 "Good Bye HP" | 2009-10-07 |
| - Reviewed By User: A3R5Y6GBV1J363 |
In the beginning of 2007, I spent a month researching the best home All-In-One printer. I purposely chose a printer with an Ethernet connection that I could plug into my wireless router, so that all the computers within my house could print without the need for a main PC to be on. In February 2007, I made the fateful decision to purchase an HP Photosmart C5180. Having a long history with HP printers (932C, 722C ...), and never having a problem with any of them, I was expecting a workhorse that was built to last and not give me any headaches. Well I could not have been more wrong. This printer is a nightmare.
INK IS WATER SOLUBLE: To start with, one of the most irritating things about this printer is that the ink is water soluble so any drop of water on your printouts will result in a large smeared mess. A mere sweaty finger can ruin a page. My other HP printers don't have this problem. Also, if you run out of ink in any one of the six cartridges, the printer refuses to print anything. Consequently, if you run out of colored ink, you cannot print in black. What was HP thinking? A major pain! On more than one occasion, I had to run out to the store late at night to pick up an ink cartridge to finish a project.
POSSESSED: Additionally, the device is possessed. It routinely runs calibration or maintenance cycles on its own.
AMNESIA: The real nightmare started about eight months after I got the printer - when it forgot its IP address! The setup screen in the printer read 00.00.00.00 for its IP address. After four hours on the phone with HP's infinitely patient but totally useless technical support gurus, I convinced HP's tech what I knew all along: there was something wrong with the printer.
FIRST USED REPLACEMENT: As it was still under warranty, the tech guru promised to send me a rebuilt printer. A few weeks pass and my rebuilt printer arrives. As I open the box, to my surprise, the ink cartridges had leaked all over the printer. I was back on the phone with HP.
SECOND USED REPLACEMENT: Time passed and a second rebuilt printer was sent. I hooked up the printer and it appeared to work OK, at least until I tried to scan a document. I put in a number of calls to the tech support gurus. Based on the error codes, they believed that it was related to my Norton Antivirus software, but none could help. In frustration I converted to the USB connection. This required a main computer (the one connected to the printer by USB) to be on whenever I needed to print for any other computer. This was exactly what I wanted to avoid and the reason I got the new "Ethernet" printer. Well, at least I got my printer to scan documents.
NO IPOD: But not so fast; about a week after hooking up my "Ethernet" printer to my computers USB port, I tried to connect my iPOD and found out the computer could not recognized the iPOD. After reinstalling iTunes and my USB drivers and cursing the iPOD, I find out that if I shut off my printer everything works fine. After doing a little more investigating I find out the printer affects ANY device I plug into the USB port. In other words, I need to turn off my printer if I want to use my USB port for ANY other device (other than my mouse).
OUT OF WARRANTY: My printer is now out of warranty. I got barely six month of acceptable service from it. I spent hours trying to diagnose its problems by myself, and in concert with HP's tech service.
I am willing to spend a little more money for equipment that does not give me a hard time. HP was always one of those companies where I expected to spend a little more money for value, and in exchange I would get a worry free product. This is not the case anymore. Buy HP? No, No, No. I am saying good bye HP. |
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 "Poor drivers, doesn't play nice with generic paper" | 2009-09-15 |
| - Reviewed By User: A2KIM7V28BYO15 |
I've had this printer for over a year now. I was relatively satisfied at first, but became more and more frustrated with it as time went on.
Installing drivers and software was inexplicably slow. It wasn't complicated, really, it just took forever.
When I upgraded my PC to Vista, the problems really started. The drivers on the CD weren't Vista compatible (even though Vista had been out a couple of months by the time I bought the printer). Eventually I found them online, but man were they buggy. The most serious problem was that the part of the drivers specific to the C5100 series would uninstall itself periodically. An online patch fixed that, but you had to get the patch installed before it uninstalled itself, or you effectively had to reinstall the whole driver suite, which, as I mentioned, takes a long time. It took HP ages to incorporate the patch into the initial download of the drivers - I think they've done that now though.
If you use non-HP papers with this printer, watch out. The HP papers seem to have some kind of code on the back side that the printer's able to read so it knows what quality and size of paper you're using, which generic papers obviously lack. For plain old printing, generic papers work fine. But I found that the printer would refuse to copy onto generic paper, always giving an error message that the wrong size of paper was inserted. I was able to work around this by scanning and then printing, but this was a major hassle because of another issue: scanning to PC just plain doesn't work with Vista. I also was unable to get the file sharing to work so I could read data of memory cards over the network. So the only way I could copy stuff was to scan to a memory card, then take the memory card out and load the scans onto a PC, and print from the PC. Deeply frustrating.
At some point also, the paper path got obstructed somewhere I couldn't get at it, or even see. This meant that every page I print now gets the top left corner folded over, and the printing isn't quite straight since the obstruction knocks the page out of alignment. I've tried all the means of user access, so this would be a service job to repair. I'm not going to bother.
My final gripe is with the option to print in grayscale using only the black cartridge. The option is offered, but clearly not honored. If your color cartridges are low, when you start to print the printer will require you to OK a warning that color is low, then it'll ask if it's OK to print using only black. If your color cartridge is completely empty, you can't print at all, even in grayscale, even after selecting the option to use only the black cartridge. Grr. I wanted to print something in black and white urgently last night, and my light magenta was empty - and I didn't have a replacement. Ended up having to use a friend's printer.
Well, I'm done with this printer. Its replacement has been ordered, a Canon PIXMA MX860 Wireless All-In-One Photo Printer. I'd seriously urge anyone thinking of buying this HP to consider alternatives. I know I won't be buying HP again - at least, not without seeing convincing evidence that I won't suffer a repeat of the experience I had with this model. |
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 "Nice" | 2009-08-11 |
| - Reviewed By User: A22ILK778U43TG |
| It's perfect for me...Looks nice, prints nice and it's fast. The ink doesn't cost me much because I buy it from a non-hp distributor. Doesn't use ink as fast as some say, I just printed 60 pages of black and color, my ink barely budged if at all. |
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| "Problems, problems, problems" | 2009-06-05 |
| - Reviewed By User: A2WR1I0GAP8ZL8 |
I'm guessing HP thinks they make useful, high-quality, valuable products.
I don't like my two-year-old C5180 All-in-One printer (or the HP computer it came with) and would like to sell it back to them.
If someone from HP sees this, would you please make an offer? I'd be interested to know what YOU think it's worth.
If I don't hear anything, I'm throwing it out. |
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| "Worst product ever" | 2009-04-15 |
| - Reviewed By derkosjo |
| This morning I placed my C5180 into the trash, and smiled as it was thrown into the garbage truck. This is the worst product I have ever purchased. After 1.5 years, the printer became completely inoperable - it constantly claimed that perfectly brand new, HP-branded ink cartridges were empty ... after sinking $50 into new cartridges, and replacing them, the messages remained, and I was unable to print anything. Multiple system resets and countless hours on the phone with customer service did not remedy the problem. Furthermore, I'm not the only one with these problems - some simple Google searches will reveal multiple people with "empty ink cartridge" issues. Throw in a completely over-engineered software bundle that slows down your PC and doesn't work under Vista (constant "HP Cue Service has stopped working" popups), unreliable scanning capabilities and the fact that this printer does not function as a network printer (under Vista) and you've got a massive waste of money. The customer service is terrible - the only solution they will offer you after 3+ hours on the phone is to purchase a new HP printer. I recently bought a Canon printer, as I have vowed to never purchase another HP product again. - the Canon works great. I recommend you stay away from HP products. Far, far away. |
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