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HP Photosmart Premium C309a Review

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  1. ROBTEMPLIN •  October 19, 2009
    Rating: 5/5

    Just purchased this printer at Costco after waaaaay too much research (I have a bad habit of doing that with purchases like this). Almost everyone complains in these forums – no matter what the printer – about ink cost. You can always check before buying, right?, what’s available for non-brand inks and/or the cost of OEM stuff. This printer was pretty much on par with other models from various companies (I looked at Canon as well) … I don’t like some of the ink pricing but do my best to find alternatives. Others complained about the software with HP printers but I didn’t have any problem(s) – BUT, I took the advice of one reviewer that made a lot of sense to me, and downloaded drivers, etc. directly from the HP website. So I imagine this gives you all the current software, and eliminates a lot of the headaches. I’m an intermediate techie, and had NO problem with getting the wireless to work with my current internet service. I’ve got Vista Ultimate. I found it interesting that for a rare first time, I found this particular printer cheaper at Costco (stumbled across it actually while shopping); usually Amazon is the best bet. When I’ve purchased from Costco or Amazon, I’ve NEVER had to worry about defective products because both these retailers make it very easy to exchange or get a refund. I had minor issue with printing envelopes but this was because I was using an “old” Windows word program (2003); and the HP tech dept. gave me a work-around that will be fine (not great but will work for my professional biz mailings).

    Rating: 10 :: 2 out of 4 people found this user review helpful.

  2. mumpkin •  October 22, 2009
    Rating: 1/5

    Just purchased this one day ago. It comes inside an ECO friendly bag and a plastic bag, this makes it a bit of a struggle to get it out of both bags at once! Set-up was moving along fine, the printer found my wireless router in a flash, however, as the printer aligned the ink cartridges it made very loud and disturbing sounds, sounds a $399 printer should never make, then the clock showed 10 minutes, 10 minutes to completely align the ink cartridges?

    Next, I put in the software CD, when it came time to connect to my PC and wireless network the problems began–had to turn the printer on and off several times, after about 15 minutes of errors the printer finally connected to my wireless network. Immediately I noticed my computer starting to act slow, I checked my control panel only to find a huge file called the “HP Customer Participation Program” or something like that. It was that unwanted spyware HP uses to track your computer/printer usage. Normally there’s a decline box to opt out, I didn’t see it when I downloaded the software, so a heads up here, I probably just missed it!

    The touch pad and overall appearance are sleek, but touch pad response is slow. This printer is much more size, space and weight friendly, I can actually lift it without slipping a disc! Print quality appears average, ink cartridges are thin and small, easy to install. I haven’t tried the fax, an error occurred with fax set-up too. As it stands the only concern I have is the noise during the ink alignment, screams nice on the outside, junk on the inside! For the time being I’m rating this printer 3 stars, mostly for it’s looks, size and weight.

    Update: After just 4 days I took the printer back. I kept getting an error message stating I had no paper in the paper tray, when, in fact, there was paper. If you really want it, wait for it to drop way down in price, given it’s performance that won’t take long…
    Pros: size and weight
    Cons: touch pad is slow, PC wireless network issues.

    Rating: 2 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful.

  3. Brendan •  April 7, 2010
    Rating: 0/5

    I had no problems at all in connecting my HP laptop to the printer wirelessly but have not been able to connect my daughters Dell laptops at all. can someone help me please???

    Rating: 0 :: 0 out of 1 people found this user review helpful.

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