Hewlett Packard psc 1215 printer scanner.

Long time readers of the newsletter might remember that I have a Canon S200 printer and that I don't actually print a lot, so might be wondering why I have bought a new printer, well the answer is, that I haven't, I bought a secondhand computer and the printer was part of the setup, I didn't actually want the printer and was not prepared to pay for it, but the previous owner didn't want it either, so included it to get rid of it.

The previous owner hadn't got on very well with the computer and it was hardly used, he had never managed to get the printer going at all and it was unused.

While setting up the computer I decided to try the printer, it comes with a large chart, showing how to set it up, the software had not been installed by the previous owner, so I ran the driver CD, there are no options as to which software is installed, you just have to follow the prompts.
The front panel overlay was already stuck on the control panel and the print cartridges were installed, so when the installer said connect the printer, I did, unfortunately the computer refused to recognize the printer and finish the install.
Well after much head scratching and rereading of the instructions, I found that the previous owner had stuck the front panel overlay on slightly wrong, peeling it off and reattaching it, solved the problem and the install completed. Why HP don't attach the front panel overlay in the factory, I don't know, it just seems to be a problem waiting to happen and is a very poor idea.

Once the printer is up and running it automatically prints a sheet to check the print head alignment. It is critical that this is correct, to produce good prints. Checking the alignment couldn't be simpler, you just take the sheet the printer has produced and place it in the scanner, it then scans the sheet and aligns the print head by itself, so much easier than having to manually examine a test print pattern.

Performing a few test prints I found the print quality on the standard setting to be excellent, text was clear, with no feather edges and graphics had good colour reproduction, although the colours in scanned photo's came out a little "flat" looking.
It is very hard to judge the print speed, not having much to compare it with, but it was two or three times faster than my Canon at printing text and slightly faster when printing images.
The print quality was also superior to the Canon, in both text and photo printing.

The printer comes with a detailed instruction booklet and the software also has an excellent help file. It is an easy printer to use and scanning and copying can be done without turning on the computer.
The software that comes with the printer is adequate, but not great, the scanning section is fine, allowing you to scan a picture onto your computer, but the image editing software was not in my opinion very good and I preferred to use Googles Picasa program.
The other disadvantage with the installed software is its file size, around 600Mb!! Yes 600Mb. After looking through the created folders I was able to remove a lot of this, as all the setup files are copied needlessly to your computer.

Size wise the printer is good, its footprint is only slightly bigger than my Canons and of course it includes a scanner. Space is also saved by both the paper feed and output being at the front of the machine, accessed through a neat little drop down panel, that serves as a paper tray.
On the downside the paper is very awkward to load correctly, it either goes in too far and several sheets feed through at once, or it is not in far enough and nothing happens, it needs a more positive stop.

Running costs. Looking on the internet an original HP black cartridge is £13.27, with a colour cartridge being £22.08. Compatible cartridges are a little better at £13 for a black and £16 for colour.
The cartridges are chipped, so are probably not refillable by home users, they are also quite small, the capacity looks no greater than my Canon S200, so while the black cartridge for text printing should last a reasonable time, the colour cartridge will be exhausted quite quickly if printing high quality photographs.

In conclusion the HP psc 1215 is a good printer, but with a couple of major flaws. The software that comes with it is too bloated and not that good, although I have found since doing a clean install of XP on the computer, that you can just plug the printer in and XP will recognise it and just install the drivers from the CD, you can then use your own image editing software, although I haven't managed to get the scanner to work this way, but you can still scan and copy direct.
The cost of the print cartridges is rather exorbitant, I can get a complete set of compatible cartridges for my Canon for £3.50 compared to £29 for the HP, so carefree printing on the HP is out of the question, unless you are pretty rich.

In a few weeks I think the HP will end up being either sold, or unused in the spare room, it is much too expensive to run compared with the Canon and although the scanner is a novelty, it is not of much practical value to me, as I can't remember the last time I copied a document.

Hewlett Packard web site: http://www.hp.com/

Rob Goldfish Web Site

Copyright 2005 Rob Goldfish.