I bought it because of the low priced ink tanks.
What I have found out is that the S400 does not print when I want it to. At first, I was using the parallel port connection (don't even think about doing this). The connection isn't fast enough for the printer and every page you try to print will be illegible. Using the USB connection has helped, but I still throw out about 1 out of every 3 pages that I print because they don't come out correctly.
In short, the S400 isn't reliable. I find myself walking across the building to print a single page instead of trying for 20 or 30 minutes on my S400. Don't buy this printer. It will be a waste of your time and money.

It took nearly three months for me to print one page with this printer. Why? The printer I bought came with a faulty ink cartridge. I mailed it in and over a month later received another printer, with another faulty ink cartridge. A month later I actually received a working cartridge from the fine folks at Canon- at least they were nice- and finally I am able to use my printer. Sort of.

Now instead of the six orange flashing lights, I'm getting four and three and sometimes they're green, and all the while this thing grunts and grinds and shakes back and forth like some wild-eyed shivering hog.

It prints sideways, it grabs ten sheets at once, it won't grab the paper at all, and heaven forbid the black ink actually come out black instead red and green and blue.

This printer has made me reexamine my faith. No benevolent being could unleash this beast upon the world. For your own well-being, please steer clear of this monstrosity.

I got this printer after going through two Epson printers over the years. The Epson printers, both top rated in consumer mags, often produced messy pages with smeared ink. I had to constantly run the cleaning utility. The cartridges on the Epsons also clogged all the time. The same thing happened to my sister's Epson. Too much trouble for a basic printer. Getting back to Canon--this printer has been great. No clogged cartridges or messy pages. One thing--I seem to get better printed text when I select graphic rather than text for the type of print mode.

Ok, the good stuff first. It's compact and quick and easy to set up and has been reliable so far. But, my Lord, the ink this thing runs through!!! I've had it less than three months, and have already had to buy one color cartridge and three black cartridges.

More and more, I wish I'd bought a low-end laser printer. If you don't need the color, that's the way to go. The Laserjet 1012 costs less than $150 and gets an estimated 2000 pages out of every $70 toner cartridge. That's 3.5 cents per page. Estimates I've read for inkjets run around 25 cents per page. And at $80 spent on ink so far, I'm living that dream.

I've bought this printer to backup my QMS Laser and for my laptop. It's hard to carry the 80lb. QMS printer with ya, I can tell you that. It was cheap (Wal*Mart around $30-40) but it doesn't come with an USB cable (that's one star down). I haven't had any trouble with it so far. XPs detected it immediately. I have never used any ink printer before, but this one prints perfect. Well, at least good enough for me. Pictures are sharp, colors are bright. B&W print is very fast. I have even tried to print on the Iron-on-Transfer media and it worx great. I have washed the T-shirt 4-5 times already and no problem. I use it every now and then so I don't know how long the cartridges last tho.

A printer for $39.00 dollars that prints well. I purchased this printer for one of my clients who wanted to travel with her laptop, but didn't want to part with over 300 smackers for a portable job.
This printer is lightweight, not that big, although it won't fit in her laptop bag, it will fit in a small suitcase. I advised her if she didn't like it; give it to the kids.
For the price, it did the trick. It was faster than I expected and printed better than expected. Since the paper also feeds in on the bottom, no paper jams like top feeders.
Printer only includes a black cartridge. It also uses a color cartridge, but can print with just the black cartridge. Great for printing web pages, kids, and small jobs. Since it connects only with USB, it's not suitable for older machines.

Gina Novelle
Exclusive Markets

I have never spent so much time with reps (In India no less) in trying to figure out problems. They sent me black & white new cartridge..that didn't help (I had brownish red print all the time.) Then another rep said it was the color cartridge an sent me one of those, THAT didn't work. Finally they sent me a new machine, sans the top which they said to keep and install on the new "bottom." Then, although all copies went through & the confirmation said they all went, the receivers kept telling me that they didn't get all copies. HP then sent me a new top, so virtually, my entire machine (except prints heads) were replaced. Now all seems to be OK. Good point - You can print on "fast" although the colors are faded when you use these method of copying. Reps were very nice but spent much too much valuable time on the phone with them.

Just recently bought a competitive product, i.e. scanner copier and printer. I returned it the same day and bought the HP 7110. Happier than a clam. I've always had HP, but for the last few years, now I'm back. This is a great product. It's classic HP quality, (Weighs a ton) but has the quality in printing, scanning and copying. Even the Fax is simple to use. I like the stand alone fax and copy capabilities, makes life easier in the home office world. I use the machine for a combination of home office activity and personal use. I just scanned in a picture at the highest resolution and printed it at the same on HP photo paper. I'm hard pressed to find the difference in the scanned copy. If you have a home office or a small business buy this machine. You'll be happy you did. Don't waste your time with other equipment. CEO Carey Fiorina has done it again.

I must say I agree with some people about this machine, it does have some issues like the size is big and it does shake some while printing but for the most part this is the best machine I have ever owned. Reguardless of what was said previous it does work in Adobe PhotoShop CS which I use. When you load the drivers it installs a twain driver which does come up in PhotoShop. The color is the best I have seen and very crisp and clean. When you open the cover you can tell this is built much more solidly than almost any office machine available. The cartridges are faily inexpensive for ink jets. You can print on many different paper sizes another critizism is the tricolor cartridge. It would be much better with separate cartridges also you have to be careful about the color cartridge, when you print in greyscale it still uses color ink so it can go fast if you are not careful. I wish HP would only use black ink in greyscale but thats where alot of their money comes from I am sure. When you consider the faxing, scanning, quality printing, and copying all from your home office this printer is top notch.

I was told buy Epson Pre-Sales that this printer would print 16.5" +/- in WIDTH.
IT DOES NOT !!!
The maximum width of this printer is 13.6" Don't buy this OLD machine! Get a newer one.

>:(

Probably the best deal you can possibly get on a solid wide-format color inkjet, from anyone. However, word of warning: as of not (August 2002), there are NO drivers for this on Mac OS X... so it's completely useless with that. You'll have to use OS9, or a PC to print from.
I have the networking card from a different epson printer, that works with this as well, and it's pretty nice to be able to print to it from anywhere on the network, so realize that's an option as well.
It does suck down ink a bit, and the startup time is quite long (often 3 minutes from turn on to printing), but this is the case with all Epson printers of the era (this printer first came out in 1999 I believe.)
Overall, if you really need the wide-format printing, this is probably the printer to get for under [dollar amount]; it's definitely got some quirks, and until they release OS X drivers I'm bummin', but it is a nice printer for full-page bleed proofs, etc.

I've used this printer for 5 years on all kinds of paper and have never encountered these feeding errors so many people talk about. I do keep the printer rather clean though, as I realize that a roller coated with paper dust is probably not going to work as well as a clean one. The only time I have trouble with feeding is when using the manual loading slot and thicker paper. Since I prefer to load the paper before the printer needs it, if the paper doesn't load correctly I can just reload it. If there is a problem, it just fails to grab the paper and pull it in. This can be fixed simply by putting slight pressure on the top of the sheet when the printer first grabs it.

I've only had problems with the head clogging on one occasion, which turned out to be a bad black print cartridge (brand new and didn't even print a full page). I've abused the printer by using media much thicker than what it is supposed to accept (using manual loading), yet this is the most troublefree inkjet I've ever used. In the same time I've used this printer, my parents have gone through 2 HP's and encountered all kinds of intermittent behavior on both units with two different computers.

I think it's more a "windows" factor that causes these "driver" problems, I've not had any problems using it with Linux and gimp-print (which, BTW will work with MacOS X).

Don't expect such an old model to rival the photo output of the newer printers, but if you ever get the chance to compare a 1520 with on of the newer Epson models, the durability of the 1520 is quite evident. Overall, even today, this printer is a bargain if you wish to print out large graphics.

They're easy to use & they look great right up until you wash them the first time. Light t-shirt transfers crack & peel something awful, I've never known one to last more than one wearing.

If you're going to make a t-shirt, get the kind that says DARK t-shirt transfers. I've got a closet full of Office Depot & Avery brand Dark t-shirt transfers (many transfered onto white shirts) that look great and I wear them every weekend. It costs a little more, but they actually work, making it well worth the money.

I did a little more than the directions outline. I took longer with the ironing. I took 5 minutes to iron the items on. I pushed down hard when I did the ironing. My black and white iron on washed well. I washed the item inside out in the cold water. Dried it on gentle cycle and it came out fine. I just don't know how it will turn out after several washings. Let the printing completely dry before ironing it on. Take your time on ironing them. Take your time letting the iron on cool before peeling the paper off. It should work.

I have tried both the HP paper and the Office Depot paper, and the HP paper sure has better quality.

Both of them were done with the same steps, and it ends up that Office Depot one started to come off after 1st or 2nd wash, while the HP one is still on there without a scratch.

Also, HP paper fits more to the fabric, which it will be harder to see it was an "iron-on", but the Office Depot one was very obvious.

I will give two thumbs up for the HP paper!

I had no expectations for print quality with a printer at this price, but expected something that worked. EVERY attempt to print either jammed the printer or ripped the paper. I attempted to print with newly opened reams ranging from low end generic copy paper to Epson photo paper with consistent results. If you do decide to buy, 1) ensure the store will accept returns, and 2) be prepared to pay return shipping.

this printer holds up well for normal, everyday use-- i mostly use it for academic work, and its held up well for the past 2 years (paper jams have been rare). color printing with the hp 825c isn't the best quality, but digital pictures come out moderately well on photo quality paper-- i've framed photos printed by the hp 825c and, unless they're looking closely, people haven't really noticed any difference from my regularly developed photos. overall, the hp 825c is a decent printer, well-priced for student use.

I bought my 825c printer for a really good price, about half the average cost of printers. The best thing about the deal is that it even included ink cartridges! (Which ironically cost the same price as the printer itself)

Over the years, it has been a great, hassle-free, beautiful looking printer, and has graciously accepted ink refills (instead of having to buy more of those outlandishly expensive printer cartridges).

Of course, the occasional printer jam is inevitable for all printers, but those have been minimal for me. Surely the quality is nowhere near photo quality, but for reports and papers, it works just fine.

My hp 825c is one of my best purchases since I got to college.

This printer worked fine for Windows ME, but once we upgraded to XP the printer started acting up. It would stop & error out half way into a print job, and for photos it would dump so much ink on the paper that it would look horrible and embarrassing. However, we just upgraded to the Lexmark Z45, and it works WONDERFUL with XP. Just FYI for those Windows XP users looking for a printer.

I bought this... because it was affordable and offered decent print quality. Each printed page is quite precious, because you'll probably only get a few dozen of them before the printer commits seppuku.

Their supposed "accu-feed" technology was nowhere to be found, with perfectly-loaded sheets getting crinkled diagonally about half the time. The exit tray is a joke. The mechanism jiggles envelopes violently, causing your intended black ink to arrive on the paper in components. (remember, black is often made of a mix of complimentary pigments). Plus, the included software does not jive with Windows XP AT ALL. Lexmark has clearly fallen off the boat when it comes to compatibility.

I have used expensive Xerox 1200X1200 and Highend HP Deskjets and Epsons. To be blunt, they don't compare to the Lexmark Z43. This printer does it all and quickly too. The first photo that I printed out at 2400X1200 was absolutly amazing. The install was easy and the text print is true laser quality.

I purchased my BJC 5100 about 2 years ago when I was looking for a large format printer (11x17) at a reasonable price. While the 5100 did meet those criteria, I have since had second thoughts about my purchase.

What I like about the printer:
Good color and B&W print quality at a reasonable speed; minimal space required for a large format printer; attractive initial price.
What I don't like:
Ink cartridges are expensive (this is where printer makers make the real money) and don't last very long; if idle for more than a few minutes the thing goes through a loud and annoying boot cycle before it finally prints.

For the most part this is a decent printer if you need larger format capability and don't want to cough up 3 to 4 times the money required for a competing product. But, be warned; if you are contemplating upgrading to the XP OS or already have it, don't buy this machine. Canon doesn't provide printer drivers for XP that support the 5100. This is extreeemely aggravating for those like me who need to upgrade or replace a computer but otherwise want to keep using their 5100...

I own two of these machines and I have to admit I am a fan of Canon products. I also own their digital camera and copy machine. For the money it is hard to complain about this printer. It delivers nice crisp text at a very acceptable speed and can do some really nice things with digital images using their photo cartridge. If you buy cartridges for this machine at your neighborhood office supply, you could complain that it can be expensive to run. I personally used compatibles that I purchase on the internet and use a refill kit on the larger tank in holder two. This really makes the machine economical. The fact is that if you use a manufacturer's ink on any machine, you will pay a premium price. That's how they make their money. The larger format ability of this machine is also a bonus considering the low cost to initially acquire.

I have absolutely loved this printer. It carried me through 3 years of school without constantly running to the computer lab to print drafts of papers. It handles a very high volume well.

I have also found that by ordering off-brand ink tanks I can save a lot of money. Frankly, if you buy the Canon, HP or whatever manufacturer's ink, you're really being bilked out of a lot of money.

I'm selling my printer because, like many of you have found out, it is not XP compatible. That's very clearly stated on the box. A manufacturer has no obligation to provide you with new drivers because you didn't read the printer information before upgradning your computer. If you're running an older OS and plan on doing so for a while this is a great little printer. It comes with my highest recommendation!