Greased Lightning (HP Deskjet 990c)

Member Name: Alfo

Product:	HP Deskjet 990c
Date:	06/02/01 (737 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Fast, real fast! Looks Cool, Double sided & infra-red printing

Disadvantages: Cost of Ink, Photo quality

Know for years for their brown tangy sauce, HP have branched out into computer equipment, most notably printers.

OK, OK I know it's not the same company, but it makes me laugh. Yes I am easily pleased!

Anyway on with the show, the 990 is HP's (Hewlett Packard) latest inkjet printer. It's the newest addition to the highly successful DeskJet range. Following in the footsteps of last years 950 and 970 printers this carries printing technology one step further.

The 990 is, at the moment, the fastest inkjet you can buy. At maximum speed you should be able to print black text at an amazing and paper scorching 17 pages per minute. (Before too long we'll be measuring this in pages per second!). Of course to be able to reach this "velocity", you have to switch it to draft mode and low print quality, but to be honest the quality is good enough to allow you to do this without it looking too bad. However an interesting side-effect of this super-speed, is that the ink doesn't have a chance to dry, and documents often come out wet and easily smudgable (made-up word? Very likely!) for a couple of seconds! At the speeds quoted by HP, you can see this printer is maybe aimed at small/home office rather than a family user, this easily keeps up with most small/medium laser printers, just not as economical.

Speed is one thing quality is another, we know it does fast laser quality text printing, but what about colour? After all this is a colour printer. Well don't expect to be printing photos at 17ppm it won't, in fact it won't print anything in colour other than text at the quoted colour 13ppm, it's fast but not that fast. Expect at least a couple of minutes for a high quality colour print (photo sized).

Colour quality is excellent, and at maximum resolution (thanks to HP's Photo RET 3 technology) it prints at 2400dpi, that's pretty high, however it's worth bearing in mind that the dp
i of Hewlett Packard printers is bumped up by the Photo RET software, it's not really a true dpi count (say, in comparison to an Epson printer) The software helps the printer "overprint" where it has ALREADY printed, which it can do thanks to HP's inks which are slightly thinner than other inks, meaning you get great results on standard paper (without it going all wet and wrinkly…ooo-er!), and don't have to use photo paper, although you get better results if you do!

All HP printers use 3 colours and a black, even in their high-end photo printers, the results are good, however if you look closely enough at any photos you print, you CAN see the dots, sometimes too easily, (compare this to the Epson 890, review coming soon) of course if you're not a perfectionist then that really doesn't matter, only people who are after a dedicated photo printer should bear this in mind. Maybe HP should consider a 6-colour system soon!

Onto more shallow matters, this printer looks cool, it will look good sat on anyone's desk, rather than the dull grey, HP have gone for a futuristic (well it IS 2001!) style and finished it in silver. It's a really sturdy printer and looks really well made, some printers look really plasticky and cheap this doesn't, it would go well in a professional business environment, and perhaps HP realise this as it has "professional series" emblazoned on the front.

So what else does it do? It really does have lots of cool features, the one which strikes you when you first use it is the noise level….there is none, it is virtually silent, the only sound being that of the paper actually moving through the printer, very clever! On the subject of paper, when it starts printing, a light shines down through the printer onto the paper; this determines what type of paper you are using and adjusts the print quality accordingly.

Desktop publishers will love this printer, it s
hips with a duplexing unit, no that isn't a piece of Star Trek techno babble, it's the fancy sounding name for a device which bolts onto the back of the 990 and…..turns the paper over for you, that's right it automatically prints on both sides. Anyone with a Laptop or PDA will also benefit from an extra little something, an infrared input, just point and shoot. No more wires. This is actually really good, suppose you have the 990 plugged into your desktop, BUT you want to print from your laptop, well in the dark and dismal 20th century you have to unplug and re-plug the printer connections, not anymore just get in a line of sight and press print! As if by magic, your document appears. I have only used this function with my mobile phone (to print phone numbers, no I don't know why either!) and it really works.

So in conclusion this really is a very good printer especially if you do a lot of general printing, it's certainly fast enough for office work, and good enough for pictures and the odd photo.
However, if you're just printing text, buy a laser, it's cheaper to run about 2p per page, rather than the 990's 5-6p.

If you're after a printer for photos it'll do it, but after a while I think the quality will become an issue, for photos go for a 6 colour Epson.

But if you're after a fast printer for a bit of everything then the 990 can't be beat!

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