Hewlett-Packard Photosmart 7550

The printer has excellent photo quality. Everyone who sees the photos comments on how great they are. My issue is when I try to print in landscape. You get a very narrow border at the left hand side and a wide border on the right. This has happed (every time) with two different software packages. Talking with tech support their solution was to not print in landscape, but do everything in portrait mode. If all you ever do is print in portrait, then this is a excellent printer. If you do landscape printing keep looking.

excellent prints

slow not able to print in landscape mode correctly

none, this was my first photo printer

Customer Service solution was to not print in landscape mode.

I bought the printer for $51 plus shipping and a set of virgin carts and ink for another $60 plus shipping. Everything arrived nicely, and the instructions for filling the carts properly were easy to follow. Be careful with that ink, though--a little goes a long way so you don't want to spill it in the wrong place. These inks are formulated to work with HP's color profiles and this printer's specific head temperatures. They are for all practical purposes OEM inks, just like the stuff that comes in HP's expensive carts. I set to printing. First the most detailed, lavish photos I had on file that I'd waited to print. They came out beautiful. Then some snapshots on small media. Also wonderful. I'm going to next crop one of my favorite high-res landscape photos to fit horizontally on a legal-size sheet. It's from Glacier national park, and it is going to be stunning at that size. Printer takes its time producing these images, which is just as well, with the quality it puts out. It is truly unbelievable what you can get now for a hundred bucks and change. The only way I'd be happier is if I could afford to go with a refurbed Epson 1280 with a continuous ink delivery system. That costs closer to $500 sans ink. Once you've paid that, however, you can make unlimited 13 x 19 prints until the cows come home, for literally less than a nickel's worth of ink each. If you're like me and can't afford $500 worth of printer and feed system and a hundred dollars' worth of ink, this printer is the way to go. Period. Even if it's not 'cutting edge' anymore, 7-color printing with dedicated photo black is enough to make prints that are as good as the Wal-Mart photo lab without even breaking a sweat.

cheap, cheap, cheap aftermarket inks are pretty good cartridges are easy to reset to 'full' without electronic gimmickry

cheap feel no continuous feed available no longer 'cutting edge', other products can beat it

HP deskjets, Epson Stylus Photo printers.

Never needed it.

This is my first photo printer, and I was on a tight budget so I did some research to determine that this printer, refurbished for $99 plus a $30 rebate, was the best value out there right now. At first I wasn't impressed, and I expect this is probably the issue with a lot of people, I was not using high enough resolution files, hence the less-than-optimal quality of the prints. After doing more reading and learning about printing, I tried again and got prints truly indistinguishable from lab prints. (I've only printed 4x5s so far though). The key is starting to scan at a high enough DPI. You should be printing at at least 300DPI for this printer, meaning if you're scanning 120 negatives, scan at 600 dpi to get a good sized 4x5" print that will look perfect. In photoshop, change the DPI to 300 and it will give you a 200% larger output. This is confusing, so reference this site for a better explanation: http://www.scantips.com/

Very high quality prints (and I was using Canon Photo paper that wasn't even their best quality) Inexpensive Can print from cards Extra cartridge slot so you don't have to swap the black ink in and out

None found yet, maybe a little large

I bought the HP 7550 because I'd seen good reviews, and had shopped around, then found it at a good price on sale. But then the problems started: my Windows XP system refused to go into standby mode after a few days; the only solution I found was to reboot (then it would go into standby for a day or so, after that not); or to kill the HP-related processes (disabling the printer). The error message pointed to one of the HP drivers. Two calls to the HP help line were nearly identical in their over 50-minute hold time before a human came on. The second human told me the problem was with my computer, and I should call the manufacturer (I did, and, what a surprise, they told me the problem was with the printer.) Then followed days of email traffic with HP Support, with many widely varying solutions offered but none that fixed the problem. Meantime I tried printing 4x6 borderless prints from several programs (including HP's) and always got a 3/4" border at one end of the print. Also had problems with differing brightness/contrast levels across the print, never shown on the LCD or on the HP print preview. Good riddance, I say.

Low cost on sale.

Interferes with standby feature on PC; inability to get good prints; USB only but no USB cable included.

Atrocious wait times on the HP hot line;

I enjoy quality prints but cannot afford, nor justify, the cost of professional level printers. I bought this printer in order to make my own reprints and enlargements, thus allowing more control over the photo cropping/enhancing process. I have always used HP printers and this is my favorite of all. When printing photos of any size I use HP premium photo paper as is recommended by the company and set the quality to "best". The results are stunning!Another superb feature is in having the photo ink tank readily available when needed rather than having to change out tanks. The ability to insert a digital memory card (7 different types accepted) directly into the printer eliminates the need to have the same brand of camera and printer, and makes it possible to use the printer without a computer. These features make this printer very portable/versatile, especially for digital camera users. The software is easily installed and the printer is very user-friendly.

Superb picture quality, accepts a variety of memory cards, portable, economical in comparison with the cost of reprints or enlargements, easy to install and use. Affordable quality for the average amateur photographer.

The LCD screen is rather small. The tri-color ink tank must be replaced when 1 color is out to preserve quality of the prints.

HP 600 series, 700 series, 930 series color printers

I have not had any problems that required Customer Service.