Proceed at your own risk

This printer seemed promising, but in-use it has not lived up to its promise. It feels rinky-dink compared to the more tank like qualities of my last HP Laserjet which died last year. I actually have owned every generation of the Laserjet from Series I through IV, until HP convinced me that it was time to go to inkjet technology for my home office...

My first one (actually a 7680, which I bought in March of '07 for $399, failed mysteriously within a month and had to be replaced, then #2 the replacement had an out-of-the-box defect, which did not prevent it from printing, but was annoying nevertheless, and they could not tell me how to fix it, so back it went... (By this time HP had sent the body of a 7780, so that I theoretically would have the option of adding just the extra paper tray to upgrade to that level).

#3 worked OK for a while, except it produced a "carriage jam" every once in a while, and while HP has given me a maintenance procedure, this was not confidence inspiring.
I encountered some trouble with feeding heavier paper when I was trying to print business cards from an Avery template, the printing was "off" by .25 inch compared to other printers - annoying.

The quality and speed are good, we'll just have to see how durable it is. My last HP was a Laserjet 4 which gave me little trouble and lasted 15 years with just one major overhaul.

HP's online "chat with a technician" can be very slow, and it constantly feels like you may lose the connection. They have been helpful, warranty exchanges have not been a problem, but the offset for printing business cards they could not solve, because in this case I had a sealed template, and could not edit it to change the margins individually. So if you have a lot of heavy stock to print this is not your printer.

Meanwhile the "carriage jam" problem, which occurred first after the printer mysteriously shut down in the middle of a print job, is becoming terminal, and HP sent me a 4th printer, and my confidence hit a low point. However, the fourth one was the charm. All were warranty replacements within the 1st 3 months. Get extended coverage from HP!

One of the dubious features is that the printer does not like it if it is shut down other than with the on/off button, something which is not documented, but shows up on the printer display. However some of the maintenance procedures HP recommends, involve unplugging the power while the printer is on, and now I keep getting a warning of an "improper shutdown."
The printer display recommends not plugging the printer into a UPS or Surge Protector, so it is not shut down improperly, but rather to plug it into the power directly. This seems kind of self defeating if you're in a building like I am with frequent power problems (A/Cs switching on/off), and for that reason I have carrier grade UPSs. My practical solution thus is to plug it into an unswitched UPS outlet that is always on. All of this creates the impression that this printer was designed to work in the lab, but not in the real world.

I am updating this review as when experience warrants it. My confidence in HP is a bit shaken at this point.
I'm adding this comment in Sept. 07, after a few months living with the 4th copy of this printer, which has given me none of the problems of the earlier ones. And so, all in all it is becoming a workable machine, and the only remaining annoyance is standard templates not lining up with heavier stock.

And as of October, I'm saying it's OK for casual printing, but not workable as any kind of a serious business printer. I'll keep it around as a spare, but it's the last HP printer I'll ever buy. I'm saying that because most months I use perhaps half a ream of paper. This month probably 3 or 4 reams, as well as printing 200 envelopes. Promptly it has paper feeding problems too often (and I use 24lb paper), and then sometimes there are mysterious magnenta inkblots, which even after running a cleaning cycle were slow to go away - conveniently these occurred on an envelope printing job with Stamps printed on them. Every thirtieth envelope or so was misfed, so you have to go back to Stamps.com for a credit, etc. etc. etc.

How anyone could state this printer has a duty cycle of 7,500 pages per month is a mystery to me. It may be tolerable if your needs are 50 pages a month or less. At present, when I'm trying to print something in runs of 50, it seldom can do more than 10 copies in one go, and frequently stops after 3 or 5, and every time it's a paper jam. I've cleaned it repeatedly as per the instructions from an on-line technician, but clearly that's not the problem either. So again, it's beyond me how they come up with these PPM claims, for it hardly ever manages to print as long as a minute continuously, and you need to hire extra people to clear the paper jams.

So, sure enough a few hours later HP offered me another warranty replacement, that'll be the 5th copy. This time a piece of the paper feed mechanism came loose when I had to yank out another sheet of paper in my 50th paper jam of the day. To be continued.

Today, here we are October 28th, on printer #5 or 7+ months after I brought my first copy of this printer home, and after a few successful test pages, I'm printing my first major job, 221 pages of straight text, double-sided. The stats are staggering. I should add that I'm using a 24lb paper, not the thin stuff that tends to cause printer problems. If this printed without a problem it should have used 111 pages. Instead, it misfed numerous times, in the first run wasting 30 sheets exactly, all because 1 doublesided page ended up being printed on 3 or more pages due to misfeeding. This translates to 27% wastage of paper and ink, plus an extra hour of work to redo it. In other words the cost per page ends up being many times more than what a good Laser printer would cost. Meanwhile they are sending me the 6th copy (the 5th warranty replacement) for #5 after working OK for two days started printing all colors in shades of pink. No, I'm not buying my next printer from Hewlett Packard. After 30 years, they've lost me as a customer.

Clearly this printer is suited only to the occasional letter, and not for any serious business use. As of 11/1 I'm expecting the last warranty replacement by tomorrow, and in the interim I'm surveying the damage from 7.5 months of ownership (March 15th till Nov 1st) which is probably about 10 reams of paper, an estimated 7,500 pages (notice this is the theoretical MONTHLY duty cycle). I don't know how many ink cartridges I used, and in all about 30% wastage due to technical difficulties, in short I wasted about 3 reams of paper, and probably 1-2 sets of XL cartridges at $110, or in round numbers about $250. I should also add in on average at least 10-12 hours wasted for each new printer, so some 60 hours of my time, just down the drain trying to make a printer work. So, if my time is worth $50/hour it needlessly cost me $3,250 extra just for the pleasure to own this printer. Oh and I forget paying $30 extra for overnight shipping on one of them. And then buying an extended warranty from HP, which includes overnight shipping for $80, on top of the extended warranty from Staples at the time of purchase. So if you followed the math, I paid near $4,000 in incidentals for my first 5000 pages from this printer (ignoring the 30% wasted), or about 80 cents per page, and I still do not know if I have a reliable printer. I'm approaching the point that it is cheaper to throw it out and buy another printer. Needless to say, every breakdown has been in the middle of a pressure situation.

#6 Arrived, and failed out of the box, but it took 3-4 hours with tech support again before HP admitted it. And of course every time ink and paper is wasted. At the time when HP offered to replace #5, they (again) offered me a 2 year extended 1 day replacement program, and I paid them the $80 for in lieu of $30 extra if I wanted next day replacements.

The next complication was that since #6 failed out of the box (it printed just 1 and 1/3 page, and then went blank), the usually helpful on-line support people who had sold me on paying $80 extra for next day replacement at the last incident, now told me they could not ship the replacement until the prior one came back. So now I started calling other numbers at HP, including a number that was on my extended warranty agreement, where at first they told me the same thing. I had to ask to speak to a supervisor, and he promptly accepted my logic that evidently it was not my problem that they shipped me a broken unit, so they should replace it promptly. By this time however I'm really in doubt that there's any point to go on replacing the same unit, for no printing is getting done, and I will shortly have to rent permanent space at Kinko's. I think HP should offer me a model that works complete with a 3 year service contract, and it should probably be a laserjet by this time - for this printer is their supposed top of the line Inkjet.

Last not least, did I mention that it takes about 2 hours just to install this printer, even if all goes according to plan? Could one of the magazines have mentioned that? I badly want to believe in the HP of old, rock solid and reliable. I've been using their printers for 30 years, and their calculators ever since they first came out. But this experience has soured the relationship considerably.

OK Well the last one, #6 which failed out of the box, as of 11/04 has been replaced with #7, which failed out of the box as well, and it only took 3 or 4 hours with HP service before they admitted the problem, and offered to ship me another replacement. I cannot seem to get them to substitute another model which works. Besides the time and the hassle, there goes another $65 on printer cartridges spent on my personal printer testing service for Hewlett Packard. When I asked them to replace some of the at least 4 sets of wasted ink cartridges from the last half a year, they told me they can only ship me yet another printer. It's even a joke at the UPS counter by now.

I've been resisting threats by HP to ship me the same printer again, and have demanded that if they do, they should ship me an all new one, and at least three complete sets of ink cartridges as well as four reams of paper. This has led to a complete stalemate, and every rep I speak to just has me repeat the whole story. The last one took an hour and half or so to get the serial numbers of the printer, as well as of every cartridge along with expiration dates, along with a recap of the experience. After another 30 minutes or an hour with a manager, I was still no further than an offer of shipping me the same body all over again, meanwhile I was struggling to answer the phones for my business, while being on the line with HP for 4 hours continuously. At this point my girlfriend took over the conversation and is pursuing it up the line at HP. Her old Officejet V40 died in the last 2 months, so she had become temporarily dependent on my printer, but we've now had 2 weeks without a printer, so on 11/08 she bought herself another printer. It should not surprise anyone that it was not an HP. Even printed the nametags with an Avery template correctly, the same kind which gave the HP Officejet PRO hiccups as reported earlier in this story. So here we stand for the moment, awaiting the verdict from HP, to see if they're prepared to provide me with a printer that works.

Ok, never mind all of the above it's now 11/14, and #8 has been here since monday. After getting through to supervisors, and supervisors of supervisors, finally HP concluded it was the printheads after all, and shipped me new printheads. That worked. So I printed 500 pages, to catch up from all the printing I did not do for the past 3 weeks. It never worked so smooth... for about 500 pages. On the next document it jammed. So, first try the procedures for clearing a paper jam three times, then try it again with tech support. So they offered me #9, and I screamed, louder than I did the last few times, and refused to have another remanufactured unit.

Now, realistically, it seems evident that at printer #5, when it started to print in pink, the printheads were failing. Except the on-line help people adamantly refused to replace the printheads, and I had to escalate the issue several levels up before I found someone, who exclaimed: "Why didn't they replace the printheads?" Well, why indeed, for that's what I had been urging them to do. In any case #9 is supposed to be an all-new unit, and HP assures me that this printer has been holding up well generally. They offered me other replacement options, but switching to a laser printer would have involved paying the difference, and I'm not in a mood to spend more money yet again on this problem. As it is, waiting for the factory new replacement means yet another week without printer, and in effect it has been at least one month since I've had a working printer, except plugging in my girl friend's printer (not an HP, I might add).

We shall see. A new printer arrived on 11/27 - HP gave me a wholly new 7780 this time. In the first 100 pages there were numerous carriage jams and paper jams. Then it got better. It got even better when I programmed the printer to default to the bottom paper tray, which seems to produce fewer paper jams than the top tray. So for now that's a marginally acceptable work around. The bottom tray is for regular printing, and the top tray for letterhead or special paper. It's workable, but not great. At this writing, on 12/3 I'm at the point of having printed some 1200 pages, and after about 30% loss due to paperjams for the first 100 pages, it's been much better since then, with only one or two misfeeds per 100 pages. Typically it'll think it is out of paper prematurely and print only one side of a dual-sided job on a sheet, so that you have to reprint those two pages.

For the rest you can see that the paperfeeding is not regular, which becomes very visual if you rifle through a large document with page numbers, and they kind of dance. Not a killer, but this is acceptable only as a backup printer, for the odd letter, not as your main printer, if you need professional results.

Tentatively I'm satisfied at the moment if it does not get any worse than this. Hopefully HP has improved their script for their on-line support so they'll diagnose properly if the printheads fail, as in my case they shipped me 4 printers in vain, when the printheads were the real problem. So from 3/12 till 12/3 of 2007, and I'm on printer #9, or better than one a month on the average, though in reality the last 5 were within one month.

To be fair I will add to this report at least in another month or so, unless there are major incidents sooner than that.

OK on 12/15/07 I'm at 2350 pages this month, almost 3 weeks since I got the printer. That's less than 1/3 the supposed monthly duty cycle. Today printed 3 jobs, total 500 pages, but wasted about 50. In the first job of about 100 pages, it had a paperfeed and carriage jam and when it resumed printing, it started printing the odd pages where the even pages should be, and in the end I had to redo the whole job.
In the 2nd job (200+ pages) it wasted about 6 pages the same way, and the 3rd and final job (200+ pages), it seems to have printed the whole job without a hitch. In short marginally workable, barely acceptable performance.

You can see that the pages are almost never aligned right, for if you hold the papers up to the light, you can see the page numbers are almost always misaligned.

OK, We're now many reams of paper later, and the printer is behaving OK, but not great. I'm coming up on one year with this baby, and the last one has been the best. But not great, not ready for prime time. This is a proof of concept, not a product. I print 200 page docs regularly, with only an occasional problem, mostly a misfeed, or an erroneous out of paper report, usually with 150-200 pages still in the tray. It's manageable, but no fun.
This morning tried to print a 3 page report from theregister and it took 4 tries to get a picture perfect result. All the others had some degree of a misfeed in them. That's what life with this printer has been like. It's no good as a backup printer either, for being an inkjet, the ink will only dry out if you relegate it to secondary status. So there's no future for this printer in my book, and it's only a matter of time until I replace it.
Alright, today on 2/19/08 it's nearly three months with the last brand-new replacement of this printer, and I'm averaging 2,500 pages per month, or 1/3 the rated duty cycle, the problems have been few, and it's manageable. So I'm altering my rating to 2 stars.
Well, it is now March of '08, and it's been a year, and sure enough I spent another 4-5 hours with HP troubleshooting the printer. So it's lasted all of 4 months, with 2,500 pages/month average, or 1/3 the supposed duty cycle. And just now HP offered me yet another replacement. In short, this will be printer #10 after one year, so on average they lasted one month each, and in all it cost me more than a month of trouble shooting work.

Ok, it's now July of '08, and for a while I've been doing low volumes with few problems, but then I had to get a new black ink cartridge, and ever since I've plugged it in earlier in the week, the printer has been acting up, and I have again spent some 6+ hours this week with customer service and trying various things on the printer. It also cost me 25% of the ink in 4 cartridges and some 100 sheets of paper. And it's still not resolved as I write this.
Well now, it's July 17th, the replacement arrived yesterday, printed one page right, and by now it's malfunctioning again, and since the start of this episode I've used another 200 sheets of paper, and a full complement of XL ink-cartridges, and the sadistic HP tech keeps asking me if I have more fresh cartridges. Ok, and now finally two weeks later, after sending me a replacement printer which did not change the problem at all, they once again come to the conclusion that they'll replace the printheads, but they won't make up for the ink cartridges wasted while they misdiagnosed the problem for two weeks.