HP PSC 2110 Multifunction

• Color printing, scanning, and copying in one compact product
• 600 x 1,200 dpi scanning resolution
• Up to 4,800-optimized dpi color printing on premium photo papers
• Accepts 4-by-6-inch photo paper for borderless prints
• Optional 6-color printing system

I originally purchased a HP PSC 750 after testing the quality of the copying and printing capabilities in the store, but I couldn''t test the scan features until I got home. Well, I do graphics for a living and the quality of the scan (16-bits) wasn''t cutting it, so back to the store I went. This time HP had a representative in the store, so we got down to talking scanning spec''s. Only he was able to tell me that the HP PSC 2110 scanned color at 48-bits vs the HP PSC 750 at 16-bits, but that I would not find the quality as good as a stand alone HP scanner (64-bits), but the 2110 was 3 times better than 750. Long story short, the scan quality is great and is very close to the quality of the stand alone scanner. BUT, make sure you install the software and add the hardware in the correct order, if not the device/drivers will cause a conflict when you try to load windows and will freeze your system. I have Windows 98 SE.

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I was given the HP PSC 2110 multifunction printer after my sister repossessed my highly reliable and well liked Lexmark X-83 multifunction. The story is, my Lexmark was sitting idly for a few months when my sister got it in her head she really wanted a printer. And why go buy a printer when you can just "borrow" her brother''s. Well, my sister is a computer neophyte and when I saw that she managed to install the drivers and correctly hook up the printer turning it into a fixture with her computer system, I just did not have the heart to reclaim the printer.

Well, then when my printing needs required a printer, I was given the HP PSC 2110 multifunction. The best way to proceed is to outline the topics.

Speed Excellent speed. The "fast draft" quality still looks better than previous generation dpi quality and "fast draft" is ridiculously fast. No complaints on speed.

Installation No problem on the install. It did put some goofy icons on the desktop and they aren''t all that useful.

Ink Cartridge I received a notification that my black ink cartridge was nearly out of ink. I then proceeded to print countless numbers of pages without noticing a dropoff in printout quality.

Noise EXTREMELY NOISY. One would figure that a printer should make noise when printing but this unit makes noise when it is idle performing repeated self checks seemingly at random.

Power The printer also does NOT have an automatic shut off or a power save mode. This is annoying.

Scanner My scans of black and white pictures came out light and extremely grainy. I used the competent but not spectacular bundled software to REDUCE the sharpness of the scanned pic by 200 percent. This eliminated the grainy aspect. Playing with the contrast will help with the light aspect. The other quirk I ran into here was that I had to have the bundled software running in order for the scanner to send the scanned image to the computer. If it wasn''t running, the printer only returned an error message.

Bundled software Not much to write home about.

Envelopes The paper tray can be manipulated to print envelopes up to 8 1/2 inches by width. It prints envelopes very well.

Copier function Works independent of the computer (i.e. the printer need not be connected to the printer for the copier to function).

All in all, I would recommend this printer but not entirely without reservations.

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Bought this a few weeks ago to replace an HP DeskJet (still worked but slow). I have been very pleased with it so far. Installed it on an XP system without any problems. As with most USB devices, be sure to follow the directions when installing. We use it primarily as a printer and also make copies. Copy quality is good and you can easily select fast, normal or best quality and copy in black/white or color all from the devices control panel. Note that the 2110 does not have a sheet feeder. Also, remember to get a USB cable since one isn''t included in the box.

If you''re doing a lot of scanning, I''d suggest getting separate products. I''ve experimented a little with the scanner but gave up and used my Epson Perfection 1640 Office (a great scanner) instead which is faster, has a legal size bed and has a sheet feeder. If you''re doing much OCR, you''ll want to get a program like TextBridge Pro (under $) or if you''re really serious, OmniPage Pro (around $).

I''ve been very impressed with the print quality particularly on photos. I also have an Epson C80 and this printer does a much better job when printing on premium glossy photo paper. I purchased an optional photo cartridge (replaces the black cartridge) and printed some photos in 6 color excellent quality the dark areas of the photos are more natural and skin tones are better.

Several reviews have said the printer is loud I would disagree. It does periodically "adjust" itself but it''s not noisy. Paper feed is reasonably quite (much quieter than my Epson C80). I would probably turn it off at night if it was in my bedroom though.

The reviewer who said you can''t put a used cartridge back in the printer is wrong. I did it today when using the photo cartridge without a problem. Perhaps he didn''t get the cartridges back in correctly.

Few suggestions for improvement:

Separate tanks for the color ink cartridges (it uses a single 3 color cartridge and a black cartridge which can be temporarily replaced with a 3 color photo cartridge). We have printed several hundred color and black/white pages and haven''t replaced a cartridge yet although, for the last 4 days, it has been warning that the color cartridge is low. More accurate ink indicators would be nice.

In typical HP fashion, it only holds about 50 sheets of paper.

In summary, for printing and copying, I would buy this again without hesitation.

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I bought this unit to replace both a UMAX 610S scanner and a Canon BJC-4300 printer, both of which were showing their age, but still worked well. I hate spending money on products that produce bad results, so I compared the HP against the comparable Epson and Lexmark products. I also compared against the newer Canon printers.

To compare print quality, I got sample prints from each of the printers on normal paper and looked for the best one. HP came out on top on the surface. Of course, the print samples are optimized to make the printer look really good. Needless to say, most of my printing would not be optimized samples, but rather just plain text. So I took the print samples and concentrated on the text. The HP had higher contrast, sharper text than the others. OK, time for some magnification. Using a Bausch & Lomb 10x magnifying loupe, I saw that the dots comprising the HP text were in much better registration than with any of the other printers when printing at a usable print speed. Since the Epson, Lexmark, and Canon print samples were noticeably inferior to HPs, HP won the printing contest. When printing in the fast draft mode, the HP was still very clear and nice and fast.

For scanning, I found that it is nearly impossible to compare scan quality without hooking the scanner up to your computer. The only comparison of scanners that can be made at a typical computer store is one of size and perhaps how well it would contribute to the Ch''i of your workspace. Fortunately, scan quality was of secondary importance to me. If I wanted 2400 dpi, I wouldn''t be looking for a combo unit like this. My testing of the scanner was accomplished by putting my car keys and some loose change on the glass and hitting the copy button. One thing that was important regarding the scanning was the capability of scanning a three-dimensional object. My UMAX scanner has close to 2 inches of depth-of-field (an object almost 2 inches off the glass is still pretty sharp). Certain scanners (Canon 650U, for example) that use LEDs to scan have ZERO depth-of-field, meaning if the object is not on the glass, it is blurry. To make a long story stop, the HP has good depth-of-field, and make a quick copy of my car keys.

Thus end the accolades.

I have had a few problems with the PSC2110, some operational, some philosophical, but none related to the quality of the result.

First, as is mentioned elsewhere, follow the directions precisely when installing the unit, or you will have to uninstall and reinstall.

The biggest operational problem I am continuing to experience with the printer has to do with my Windows 98 installation. Periodically, the printer doesn''t respond to print jobs. The active job shows up in the print queue but cannot be deleted. The only way to print this job is to restart Windows and hope that it works. There is no way of predicting when this will happen. It is documented on HP''s support web site and they admit that they don''t know why it happens, but blames it on

insufficient system resources, like my 384MB of RAM, or other resource conflicts. I think I know why the problem happens, but you''ll have to keep reading.

Another operational problem I''ve had is with printing envelopes. Try as I may, I couldn''t get an envelope to print correctly. As a result, my Canon BJC-4300 is still being used for this purpose. I may get it to work in the future, but the point is that if it is trivial to print envelopes on my 5 year old Canon printer, it should me moreso on a new printer.

The first philosophical problem I have with the HP PSC2110 is the fact that what is essentially the driver weighs in at 160 MEGAbytes, which should be downright criminal for a printer/scanner. This is bigger than Windows 95 and has got to be in the running for most inefficient use of computing power by any software package currently out there, and there are some bad ones. Even when I''m not printing, I can detect the performance of my system being dragged down by this software. This is a

problem that didn''t exist before on my system.

Software that big (bloatware) is bound to have many more bugs in it than smaller software packages. HP''s decision to make a huge printer/scanner driver contributes to the Windows 98 (and WinMe) problem mentioned above, and is probably the reason they can''t find the problem yet. The product is too big. When all is said and done, they will probably find a memory leak of some sort somewhere or will abandon trying to fix the bug because there will be other ones that affect newer OSes.

Another thing I don''t like is the scanner interface. Once again, because it was written to be a "designer" UI rather than an efficient one, the response on my system to things like adjusting levels, resolution, scan area, etc., are as if I were communicating with the driver over a 56K modem. My UMAX driver, in comparison, was quick, powerful, and efficient. There are other design problems with the scanner interface. The workflow is very rigid. First you wait 5 seconds for the HP splash

screen to go away. Then you must do a preview scan, after which you may adjust the scan settings, then you can do your final scan, after which the scanner interface window DISAPPEARS WITHOUT SAVING YOUR SETTINGS. After looking at the final scan, if you want to change a setting, you have to start over with the splash screen again.

In short (short?), I am having a love-hate relationship with the PSC2110. The results are great, but I sometimes hate the way I have to get to them.

I almost didn''t buy this machine because the reviews were so equally split between those who loved it and those who hated it.

I really wanted the multifunction, so I took a chance. So far, so good. No problems, and I have Windows 98 SE. The installations directions are good, but amazingly I misintrepreted a screen message. BE CAREFUL: DO NOT PLUG IN THE POWER BEFORE YOU PLUG IN THE USB. I did that and had to uninstall the software and begin again. Once I REALLY followed the directions, I had NO problems.