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Too few -- and it jams. We can print single sheets, usually, if there's a small (but not too small) stack of paper.
A lot. Jams.
I've given up fighting with it to try and get it to print the way it's supposed to. We picked up the 8450 a couple of years ago and it seemed to be a good deal at the time, nice features, good brand, but it's been fussy from the get-go and it's not all due to owner ignorance.
Technical support is not much help either. Too many -- and it jams.
Given the slow pace of photo and image printing, one doesn't want to have to sit and babysit a photo printer.
I ended up giving it away. Since it was out of date there was no warranty, and I could not buy an extended warranty. After trying to set it up, I found, after a $39 phone call to HP, that HP stopped making this printer five years ago. I could not download the software because it was too old for my iMac's OS. In addition, the machine was so old the ink was no longer usable. I learned all this the hard way, since there was no mention of these limitations in any of the reviews.
This printer is GARBAGE. My husband bought it because of the memory card capability, but as far as I can tell that is the only redeeming quality of this printer at all. It also will not do envelopes without hand feeding it one at a time, hand printing would almost be faster.
I owned a few Epsons with no problems at all, I only upgraded as the technology improved, not because any of them were broken or didn't work. Don't waste your money. I have used printers since 1989 and this is definitely the worst.
I have had this printer for over 2 years and the only reason I am writing a review now is because I just tried to put regular paper in it and print a single page word document and it jammed yet again and it was just the last straw. and I think next time I will go back to an Epson. The hp is a "photo" printer, but if you put more than 3 pieces of photo paper in it at a time, it will jam and waste your paper and ink.
This printer is way too expensive, and in my opinion, total junk. I will take great pleasure in smashing this one to bits whenever I get around to buying another Epson.
I print around 30 to 50 photos a month, mainly to sell to customers and this is a lot more economical than a lab. I purchased the HP 8450 about a year and a half ago. If you are looking for Wal-Mart quality go to Wal-Mart. I see complaints in other reviews about the speed and the cost of ink, but if you were to send photos off to a photo lab, not only would it take more time and money but the quality would not be any better. I find the print quality as good as and professional lab that I have used, if not better. But if you are looking for professional quality I can not say enough about the HP 8450.
If you print a lot of black and white pictures this thing does them beautifully. Eventually I asked him what printer he would buy if he had his choice and was going to use it for his personal or family use. It is a little more expensive but the quality of your printout shows when you need it most.When printing small pics on 4x6 sized photo paper you cannot tell the difference from what you get at a local Wal Mart (or whatever). Go ahead and block it, it doesn't hurt anything.
If you leave it in then you will notice that the printer will go through it pretty quickly. After installation it does try to contact HP for regular updates but there is no option to turn this off. So we talked a bit more and I decided to go with it.It should be noted that we generally use HP premium paper and HP photo paper for our printing. It was a little more expensive than some of the others, but not the most expensive photo printer that was on the shelf. Being that I have worked on and with computers for many years we had a pretty good no-BS discussion.
If you want to print photos then you can change your "text" black ink for the photo gray ink. What this means is that you can take out the black cartridge and snap in the photo gray.While this is not hard, you don't want to make the mistake of always leaving the photo gray cartidge in for all print jobs - it's for photos. that catches your fancy then you will be pretty unhappy due to having to replace the ink cartridges. After testing other brands I can testify that if you want to get the best out of this printer then go with the HP paper. Large color photos are also excellent but as some reviews have noted that there is a slight curling sometimes near the edges on no-border printing (that prints all the way to the edge of the page).
However, if you aren't in a business environment then it shouldn't matter. We have had this printer for over 20 months now and I figured that it was enough time to test it before writing about it :)When I originally went to buy a photo printer the CompUSA store that I was in had an HP Rep there for the Christmas to answer questions about their product lines. You don't want to waste it just printing text. It's better (and cheaper)to use the black cartridge for text.
It will be empty and the other print cartridges will still be about 1/2 full.The editing software, like most bundled software, is [.]. It's great if you don't have anything else but it can be flaky on some computers. For those of you with a little more computer skills you can edit your start-up and nix the offending HP app.
This was the one he selected. That also does not hurt anything.The ink cartridges can be filled with kits, so if you like to do that then you can save some money over the long run.If you aren't in a hurry or in a high-output business environment, this has been a very dependable printer for us and since we have bought it for photo printing we have not been disappointed at all, but with the cost of ink and quality paper someone might be better off getting their prints done at Wal Mart (or wherever) if per-print cost is a major issue in their personal usage. However, this is not a show-stopper.Speedwise it's not even close to what you can get today.
I would NOT use this in a high-output environment even though the quality is excellent.The inks are not cheap, and if you like to print out every piece of [.]. If you have a personal firewall running and set to alert you when things try to get on the internet, then you will see this pop up. For us, we like being able to create and frame photos from home.
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