HP Photosmart C8180 All-in-One

Pros: Prints well...I think

Cons: HP software fails again

Summary: I bought this for the high quality scanning options, the built in light scribe drive and network connectivity. Well as far as I’m concerned being able to use a major feature (disk burning and light scribe labeling) only in USB mode (and not mentioning it anywhere until you unpack the unit) is disingenuous at least and bordering on deceptive practices…”Oh yes my car has air conditioning, but it only works in the winter when I am in park”. A networked printer that has a major feature crippled by using it in a network configuration is not a networked printer (at over $400 this really pisses me off). The WiFi connection is slow as well and taxes the sending machine. Apparently switching between network mode and USB mode is not trivial and you cannot be connected to both at the same time (this is murky tech support has not answered that question, but really wants to know how well they did…sigh).

The software driver is buggy, sometimes when I turn the printer on, after the printing computer has booted, the printer will print, sometimes it won’t; reboot and power cycle time. When rebooting a computer with the driver installed you have to wait for I/O notification windows the shut down repeatedly.

Using the WiFi option (I have very good signal strength everywhere in my home) the print driver blips in and out telling me I’m connected to the printer at random intervals (I view this as a marketing ploy to remind us of our lovely products (unless the wifi connection is absurdly weak). When I changed to legal size paper the other day the printer immediately loaded 2 sheets, and tried to print (and promptly jammed), when there was nothing in the print queue.

On the rare occasions I have printed the quality seems quite good. The hardware should work, good hardware is a hallmark of HP; and in the last 10 years, so is bad software. I’m sure the drivers will improve over time…check back in 9 months on this one. I will not be considering any more HP equipment for several years if ever again; this is from an old engineer who used to worship HP for its quality, now not so much.