Home Office, SECOND occasionally used printer, great buy

April 16, 2007 UPDATE: When the original toners (that came with the printer) were only 30% low, all the paper printed with a kind of "marbled" background. The manual indicated this is a sign the "toner is low," but 30% full is hardly low! Long story short, many hours with HP tech support (in Costa Rica -- very smart, nice, savvy guys who know their stuff) later, I was sent a replacement printer -- twice! All I can say is that HP really stands behind their product, so have no fear no matter what you buy from HP. The only frustration was, of course, the hours "wasted" on the phone.

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

Perhaps it's too early to write a review since it's my first day using the printer. But after reading over the 14 other very diverse reviews I'll weigh in this way. I did a lot of internet comparative shopping research before buying this very nice HP2600n. As with others, I got fed up with my Canon bubblejet, which was cheeeep at the time, but the cartridges were basically a one-use only item, then they'd dry up despite every technique I tried when I kept them stored. I could have bought 50 laserjets for what I threw away on the inkjet cartridges. As a teacher, I only need a color printer about once a month. I'm not looking for a photo printer, because I can upload to Costco or Walgreen's for great cheap prints. If I need something brochure-quality, I can upload to Copymat for that. Or even get it done at the school where I work.

I have had an HP 6p for over 8 years and it's a fast, reliable workhorse. If you want speed and volume, then get a basic b&w workhorse laser printer and use this nice 2600n for your occasional color needs -- NOT photos.

I compared pages on the 2600n with what I'd formerly done on my bubblejet (again, using a new cartridge each time) and the color is slightly less bright and saturated, but that's nitpicking under a microscope to be accurate in this review. To a non-scrutinizing eye the print quality is identical. The online manual has options for adjusting the color saturation if I care to explore that in the future. But the out-of-the-box default settings suit me just fine.

Yes, it's slow, but I'm not doing my volume work on this. And slow means 3x the time for each page compared to my old 6p. I don't find it any more noisy than my 6p. A poster gave 5 stars but regretted there was no dust cover for the 2600n. I just purchased one at compucover.com. One poster said it's only good for about 50,000 pages. I only print about 1,000 color pages in a year.

I'm not a techie, I'm intimidated by new technology, but using only the one-page picture set-up flyer that came in the box I had no trouble installing the printer. I took my time and was very patient and careful.

The printer was on sale for $349.99 at Staples, which I price-matched at Office Depot. Plus I have a 5% teacher discount, plus Office Depot was offering a $50 rebate on the printer when I bought it. Altogether, I saved $118.00 off the list price of $399.99.

I read everyone's comments on the toner cartridges being deceptive. I look forward to learning the override technique for this. But then, I am a teacher. "Inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered, an adventure is an inconvenience rightly considered."

By the way, I've had exceptionally good experiences buying genuine HP toner on e-bay.

In sum, not for use as a principal printer, for heavy volume, a business or for photos. Recommended as a second, light-use, back-up printer. If I change my opinion after a few months' use, I'll post again.

UPDATE: One month later and still love it. I had a "spooler" problem and called HP tech support. Within seconds I was connected with a sharp, articulate tech in Costa Rica who explained it was an MS problem, but walked me through solving the problem anyway. In a few minutes I was off and running. So my experience with HP tech support was great. Because the printer is so easy to use, I find myself using it for almost everything now that has color in it, so I'm probably printing 300 pages a month.