If you're going to 'rent' a printer, this should be the one!

Almost all printer manufacturers are moving to a pricing model where they almost give away the printer, and make money on selling their ink. (Lexmark started this fine tradition) For low-use needs, I have been extremely happy with the 825C.

In this review, I will talk about the installation, documentation, the driver, setting it up as a network printer, and the speed and print quality.

Install and Set-up
I have installed this printer on Win XP Pro, as well as Win 98 SE. It installed flawlessly both times. Note that the driver is not built in, not even to XP - you have to install from CD. Hooking up the USB connection is a breeze, and the instructions are pretty straightforward.

Documentation
The printer comes with a quick reference guide, but not much else (although they've still managed to make this look thick, by translating it into every world language). It's pretty skimpy on basic information. For example, I was looking for info on how to feed the 4x6 glossy photo paper I have - and I couldn't find information anywhere. I couldn't even find that on the cdrom documentation. (but I did guess right!)

Driver support
The driver is good, although not that fast. I'm not sure if this is a Windows XP problem or a driver problem, but it never seems to remember whether I am trying to print out in black only or in color. And no, it's not smart enough to look at the contents of the print job to determine which ink cartridge to use. I've printed off way too many text-only documents using the color cartridge!

A big drawback of the printer / driver is that it does not know how much ink is in the cartridges. So if it runs out of ink in the middle of a big job, you will not be told, and you'll just waste a lot paper (and potential black ink if it's mixing black with color to create a color document)

The printer tray icon has a somewhat strange behaviour - I'm used to double clicking it to bring up the printer queue, but instead I find I have to go to settings / control panel / printer properties to bring up the print queue and cancel the job.

That's one low-cost network printer!
I have "shared" the printer under XP, and my wirelessly connected laptop saw it right away. No problems printing - only catch is that I can't cancel documents from the laptop - as the queue is setting on the desktop. I didn't even have to install a driver on the laptop - it just inherits it from the desktop.

Printer cost, and cartridge cost
Well, they almost gave it to me. I had a $20 off $50 coupon at OfficeDepot, and Office Max accepted it. In addition there was a $10 gift card. So all in all, I scored the printer for $20! Oh - and cartridges also came out to about $18 apiece using this coupon. Of course, that coupon is long since dead, but I stocked up nicely.

The printer seems to retail normally for $50, and the cartridges run $30 for black and $33 for color. Costco has some nice deals on them, so it's worth it to check that out.

One gotcha here - the printer does NOT come with a black ink cartridge, and if you use the color cartridge for black ink, you'll burn through it pretty fast. In addition, the color cartrdige it comes with is only "trial size" to get you started.

To make up for that though, HP has thrown in a USB cable - something a lot of the cheapies don't. That alone can cost you $10.

Print Quality
I'm very happy with the print quality. Documents come out looking great, and the colors are pretty accurate. I've printed out a few photos using special HP glossy photo paper, (I think some is included in the printer) and they look great too. My friend has a $100 photo printer and we had a hard time telling the difference, in terms of color. I think his was a little sharper.

Print Speed
It's pretty pokey, ok, I admit it. But for their target market, the speed makes sense. So long as it gets the job done unattended, I'm happy. The color photo I printed took a few minutes in highest quality. I think I read that on text, it does about 5 pages a minute.

The competition
The only other printers I have experience with are Lexmark -and they're crap, I'll never buy another Lexmark again, even if it is free after rebate. The printer constantly jammed, printed at a slant, etc. And it always seemd to know when I was in a hurry and misbehaved the most then. What a nightmare!

The printer itself
Even though it's super-budget, the printer feels pretty solid. (i.e. it weighs a lot, not all plastic). The feeding mechanism is flawless (typical HP!). There are two buttons on it, and I have yet to figure out what they do. When stuff goes wrong, I hit the top one. ;)

The paper tray comes out for easy loading of paper. The printer can hold black and white and color cartridges at the same time. Changing cartridges is easy and mess-free.

The printer is fairly chunky, but it's a price I'm willing to pay for a good paper feeder and document tray.

Support and Warranty
Who cares? The thing cost me $20, for crying out loud! If it breaks, I'll get another one. If I get tired of looking at it, I'll get another one! Oh, the waste... I can just picture the local dump filled up with the scanners and printers people have grown weary of and trashed. I don't really agree with the business model that printer manufacturers have fallen into, but I won't start soapboxing.

Conclusion
For the casual printer user, this is the way to go. For the amount of printing I do, it's not worth it to me to find a more expensive printer that will save me a penny per sheet in ink costs. Besides, if I keep watching for those coupons ....

Well, I hope you enjoyed reading my review. And hey - with what I paid for the printer, I only need a few people to read my review (or perhaps read my other reviews as a result of this one!) and it will have paid for itself! Of course, once I run out of ink ......