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Posted by: thankyoumaskedman on 2010-01-03, 13:07:12
A few years ago I tried an HP Photosmart. I returned it because it had incompatibility with my version of MS Works (I am told this probably wouldn't happen with newer versions of MS Works), and text looked muddy. I got a Canon iP 4600. It solves some of those problems. However, the newer HP Photosmarts use both a photo and a text black cartridge (as does the ip4600), so they probably have the text quality problem solved. If there isn't a software compatibility problem, the HP's might be a better choice. There is a little better selection of HP optimized paper than Canon, and it is easier to find. The Canon seems to drink a lot of ink. The Canon has two different paper paths. The rear tray handles some media a little better than the HP's bottom tray. The Canon has built-in duplexing, while HP requires an optional device if you want to do duplexing. A catch is that to do duplex (two-sided) printing with the Canon, you have to use its bottom tray, and the Canon bottom tray is much more finicky and jam-prone than HP's. The Canon's software and firmware seems to be better at recovering from and resuming a print job interrupted by a paper jam than HP. My older HP Deskjet seemed to do navy blue very accurately. The Canon ip4600 makes it too electric, and the HP Photosmart I tried a bit royal blueish. The Photosmart seemed to do a better job than either on greens. The Canon has to have its settings tweaked to prevent a yellowish cast in photos. |