Useful Printer (HP Deskjet 5150)

Member Name: maxhale

Product:	HP Deskjet 5150
Date:	26/09/03 (3260 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good quality on text and photo, Fast, Easy to feed

Disadvantages: Small ink cartridges, Possible glitches on driver software

At first shot the driver software loaded but subsequently crashed the computer at indesciminate times. Uninstalled it and downloaded the driver from the HP website and all is now well. Having said that I have loaded the driver from the supplied CD onto my laptop and that runs OK without problems. My desktop is XP Home and my laptop is Windows 2000 so don't know what to make of it!

Loading the inkcartridges was a little tricky because there is a pice of block plastic in the way with the printer turned off and unplugged from the mains. When the unit is powered on and the lid is lifted this block drops down allowing access to the cartridge seats. Watch that as it fooled me for a few minutes. The instructions on the quickstart were a little confusing.
Sadly I feel that the cartridges are small and comparing it to my 950 were miniscule. Yet to discover whether there are any larger ones.

Printer is a smart looking unit much lower and sleeker than my previous HP 950 series. I wanted it to print 70% colour/bw text and 30% photo. It handles both very well. It is quiet and quick - the quality is very good for photos and that's even without using the optional (not supplied) photo cartridge. It printed an A4 page with border in about a minute which is fast. There is also the option to print without borders but have yet to try that.

The paper reservoir looks shallow and inadequate at first sight but it can hold at least 100 sheets. I generally put only 30 or 40 at a time anyway. The receiving tray (above) as HP turn the paper round and send it back the same way, unlike Epsom or Lexmark who feed straight through, is made up of three parts that fold or pull out to take a full length A4 sheet. It seems flimsy but is perfectly adequate. The good part about that top receiver is it pulls off easily. I don't know if anyone has had the experience of paper refusing to feed if you print smaller than A4, but this makes it simple to check the feed
..a good point if you have suffered from jammed paper, especially the sticky photo paper.

Mine has a stiff on/off button but that might just be my machine. It needs a good push to switch it from one to the other..doesn't affect the operation though.

For those that need parallel connection this printer isn't for you as it has only USB. Which is fine for me as I find it more convenient and a smidgen quicker to print.

In my experience I would reccomend it as a good medium-priced all round printer.

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