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 Customer Reviews 
The jury is still out on this one
Rating: 3
I purchased this printer for black and white photo printing since it accepts the HP 100 Gray Photo cartridge, I also intended to use it for color printing using the HP 99 Photo cartridge. The results have been a mixed bag so far.
Starting with the software installation I was nervous (I used the recommended installation not the full), the software said it would take 8 minutes to install, on my first attempt after 45 minutes the program appeared to be locked up I rebooted had to uninstall what was installed reboot again and begin the installation. The second attempt installed but it took the better part of 30 minutes.
After printing a few pages of text everything seemed to be working fine. I installed the HP 100 gray cartridge and printed a few black and white photos that looked great.
I switcheed to the HP 99 color photo cartridge and loaded some 4x6 HP photo paper into the tray and printed a very nice looking color print. On the second print the printer stopped at about 25% of the photo, apparently a jam.
I removed the paper and tried again, same thing about 25% and stop. After 4 attempts I removed the 4X6 from the bottom tray and fed a single sheet through the top envelope feeder. The print worked but had blotches of color. I tried an 8.5 x 11 photo sheet and 90% of the photo looked great but again blotches of color in some areas.
I ran the printhead cleaning, alignment and calibration routines and now it is printing beautiful prints. Unfortunatly I had to waste several photo papers and a good amount of ink in order to get it working well. My fingers are crossed that I will not have similar problems in the future.
Regarding ink usage I have printed 8 - 8x10's and about 10 or so 4x6 photos and the estimate shows that approximately 70% remains in the cartridges. Ink for this printer is not cheap at about $25 per cartridge for the photo inks (14ml) which work in conjunction with the tri color cartridge (14ml), the black cartridge is higher capacity (21ml).
All in all I would have rated this printer higher if not for the software installation issues and the failure of the printer to work with 4x6 paper from the bottom tray (one sheet at a time from the top works but is tedious). The letter size photo paper feeds fine from the lower tray but the 8x10 images are sometimes not square with the page.
Good hardware + printing quality. Annoying software + bad network connectivity
Rating: 3
Pros:
- Good printing quality, reasonable cost.
- Works from XP, Mac OS X and Ubuntu Linux.
Cons:
- Horrible bloatware.
Does HP really really think I need to put 250+ MB aside for a printer driver? I know software is getting bigger, but how many programs need to be loaded every time your computer starts up, just to run a dumb printer? News to you, HP - it's my PC, not yours.
- Network connectivity didn't work very long at all.
When I first set it up, it was recognized on the network, including by my Mac. Then, 2 or 3 weeks later, it wasn't anymore, probably because the printer defaults to some ungodly weird IP address, as shown by the diagnostic print page. And there is no indication anywhere on the manual on how you can set that IP address or get it to grab one from DHCP.
I guess I should now call up HP customer service, be put on hold for 30 minutes just in order to be told how to set the network address. Nope, they couldn't print that on their manual, it would make it look too technical! At a guess, I probably need to run 2 or 3 HP startup programs to allow for autodiscovery. Or maybe run Windows Universal Plug and Play, which is a known security risk.
So I ended up just using it with an extra long USB cable which I plug in from my various computers as I need to. Not quite what I had in mind when I bought this networked printer.
FAST
Rating: 4
Ok, i've had a HP 760 for probably a good 10 years. and actually have had HPs ever since i've owned a computer, back around 1992. It got to the point where my printer took what seemed like forever to print a picture or 2-3 pages of print. and I went looking around for a new one, NOT an "all-in-one" or a "3-n-1", just a straight printer only printer that would do a decent job with photos. Based on the reviews of this printer on here and a couple other sites, I got one and OMG its fast! The paper just seems to ooze out of the printer taking hardly anytime at all! great colour, great printing, easy to set up with Vista. the only thing I dont like about it is that there is no tray to catch the papers when they come out. the little slide out isnt long enuf for regular paper. It has a port for a camera to hook up to to print out, i need a cable to connect the camera to it. USB hook up, software ok--nothing special but they never are. And I like the little popup that shows me just how much ink i have in the wells. I believe it will make it a lot easier than opening the lid every week going 'do i have enuf ink? gee i cant tell about the colour cartridge but the black has enuf" with my old printer. I hope it will last as long as my last one.
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