my own personal darkroom
Written: Jul 10 '01
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Pros: great 8x10 photos, slots for Smart Media/Compact Flash, 4x6 and 8.5x11 trays, quiet, FAST.
Cons: Not expensive if you remember you can add a 2nd head for 2 sided printing.
The Bottom Line: Expandable to 2 sided printing, onboard RAM results in almost instantaneous printing, quiet, 2400 d.p.i. excellent image quality, Smart Media and Compact Flash slots built in, 4x6 bypass tray.
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| knappcek's Full Review: Hewlett Packard PhotoSmart 1215vm InkJet Printer |
11 July 2001, 2145 hrs EDT
I bought my HP 1215 PhotoSmart printer in January of 2001 at Best Buy for about $400. I know you can get a less expensive model HP printer, but this one has an expansion slot on the back that allows the user to purchase and additional print head and print 2 sided simultaneously. I also bought a FujiFinePix 2400 digital camera at the same time (see my review here at epinions.com, under digital cameras, Fuji) and have since given up film.
Here is what I like about the HP 1215. It has 4Mb of built in RAM, it begins printing almost immediately, and is quiet (my wife can sleep while I make prints). Using the 2400 d.p.i. photo quality setting combined with glossy photo-quality paper makes excellent 8x10 prints and most people cannot tell my 4x6 prints from those taken by a "film based camera". This printer also has a 4x6 "bypass" tray built in to easily switch from 8.5x11 to 4x6 paper.
The HP printing software is well designed and thought out. It allows the user to select "sheets" of 8.5x11 paper (or other sizes), then select "combinations" such as 2-5x7, 3-4x6, or combinations of 5x7, 4x6, and wallets similar to the packages offered by school portrait services. This reduces waste and makes printing even faster as you are not printing separate sheets of paper that have to be spooled to memory. If you select 3 each 4x6 on one sheet of 8.5x11 paper you can print all 3 of the same image or use different images for each 4x6. The software also give the user a chance to improve image brightness, contrast and color balance just before printing without changing the settings on the original image.
Besides printing photos very well, this printer also prints text fast and nice. It even does a good job of lining up the lines on spreadsheets. It handles text and images efficiently with no trade offs for being able to do both.
This printer also has slots that allow the user to insert either Smart Media or Compact Flash memory cards (common to many digital cameras). Though you can print directly from these media, you cannot adjust the image quality, crop or anything else. However, with the software provided by HP, you can easily download the images from these media directly from the printer to the hard drive right over the printer's USB cable, thus saving battery life on your digital camera.
Some say this printer is expensive. However, I feel if a product is easy to set up, easy to use, exudes quality, and that it is doing what it claims to do, then it is not expensive. Expensive is when you buy a product that gives you problems, has down time and fails to live up to the purchaser's expectations. By this definition, the HP 1215 printer is a bargain.
If you have any questions, please contact:
Craig Knapp
knappcek@worldnet.att.net
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 400
Operating System: Windows
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Epinions.com ID:
knappcek
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Member: Craig Knapp
Location: Fort Belvoir, VA, USA
Reviews written: 1
Trusted by: 0 members
About Me:
Avid photographer, digital photo enthusiast, consummate computerphile, anti-MicroSoft, Soldier stationed at Fort Belvoir, VA.
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