My old HP deskjet printer gave up the ghost recently. And when I say
old, I'm talking ancient: at least eight years old, and probably
pushing a decade. So it was time to get something new. I finally
settled on a new HP, the Deskjet 6988.
I'd not even really looked at printers for years, so I was pretty
ignorant of what was available on the market. A project for work led
me to Printer.com. They've got this system where you can tell it how
you will use a printer, and it will return a list of printers that
seem right for your needs. This particular HP came up second on my
list. The networking capabilities were what really sold it. I can't
tell how much that's a vital part of the internal workings of the
printer and how much is a marketing thing, but I can say that all my
computers can find the printer, and getting them to was the easiest
part of the process.
The hardest part was installing the printer on the first computer.
For some reason, the installation CD didn't want to autorun, so I
ended up having to “explore” the CD and manually launch the
installation software. After that, everything went pretty smoothly.
The printer itself is a dream. Its footprint is about the same as my
old one, but not quite as tall, which means I can put another shelf in
over it, if I get to feeling ambitious. It's easy to use, and though
the expanded list of options I had to choose from was initially
daunting, I was able to navigate through them to get what I wanted
without having to resort to the manual.
Even when just printing greyscale text, the printer does take a nearly
half-a-minute to “think” about the job before it starts. Once it
does, though, it's fast! Pages spit out rapidly with even print
quality all across and down the page. Pictures are just as good, with
vibrant colors. Really complex pieces do get a hint of horizontal
lines if you hold the page up to the light just so, but the
black-and-white gets horizontal lines really bad if you choose the
“cheap” greyscale option, so avoid that unless quality isn't that
important. Colors are good and vibrant and seem very solid, with no
smearing or ghosting, and every pixel appears to be where it's
supposed to be. Keep the paper tray full, though; when you get down
to the last dozen or so pages, it has a tendency to grab more than one
at a time.
old, I'm talking ancient: at least eight years old, and probably
pushing a decade. So it was time to get something new. I finally
settled on a new HP, the Deskjet 6988.
I'd not even really looked at printers for years, so I was pretty
ignorant of what was available on the market. A project for work led
me to Printer.com. They've got this system where you can tell it how
you will use a printer, and it will return a list of printers that
seem right for your needs. This particular HP came up second on my
list. The networking capabilities were what really sold it. I can't
tell how much that's a vital part of the internal workings of the
printer and how much is a marketing thing, but I can say that all my
computers can find the printer, and getting them to was the easiest
part of the process.
The hardest part was installing the printer on the first computer.
For some reason, the installation CD didn't want to autorun, so I
ended up having to “explore” the CD and manually launch the
installation software. After that, everything went pretty smoothly.
The printer itself is a dream. Its footprint is about the same as my
old one, but not quite as tall, which means I can put another shelf in
over it, if I get to feeling ambitious. It's easy to use, and though
the expanded list of options I had to choose from was initially
daunting, I was able to navigate through them to get what I wanted
without having to resort to the manual.
Even when just printing greyscale text, the printer does take a nearly
half-a-minute to “think” about the job before it starts. Once it
does, though, it's fast! Pages spit out rapidly with even print
quality all across and down the page. Pictures are just as good, with
vibrant colors. Really complex pieces do get a hint of horizontal
lines if you hold the page up to the light just so, but the
black-and-white gets horizontal lines really bad if you choose the
“cheap” greyscale option, so avoid that unless quality isn't that
important. Colors are good and vibrant and seem very solid, with no
smearing or ghosting, and every pixel appears to be where it's
supposed to be. Keep the paper tray full, though; when you get down
to the last dozen or so pages, it has a tendency to grab more than one
at a time.