HP Photosmart 3210 All-in-One
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"This one does it all - photos and every day printer!" on by rempson
Pros: Great out-put, features, capabilities! Beautiful photos!
Cons: Paper tray is awkward and does not hold a large stack of paper.
Summary: I have owned HP for over 10 years and count on their dependability and quality. I had on my desk a 5 yr old HP deskjet for every day printing, a 2 hr HP photo printer and an even older $29 special scanner. For months I have researched trying to find the right all-in-one. Some were for everyday printing, but not for photos. Some were photo only and not something for everyday printing. I looked at all brands, makes and models before deciding to give this one a try. I love the six individual tanks, and although they seem small, if you added the contents of them up together, they surpass the amount of ink in one cartridge. You can buy the HP Value Pack of ink which includes all six cartridges and 150 sheets of 4 x 6 photo paper and it states on package "only 24 cents a print". So I don't think it will suck up the ink like some printers. It has so many features and capabilities. It was what I was looking for.
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"Definately Over-rated" on by hamfiles
Pros: Prints fast. Efficient use of cartridges. High quality printing.
Cons: Will not turn on to print, if not already on. Very noisy.*
Summary: *If you leave it off for a long time, and only turn it on to print, it re-calibrates itself for about 10 seconds, and it makes a loud screeching noise. The printer does not appear to be energy star compliant. When the printer goes into power-save mode/sleep mode, the main scan/copy bulb under the cover (like the white line of light on large copiers) never turns off. So for this printer to function properly, it has to remain turned on, yet it continually uses a lot of power, even when in sleep mode. If you don't care about a lot of power consumption, then get this printer, it is very fast, and makes incredible prints. But if you want a printer that will turn on automatically to print, and is energy star compliant, then buy a cheaper HP--don't waste your money on this printer.
Updated
Correction! You can set the scanner bulb to turn off, in the seup menu on the printer itself. Times are to turn off after: 12 hours, 1 hour, 4 hours, and 8 hours. But you still cannot have the printer turn on automatically when a print job is sent to it. I e-mailed HP support, and they verified this fact, so the printer must always stay turned on, for it to print properly. -
"Outstanding... is the WORD For today on this Printer" on by kdunbar444
Pros: very good on ink usage,
Cons: Doesn't have a auto document Feeder,Paper tray could hold a little more paper in it, for both 4x6 and 8x11 paper.As well as away of printing on CD's
Summary: Well, I purchased this printer on 3/19/2006 and its now 4/5/2006 I've put the printer through printing pictures, large quanities of copies print outs, scanning items into the computer, etc... and All have been just excellent! Other than not having a document feeder this is a 10+ in my book, the software really wasn't all that hard to install, it comes with both, MAC and Windows version software, I use the Windows with my Media Center PC 2005 and its just awsome!The one thing I really like is that it doesn't contstantly clean the printer head like the last printer I had, I have the choice of when to scan it, unless it shows up while I'm printing out a large number of copies for something.. I noticed that using different thickness of 8 1/2x11 paper made the printer speed up when using a paper that was very thin,compared to another one I was using, keep that in mind. Althought the ink is a little pricey at the store, as long as they continue to offer us the 6pk of Value Ink #02, for 35.99 thats not really too bad, compared to buying all of them individually, but you also can't go to a discount ink place online and buy ink, so far I've been unable to locate it anywhere.. or any cheapper if anyone has please leave a note here.. and tell me where.. Also, maybe that they could come out with a 4310, which would have the auto document feeder, and everything in this one, plus the bluetooth technology and a CD burner for printing ON TO CD's I think they call it lightscribing at HP? As well as be able to put our pictures onto CD form, directly, when using a card stick... I think thats what would make it worth buying again, if they could come up with that.. Being this is my first time with an HP product after reading all about printers, I'd have to say that this is the BEST PRINTER I"VE EVER OWNED! ALSO, if your reading this and your considering buying a Brother MFC 3820CN Printer, I'd suggest looking else where, that was my last printer, and I hated it, Brother was suppose to be a great company but it was very disappointing, I purchased mine from HSN, only to have it fail with an ERROR 41 (printer head problem after a year) they sent me another one, and then it happened again) Thats when I decided to switch.. and I'm really really really glad that I DID!!!
Thanks HP, your awsome!Updated
Well, I've had it for awhile now, and I've don't practically everything I could think of with it, and I just love it. The ink cartridges are a little pricey, but if you buy the 6 pack, and then return them staples you get 3dollars per cartridge so that helps. I wish they could have been the same size as the Black catridge but still I get a lot of use out of them, and I love the fact that its not always cleaning the printer heads like my last printer did.. That definately helps with saving on ink, the images I've printed out are AWSOME, there's no other word for them! I didn't know a picture could look as good as it does.. A few CONS would be no autodoc feeder, and you can't just print to a 4x6 size piece of photo paper,I found that I have to print out my photo on to a 8 1/2 x11 and then copy it to a 4x6 photo sheet of paper,also it would be nice if it had the capability of holding more than 2 types of paper, not just 8x11 and 4x6 but if we had an additional tray for transparencies for 8x11 photo paper, because changing it out is a bit of a pain, and if I forget to change out my photo 8x11 paper with regular paper, I end up with a very expensive receipt that I've copied to a piece of 8x11 photo paper, which I do have. All and all I'd recommend this to anyone! And the 3310 for anyone who needs a fax machine. -
"Scanning broken on Mac" on by etiffany
Pros: Printing, copying fast and excellent
Cons: Scanning software on Mac fails miserably
Summary: Printing and copying on this unit is fast and excellent, but the scanning software on the Mac produces strange stair-step results when scanning at higher resolutions (600dpi and up).
It appears to be a data assembly problem, and seems to be related to the size of the scan and the resolution. But it is very repeatable.
This has occured when using the ethernet connection --- it's possible that USB would work better.
Scanning works fine from a Windows XP machine.
HP has acknowleged that this is a problem, and claims that they will fix it, but who knows when.
I wouldn't recommend this if you have a Mac. -
"Expensive ink and Wasteful. Avg Print Quality, SLOW Scanning." on by markandersonuk
Pros: network port & memory card reading included.
Cons: Expensive ink and Wasteful. Avg Print Quality, SLOW Scanning.
Summary: I used for around 3 months then I finally admitted defeat and returned it to Costco. Expensive and Wasteful.
The problems I had were quite numerous. I have been an IT pro for over 20 years and can only image that novice users would have many more problems than I did.
1. The unit is super greedy on ink usage.. I found myself replacing cartridges after 10-15 full color pages !! Even worse, as another user points out, if you leave the unit dormant or off for a while when you go back to use it, it goes through a maintenance routine that consumes ink! Couple that with the cost of the ink, and you will be paying a lot of money to run this unit…
2. Hp's new 'Vivera' ink system supposedly uses a technology that will keep your pictures from fading… Sounds good, but there is a HUGE problem, the inks never fully cures to paper… If your hands are even tiny bit wet/damp or sweaty the ink smears and comes right off….
3. Document scanning is slow. Especially if you want to scan a lot of similar pages via the front panel.. There is no way to tell the unit to scan another page with same settings… Instead it does a pre-scan to work out the image type and area, then it scans, this wastes a lot of time…. Talking of the automatic pre-scan, it does an awful job with plain text documents, it often cuts off the text at the edges.
4. I loved the idea of built-in networking support… However once networked the unit would not see my PCs and the PC’s could not see it (sort of.. the twain driver could see it and I could scan from Non-HP programs such as Photoshop and Photoimpact, but HPs own programs ‘Solutions Center and Image Zone could NOT see the scanner !!!
5. HP Support = Non existent. All they would say was ;
1. Disable Firewall Software.
2. Remove Firewall Software.
3. Re-install the Drivers.
4. Re-Install Software.
5. Re-install PC.
6 Go back to step 1 and repeat.
All in all this printer could have been great, but the software that controls it really lets it down... I am sure that most of these problems could have been fixed with better firmware and frontend apps.
