HP Photosmart 3210 All-in-One

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.