A Masterpiece (HP Deskjet 980cxi)

Member Name: vinodgm

Product:	HP Deskjet 980cxi
Date:	16/02/02 (598 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Excellent clean printing, Duplex system provides both side printing, Silent operation

Disadvantages: Price, This is not suitable for home or private use

Whenever I have purchased a printer it has always been a Hewlett Packard. They are the world's largest producers of printers and the world’s most selling printers.

I own a 840C already and have just recently purchased another HP Printer in the 980cxi.

This new purchase was not because the 870C was faulty or damaged but rather that I also needed a printer at home and therefore I purchased the 980cxi for the office and have transferred the 840C home.

The 980cxi is an inkjet printer. Inkjet printers work by spraying ionized ink onto the paper with magnetized plates, which direct the ink to the desired places and therefore create the desired shape.

HP are the masters in Inkjet technology and one of the outstanding features on most HP printers is that they do not require any "warm-up" time. This is unlike other printers like the Canon, Epson.

The 980cxi is a step above the 800 range in that it has a "Duplexer". This allows it to print on both sides of the paper at the same time. This is especially helpful when you are printing fliers and pamphlets, which I do quite occasionally. This was also one of the primary reasons why I decided to splash out an extra £60 to secure this particular model.

The unit itself is very elegant looking with a two-tone colour combination. The primary colour being the usual white. This is unlike the 800 series, which were totally white in colour. The buttons are also position horizontally instead of vertically on the 800 series and also the buttons are now rounded thus giving it a more elegant appearance.

The printer contains two separate cartridges. One for Black and one for colour. This is also a great feature in the HP printers in that if one of the cartridges should finish and you still need to print something in emergency then it can still be done by using the other cartridge. For example some time ago I was printing some very important faxes in
black ink. My black cartridge finished and I still had three pages left to print. I simply selected "Print in Colour" then "Print in Grayscale" then I changed the text to "Bold" and printed the balance three pages. These came out just slightly lighter than if they were printed in the usual black ink but were satisfactory enough for me to complete my work and send out my fax.

The 980cxi has a 600-dpi one-pass black print quality. The colour print quality is 2400 x 1200dpi using photo quality paper.

They claim it can print 15 black text pages per minute and 12 mixed text/colour graphic pages a minute. I agree with the black text pages but not the colour. This is just for the propaganda as they clearly mention "mixed text/colour graphic". If you print a fully colour page (photograph) you would more likely get 4 pages a minute.

The front load tray and hold upto150 A4 sheets. However I have not personally counted exactly how many sheets can be loaded but it does appear to be somewhere around 150 since I can load about one third of a ream. I will take their word for this on this one.

You can also load upto 20 sheets of banners, upto 15 envelopes, upto 30 cards and upto 25 transparencies. Personally I have not tried the banners, cards and transparencies but I have tried the envelopes.

One of the new features that this printer incorporates is that it has a "Optical Automatic Paper-Type Sensor". This sensor detects the type of paper that you are using and therefore selects the print mode for that particular paper or transparency film. Off course you can always override this if so desired.

The 840 printer that I am using used to be relatively silent whilst printing but at the time of loading the paper prior to printing the noise used to be quite a bit. However with the 980cxi the operating noise is very low. This is due to extra internal padding using acoustic materials. r>
It has a 8MB built in RAM as memory and uses a 96Mhz processor. This is significantly more than the previous HP models and thus provides faster printing and also the ability to memorize more print jobs.

It is compatible with all versions of Windows 95/98/2000/ME/NT, as you would expect.

I purchased mine for £165.00 two months ago. However since I was in quite a rush to purchase it I did not spend enough time looking around for a better deal. I understand that you can procure one for £150.00.

When purchased new the printer comes with the Black and Coloured Ink and also a few sheets of photo quality paper. However it does not usually come with the cable that you need to connect your printer to the computer. Luckily this is not that expensive and you can easily pick it up for around £10.00.

Overall I am all praises for my 980cxi printer and I am very satisfied with it. Many may not require the precision printing that this printer delivers and for you this printer will most certainly be expensive. However in my line of work I frequently need to print certain materials in the highest quality of printing, as these are things that I send out to customers overseas. The print quality is very similar to the laser quality especially if you use a good quality paper. It also prints at high speed in black and this is good when doing mass printing. All HP printers are very economical on the ink usage and cartridges usual last longer than other printers do.

Warranty is One Year although I doubt you would ever need this as I have been using my 840 for five years without any problems whatsoever and I would expect my 980cxi to do likewise.