Printer Reviews

Not even a year ago I purchased my compaq a4000 all in one fax printer scanner..Its simply a night mare and the tech support has been just as bad..The replacement ink cartridges cost 70 dollars.Take my advice and buy a fax machine and a decent flatbed scanner and simple printer.I guarantee you won;t be shedding as many tears as me.
I am willing to give this piece of junk away to the first person who asks.

This is basically a good printer but it will not do all that is claimed for it, namely, scanning can be done only one page at a time. It can scan into "pictures" then accessed by your word processor. but it requires editing for corrections. I used it with Windows XP Home Edition. Technical support from Compaq was not always correct. But a replacement was promptly provided when I had trouble with the first one. It is slow to respond and somewhat noisy in operation.

I haven't had any problems although it may be a little louder than most printers - it isn't compared to most all-in-one's I've heard. Great buy!

I bought this printer new, when it was HPs top of the line. I have been very disappointed in it from day one.
The print quality is fine. The duplexer is a joke. It needs the bottom of the page to grip the paper, so it can not print on that area. The driver software gives you two options to deal with this - print everything at about 90% scale to squeeze the content into the printable space, or re-sort the pages allowing the SW to move the page breaks. Neither is appealing, so I found that I reverted to manual duplex mode - taking the paper out and reversing itself myself.
The biggest problem I have with the printer is frequent paper jams. Even when using HP brand multipurpose paper, I find that the printer jams about 25% of the time. In the quest for speed, the paper load mechanism is just too fast, pulling in many sheets of paper instead of just one.

After reading all of the bad reviews on here about this printer, I felt it necessary to voice my opinion, although I am not one to write reviews. I have had this printer since Dec. 2000 when it was top of the line from Dell. I have loved it and wouldn't trade it for the world. It does print slower, but I can always be guaranteed a perfect print everytime. I have printed many different size envelopes, papers and labels and all have come out perfect. I have not had to change the ink cartridges very often (I change about every 6 months) and I do alot of b/w copying. This printer is very easy to setup, use, calibrate, clean, monitor ink levels, etc. I have never had a problem.

I've had one of these for a year or two, and it performs competently with good quality output. The built-in duplexer is a nice feature rarely found on home inkjets and a real paper-saver. However, this line is long in the tooth now, and HP has a much more attractive line of printers at a lower cost.

Don't expect to get good picture quality with this paper if you have an Epson Photo 820 printer. I tried differents settings, including those suggested by Kodak, and always got very bad results.

I got to agree with the others on Kodak Picture Paper quality for Canon printer, it is bad. I have a lot of printers: 2 Epson, HP, and Canon. My old Epson 1200 did a good job with this paper so I bought a lot (still one package unopened). I ditched that printer and used an Epson's 820 and the results were mixed. For presentation purpose of just color and text it looks fine. For photo picture you notice it isn't that good. My HP 6110 did a good job with it. My newest printer Canon's i960 did a burry job. The printout images on presentation and photo were fuzzy with too much ink. Maybe I have to put the setting to draft with less ink or something.

I think Epson matte paper is the best paper for quality/price for presentation. For photo printouts any top line glossy paper or e-gloss matte paper is fine. This paper is getting cheaper though.

Kodak paper is primarily for HP printers. I have used this paper on a variety of printers including HP, Lexmark, Canon and Epson and the quality is substandard on all printers except the HP. Also tried on various models of each printer manufacturer with the same result.

Some printer companies design their printers, ink and paper to work together. When this continuity is compromised, the output quality is often substandard.

In short, HP=ok. Other=**danger**

I was very disapointed by the fact that this printer is not compatible with any palm OS 5 enhanced devices (such as the Zire series, or tungsten sreies) Bummer. So if you have an older handheld with below 3.0 OS or if you have higher than 3.5 it simply won't work! I hope this information helps you.
I really have no Idea what the printer is like considering I can't use it perhaps I van someday

On impulse I bought the Sipix A6 printer, brand new,(for a mere 19 bucks!) after checking it's compatibility with my invoicing software -Lowfat Invoice. However, I DID NOT check whether there were any known issues with the Dell Axim X5 and I was unaware of the wonderful people at AXIMSITE.COM.

Soooo, the unit arrives. I giggle. I Take it out the box, pop in the CD and there were only drivers for 2000/98/ME and Palm. %$!!&#! I'm running XP Pro and PPC 2002. I google and search for drivers. I found these: http://www.sipixdigital.com/support/PocketPrinterA6/drivers.shtml and I'm printing in XP - Woo Hoo! Load the CE drivers, attempt to print from LowFat - nuthin. %$!!&#! I made several attempts of removing and reinstalling the drivers, even changing the location (SD Card, main memory, built-in storage) -all, to no avail. Then I spot a thread response in Aximsite Forums by zipidydoda that recommended removing all the expansion cards and reloading the drivers. So I:

1)Remove my SD Card and the compact flash card
2)Did a soft reset
3)Put it in the USB Cradle
4)Used ActiveSync to remove the Sipix Printer Driver (if you get an error stating that a file is still loaded in memory you may have to tap> Start> Settings> System> Memory >Running Programs> Stop all - however, doing a soft reset before this step should help you avoid any errors)
5)Did a soft reset (after taking it out of the cradle)
6)Put it in the USB Cradle
7)Reinstalled the driver (location provided above)
8)Turned Axim off (after taking it out of the cradle) -this was also part of the instructions provided by Sipix
9)Turned Axim on
10)Print from A6print (tap > Start>Programs> A6print -it is best to choose a small txt file for quick printing)
11)Voila !!

So I'm printing -Woo Hoo! I try it in Lowfat -same error as before "Unable to Establish Infrared Link". What?!!? Just as I was about to chunk the thing -I thought long enough to calm down and approach it as if it were an error on a desktop. Since it's the IR port that's not jiving, I thought it could possibly be a transfer rate issue. I go into Lowfat> Tools> Print> Advanced> More Settings. There was no setting for IR Port Speed and the one for the Serial Port was defaulted at its lowest settings. I unchecked "Alternate IR Connection" and "IR Buffer Adjustment". Prayed -attempted to print...

Thank God!!!!! I'm printing -not only can I print with the A6Print and A6Capture utilities but I can print from LowFat Invoice too!

Sorry this was so lengthy but I didn't want anyone else to have to spend a whole business day trying to get their Sipix A6 to work -or worse...give up. I hope this helps somebody.

God Bless,
Axzym

I have just bought this printer, and let me say, it is the best device that I have bought for my sony Clie. I am running Palm OS 4.1, and it works great. I downloaded the IRprint and Doctoprint combo demo from IRprint.com. It has good quality print, for pure text. The only problem that I have found is that it is sometimes hard to get a perfect lineup between the IR ports, but that might just be my handheld. Overall, I would say, go out and buy it. It has a definate cool factor. If you need a printer for documents to go, sheet to go, or any of the built in palm apps, get this one!!

I have a Canon i550 which was much easier to install and quieter than this Lexmark that I received with a laptop purchase. The cartridges are difficult to snap in place, and until they are perfectly snapped in, the printer will not work. Print quality is fair to mediocre. Print speed is slow.

I got this printer free with a really cheap computer package. I already had a pretty nice HP printer but since that was almost out of ink I figured I would just use this one for awhile. The prints this produces are almost as good as the HP (930 series by the way) but not quite there. The biggest drawback to the print process is the speed. Printing an 8.5x11 at "best" quality takes about 25 minutes.. far cry from the 10 ppm its description states(ppm = pages per minute?!... no way... I seriously doubt it could even print 10 pages containing one wallet size photo per page in draft mode in 3 or 4 minutes). But its much faster in draft mode or when using black/white obviously.

Another disappointment is the life span of the color ink cartridges. Printing most stuff like web pages and other misc. documents doesn't deplete the ink too much but those large "best" quality prints spray some serious ink. The driver for this printer comes with a little virtual ink gauge that keeps track of your ink levels. I printed 4 - 8.5x11 high quality prints tonight and the gauge dropped from 3/4 to about 1/3. That was disheartening. I suppose I have printed about 20 high quality 8.5x11 prints on these cartridges so far. Ink prices for this printer seem about average which means that a replacement set is going to cost about $55 bucks or so. Seeing as how most stores selling printers always have one for about $50 bucks I don't see why people buy new ink when its cheaper to buy the printer.

Anyway, it's a nice little printer that's easy to setup with nice driver software but compared to my previous HPs its way slower, uses more ink, and doesn't have as good of prints. If it was cheaper to feed I might give it a 3 star rating but it just doesn't deserve it.

This printer comes with the easiest-to-use photo organizing and printing software we've ever seen. This is the first setup that my wife is actually willing to use. That's no small statement since we bought our digital camera three years ago -- which takes excellent photos -- but it's always been too complicated before installing the Lexmark software, which is a snap.

We printed about 100 borderless 4x6 photos before the ink ran out. Definitely we'll buy the high-capacity ink next time. With the high capacity ink I think it will come to something between 20-30 cents per photo.

At high resolution, the printer is super-slow. That's okay for us. Overall, it's a great purchase, but time will tell if the cost of ownership is too high due to the ink consumption.

In one word the printer is " [bad]", I would not touch another Brother Printer again- having said that- when I tried to get it serviced I was totally disapointed with there approach. In short I got no Technical support at all with the printer being returned in the same condition that it was sent in. My advise is forget Brother Printers because if you have a problem then you are on your own.

If you have a newer computer, the MP-21c will not work with Win XP. The drivers supplied by Brother will only support parallel printing, even though the printer does not have a parallel port. This forces you to buy a...cable and AC adapter from Brother, negating the convenient one-cable setup via the PCMCIA card.

Feeds single sheets only; a sheet feeder is an additional [cost]. It is as large as the printer itself.

Brother's customer support is awful.

Avoid this one and look to the Canon BJC-85.

My experiences only; caveat emptor.

I travel frequently to remote locations and I sometimes find myself in a situation where I could use a portable printer with my notebook computer (Toshiba Satellite/Windows 98SE). Now and then I need a hard copy of a Word document, or digital photo print of a piece of engineering equipment, when I have no easy access to a desktop computer/printer. I often looked at portable printers in the shops but because of the price [price] and the inconvenience of carrying one around (especially if it needs an AC adapter), I never seriously considered buying one. However, a few weeks ago, I saw an MP21 on sale for [price]at an [company name], so I bought it.

The bottom line is that the MP21 does an excellent job for what a portable printer is really for. It weighs only 2.2 lbs, it is only 1/3 the size of my notebook, it runs entirely via a PCMCIA card (no bulky power adapter) and print/photo quality is excellent. Printing is a little slow (it takes about 30sec to print a Word Document and about 2min for a color photo) and you must feed one sheet at a time but these issues are of little consequence for my needs. Replacement ink cartridges for the MP21 (one black and one color) can be rather expensive [price] at a lot of places but I found them for online for [price] each [web page]P>The MP21 is definitely not a replacement for a desktop printer (frankly, it wasn't meant to be) but I certainly would highly recommend it to anyone looking for a good little portable printer.

I got this printer for large format printing. What I got was a large format headache. I spent an entire day trying to install this following all the instructions, I even called HP and they couldn't help me. I was using all the specified equipment, however one thing they didn't warn me about was you cannort share this printer without the additional purchase of the HP network server. After boxing this up for return I also noticed that this printer had already been returned once. It had two packing slip pouches, mine and someone else's. Bottom line - DON'T BUY THIS PIECE OF CRAP PRINTER!! It cost me a day of work and all the shipping charges.

I needed a large format printer for my small business, so I got online and reviewed seveal hp printers, and I "chatted" with one of their online reps. I was told this was the best printer for my needs. Little did I know that in order to use it I would have to redo my entire network setup. Well, after a full day of trying everything they told me to do, I am MORE than happy to PAY TO SHIP IT BACK!!!
DON'T BUY THIS PIECE OF CRAP PRINTER!!

Not the best printer on the planet, but definitely a good value. I don't need a color laser or a photo printer, so it works for me.

Print quality is good for schematics, drafting, and other vector based images. Much better than a more expensive Cannon that I am replacing. I haven't tried it on any raster images, and probably never will. I also have no idea what kind of photo printing capabilities it has, because I just don't care.

Setup is very easy, it took me a total of a half hour to unpack the printer, assemble it, run cords, install the drivers on the host PC (which has the same speed processor as the printer), and install the drivers on another PC, and have the whole thing networked. Everything worked fine right out of the box on the first try.

This piece of kit is transformed from being quite useful to junk status when you load up with XP.

I bought an X-73 a year ago for a small business I was starting. Continually had problems having to uninstall & reinstall printer. Spent hours on phone with tech support & e-mails with tech support. Finally, in the last month of my warranty Lexmark sent me a different printer. One month later it stopped printing color. After more hours on phone & tech support (I'd get disgusted & just not print color for a while because I didn't have time to spend on the phone & messing with the printer) the final result is that I could pay $ for Lexmark to fix it (no longer under warranty - you see), never mind that I paid $200 for the original & could now buy it for $98 average price. DO NOT BUY A LEXMARK PRINTER

The X73 does work with winXP.

Even when you update the driver for winXP on lexmark.com... it even tells you to click ok. Just go on with the install. It works fine.

Oh, as for the X73 it is a good printer/scanner. Pretty quite and does all in one jobs. The only true complaint with this printer is the ink is friggin expensive. Color ink is about 40.00 and black ink is about 30.00.

You can get generic ink. But I do NOT highly recommend getting the generic ink in COLOR.
generic ink in BLACK is fine.

I feel that the generic COLOR ink goes out to fast and yea you save 10-15 bucks... but in the run...it does not last long. As for the generic BLACK ink. its fine.

The printer is easy to use and does damn good job on photo printing,,, as long as you go to your printer setting and select PHOTO and the glossy paper (and make sure you put in glossy photo paper. And let the X73 do it's thing.

Also I think the X73 is USB 2.0... but is compliant with the odler version of the USB,,, but just takes a little longer to take off.

Now go enjoy your new X73. There cheap in price... but does it's job.

I have mixed feelings about this machine. I bought it because I could get it cheaper than the comparable Brother model. It seems to me that this is a very nice fax machine that Panasonic tacked some other stuff on to so they could sell it as a multifunction.
Printing: Slow (not 10 ppm as they claim), but sharp on plain paper. Will not print on heavy paper according to panasonic.
Fax: Does everything I would expect a Fax to do.
Scanning: B&W only, fine for documents and includes effective OCR software.
Copy: Again, no complaints here. Good, sharp copies with a 15 sheet document feeder.
I don't regret buying it but would not consider buying another panasonic unless they improve their efforts.

This flat panel (B&W only) scanner and bundled OCR software work well. The laser printing quality is good, and the new pricing is competitive ($$$ if you find bundled rebates). The downfall is that this was obviously a FAX machine with the printer function added on as an afterthought.
The fact that the manual has 80 pages dedicated to fax functions (as if they never considered email as a substitute) and 2 (that's two) dedicated to print functions says it all. The printer setup is not well coordinated with Windows XP features, e.g. you cannot add drivers for other printers since the setup CD only offers a "canned" installation. I could not get the parallel interface to work with a Win98SE or XP box. Plan on using the USB (provide your own cable).
Summary: I like it as a good personal laser printer, but would not like it at more than $$$ . The Panasonic product-marketing group needs to get over faxing as a sophisticated product, this box has stuff like "broadcast" faxing that I never heard of anyone using. I'd rather they just made the printer function work well with a PC. The sophisticated fax stuff is outdated and cumbersome to navigate through to get to the important functions.

I read the reviews at various sites and not many were complimentary. I had a choice between a Canon MP730 Inkjet and the FLB751 as both were in the same price range. I finally went for Panasonic as it looked very compact and neat.

The installation of the Printer was easy as the manual was very clear. The driver installation on XP went very smoothly with the USB interface. It printed the first test print immediately, the quality was good.

Copying quality and scanning quality are acceptable and printing quality is very good. Faxing went thru' very well.

Pros: Compact neat design, Laser printing at a low cost. Good scanning and copying quality and good to very good printing quality. Great Faxing. Telephone Handset and USB interface.

Cons: No color Printing and scanning. Unit a bit slow in printing.

I definitely recommend this printer for anyone who wants a compact all-in-one Laser Printer for personal use.

I ordered this cable March 4th and was told it usually ships within 24 hours and delivery was expected March 8 - 11. I received an e-mail March 7 saying my order was delayed and would now be March 14 - 21. I wanted to cancel the order but found out that once it gets into shipping status you're out of luck. I purchased a cable for a little more money but have it in hand for the weekend. Good luck if you order this item.

I wouldn't know what this item is like! Apparently I chose to use the free shipping option and will receive the printer that this cable goes with BEFORE I get the cable. So this item may be great but the service at Amazon stinks?

Belkin makes some great cables. They are not expensive and they are also not cheap looking! They work great and I haven't had one die on me yet. If you need a cable, this one is for you!