Need Advice - I need a new color printer

[Judy Whitehead (Florida)]

Well, I did it. I raced out this morning and bought an HP2230 BusinessJet printer. It does everything but cook lunch. What pretty pictures....I should have read Greg's post before I went, but I had a "store credit" from Office Depot so only ended up spending about $300 for this one. I hope I don't regret it and that the ink is affordable!

 

[Terry Russell]

Judy,

It sounds like your HP print driver may need upgrading. If you visit the hp.com site there are upgrades available. This may take care of your computer losing the printer.
As far as color printers go, I will never ever purchase another inkjet printer of any kind. I am saving for a color laser printer. If you do decide on another inkjet spend $10 on the extended warrany. After a year (usually) you can get another printer for the $10 you invested. And do not buy IBM home office junk they are phasing it out and will not stand behind it at all. Hope this helps.
terry

Well I see now I am a bit late getting here.

 

[Ted Martin]

Judy you might look in to a network print server so that the printer is connected directly to the network rather than through a computer. Linksys makes one and I'm pretty sure that Dlink, Netgear and most of the others have one also. I think we payed $100+/- for ours. The big advantage is that you can put the printer anywhere in the room (or out of the room) and you save electricity since you don't need to have a computer running to print. Most of the printer servers have more than one port so you can connect all of your printers to the server. We have an HP2200 and an NEC 870 connected to ours. The HP is our color printer and the NEC is a B&W laser.

 

[Judy Whitehead (Florida)]

Yes, I was reading about the printer net server with the information that came with this printer. HP recommends the server as opposed to the regular networking. Some of them come with a server built-in, but my best guess would be that the one I bought didn't. Always my luck! But I haven't had a chance to read all of the information on it. I don't know why I was putting up with the old printer - just "cheap" I guess!

 

[Marty Davis]

I have to break down and buy a new inkjet printer for photos. I have an HP laserjet 2100 for black and white and have been using an HP932C for color photos. It has slowly been printing worse all the time and really doesn't have enough memory for three computers.

Anyway, in the past Ben recommended (I think it was Ben) the HP2200. I see an HP2230 advertised and it looks attractive because it has separate cartridges for each color. Does anyone else use this printer and do you fill your own ink? Thanks.....

I agree with many in the recomendation of the HP2200. It is an awesome machine and with the draft setting is SUPER FAST and the quality is very good even on the draft setting. It is the best printer that I have used and I would recomend it highly.

Marten Davis, SRPA

 

[Ted Martin]

Actually the HP printer network card is overpriced, I had the HP Jetdirect card in my HP laserjet at one point and pulled it for the Linksys print server. The other aftermarket solutions seem to work just as well and are about half the price.

 

[Judy Whitehead (Florida)]

Thanks for telling me that. Yesterday, my computer "lost" the new HP2230 printer on several programs, even though it was set as my default printer. I am going to have to get a printer server, as that is so aggravating! I have to stop and reset for it to find the printer again. Sometimes I think these computers have gremlins in them!