 "Do not buy; does not work with Vista" | 2008-05-08 |
| - Reviewed By dbl |
| HP has decided *not* to update the 8750 driver to support Vista. Borderless printing and color profiling do not work. They want me to purchase a new printer rather than providing support for the one I already have. This is corporate HP when it is worst. I cannot recommend HP to anyone. |
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| "Buyer Beware NOT compatible with Windows Vista" | 2008-01-02 |
| - Reviewed By durandhouse4 |
I have had this printer for 2 years with no problems and had been very happy with its performance. However, bought a new PC with windows vista and after countless hours wasted on line with HP, I now find out it does not print BORDERLESS as it is not compatible with WINDOWS VISTA. I'm angry that HP wasted my time and has not solved this issue. Do not BUY if you use Windows Vista.
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 "Great printer, better than my old Canon i9900" | 2007-11-29 |
| - Reviewed By brianb2970 |
As a former professional photographer, a printer's performance as a photo processor is really where the rubber meets the road.
I shoot Nikon pro-level cameras and lenses, both film and digital. I have a Canon 9950F dedicated print scanner, a Nikon CoolScan negative/slide scanner, and an HP 8750 as a dedicated printer for larger format photo prints. I use Photoshop, Lightroom, DNG Converter, and other top-end photo software. The quality of my photo prints is absolutely crucial to me artistically.
I had a Canon i9900 printer, which made great prints in non-archival inks; not acceptable. The Vivera inks used in the 8750 will last over 100 years when used on HP's Premium Plus papers, and the unit yields stunning prints. Image quality is as good as one gets from a lab.
The printer interfaces beauutifully and reliably with my computer system (a periodic problem with the Canon, I might add), a desktop running XP Media Center Pro. Absolutely no glitches at all.
I have to say, I love this printer, and strongly recommend it.
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 "Very Frustrating" | 2007-04-22 |
| - Reviewed By stalinoid |
The 8700 prints a very nice page. But its quirks and inconsistencies doom it to one of the most frustration pieces of hi tech I've owned (and I work in an IT department).
The source of much of the frustration comes from feeding the paper, a seemingly innocuous problem, I admit. But, I've never had a smooth paper feed since I got the printer. It's not a calibration issue, it seems to not know when paper is in, when it should feed it, and it grabs at the paper so quickly that crooked prints are inevitible.
I wish I could write a good rec for this printer, but it's a high maintenance beauty not worth the frustration. Just get something that works and you'll save yourself hours of printer set up frustration in the course of your life. Considering there's so much competition, why bother with this product...
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| "Better than the 2400 in many ways." | 2005-11-07 |
| - Reviewed By tlyons1680 |
I am a serious amateur photographer who has displayed his work in corporate galleries and sells at art shows and online. I have used the Epson printers (2200, 1280) in the past to make my prints. While these printers do make excellent prints, the frustration I have always experienced has been in the color management end of printing. I've spent upwards of $80 a piece for professionally created icc profiles over and even bought the ImagePrint RIP program in my attempts to obtain the perfect prints. While these solutions did work out to my satisfaction, they were an extra cost over and above the cost of the Epson's. I always felt that if I was going to pay $600+ for a printer, that it should produce a great print right out of the box.
The 8750 does just that! This is because the color-management is done for you in the driver when using the HP papers. This printer works as well as my Epson 2200 did without the fuss. And perfectly neutral B&W's Great detail in the shadows, no blow-out in the highs. It's a printer that does it's job right without the user needing to learn any of the 'secret techniques'.
You may read that HP forces you to use their papers to get the best quality, but after some Internet research< I learned that the surface of HP's semi glossy is similar to Ilford's Galerie Smooth Gloss too. The Galerie Smooth Gloss had been my paper of choice with the 2200 and I had quite a large stock of it in different sizes.
Still being able to use the Ilford was one of the major reason I decided to go with the HP over the Epson 2400 upgrade. You will need to use Ilford's icc profile to get good results. But the HP procedure is far less complicated than Epson's and it's well documented in their manual.
This printer creates perfectly neutral B&W prints that have wonderful detail in the shadows with no blow-out in the highs. In the past, to create a b&w print, I had turned the Epson 1280 into a dedicated black and white only printer using the MIS inking system. But within a year the nozzles became clogged from the ink. Plus that ink was EXPENSIVE! $45-50/CART! So I ended up buying the ImagePrint software for the 2200. Another $400 spent. All in the quest of making the perfect print. Ugh! Then there was the issue of metamerism with the Epson prints where the prints looked different under different lighting conditions. With the HP, there is no metamerism! I made one B&W print on the 8750 that look great under the tungsten light of my room. I then ran downstairs to see it in the sunlight and it still looked great. This picture is now hanging in my office at work and under fluorescent light, it still looks great. That's impressive!
One more great thing about printer: the nozzles are built into the actual ink cartridges. So if I need to exchange, say, a dark gray for a black cartridge, I don't have to waste ink by going through a cleaning cycle because I'm installing a new nozzle at
the same time. SWEET! |
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| "Not worth the money!" | 2005-06-22 |
| - Reviewed By User: A15I0QIK891A9L |
| The Photosmart 8750 printer seems to be very well made with some nice features and is easy to setup. However my "test" photos were very disappointing. Using HP Premium Plus Glossy photo paper and the printer set to "best quality" a band would appear across the printout spoiling the print. The banding runs parallel to the print head path and starts around the last 1.25" of the print. The band varies in width and intensity somewhat but and is typically .125" to .50" wide. I increased the print quality to the MAX DPI "Highest quality" and more banding appeared in the print. I then tried printing directly from the compact flash card using the same image and I still had visible banding. I then exchanged the printer for another 8750 a couple of days later with no luck. This time the banding was typically fainter but almost always present to some degree. When image printing from one of its card slots or even from the PC, the rhythm of the print head sudden slows pauses at one side of the page. It then moves to the other side and again pauses and this is repeated for about 9 times around the time the banding happens. The print head will again go back to its normal rhythm and finish printing the image. I removed each ink cartridge and printed the image to see if one of the cartridges was causing the problem. None of seemed to be as there was always banding visible. Also when printing a B&W image the band was present there too. At any rate the print quality would be excellent except for the banding that keeps appearing. I retuned the printer for a refund after speaking to the support technicians. |
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