Hewlett Packard Photosmart 3310 All-In-One InkJet Printer

We've been in the IT field for almost 20 years now. I personally was CTO for a major automotive supplier in the Grand Rapids, MI area. We had a customer ask us to set up a new remote office. Because it is a model home office in a condominium complex, we went wireless. We asked if they wanted us to pickup an all-on-one for them or if they were going to. They decided they would do it. When I got there I was impressed, and commended them on their pick. They picked out the 3310. Incredible features. WOW! It had a wireless print server built in! Since they would be sharing the printer, we decided to set it up in the infrastructure mode so they could take their laptops with them without inconveniencing the other. We are familiar with all of the HP external print servers and internal cards, including wireless. During install, the CD says it will take 25 minutes to install. I couldn't imagine what could take so long to install a printer, but I thought OK, whatever. When the software went into discovery, it could not locate the printer no matter what we did. So, we put the IP in through the LCD, and after that it found it fine. About 45 minutes later, and that on a brand new 810 Dell Laptop, we have the printer software installed. I tried printing from the PC and it printed fine. I tried faxing from the PC and it faxed fine. The project manager for the condos walked up to do a standup fax, but he had multiple documents. The 3310 has no document feeder, but it's smart and asks you if you have more pages, and you simply put the next one on the glass and continue. Cool! Except, on the second page, it crashed with binary characters all over the LCD and a frozen printer. That's something we haven't seen in 20 years. Maybe a fluke. Next I install the software on the project managers, and 3 year old HP laptop. A whopping 65 minutes later at the end of the install, the install crashes. I was hoping it finished. It was. When I connected his via cable to the network it worked. The next day, the girl with the new Dell calls me to tell me she can't send email, but she can surf the web. I call in via Go-To-Meeting and find out that for some odd reason, she can do it fine when hardwired. She also gets limited connectivity errors 3 feet away from the wireless router. Later I get another call, from the supervisor. He cannot connect wireless from 35 feet away. I went there and sat down where he was with my laptop, and there was no problem. We switch wireless cards, same thing I connect and he doesn't. The girl with the Dell complains that he computer is super slow. I check it out, and her mouse even skips. I decided to do a reinstall of the software on the supervisor s laptop because the end of the install didn't go so well. I uninstalled the printer software, and then it hit me. I took his laptop back where it didn't receive wireless, and it worked fine. I took it 1/2 a block away and sent and received emails, surfed the internet, no problem. The supervisor went in to send a walk-up fax and got the printer screen of death again. The girl with the new Dell is reinstalling her own software, and got it to work. Her scanning stopped. It fixed the scan problem, but her computer was still a dog. The girl with the new Dell is limping with a hardwire connection to the network. In her words, "I don't have time for finicky computer hardware". The supervisor decided to use his laptop printer and do walk-up faxes and reboot the printer when it crashes. He doesn't want the software on his computer. As for us? We are going to bill the customer for 10 1/2 hours of troubleshooting plus install time. I'm glad we didn't buy the printer.

If this review comes too late for you, you might try turning off the wireless. I noticed that it injects software into your TCP/IP stack for some reason. The printer has several interfaces including RJ45, USB, and wireless. You may have better results hardwiring it to the router. Even so, that doesn't explain why the printer crashes with binary characters on the screen during walk-up faxes.

Why spend my time writing this? Because you've helped our company by relaying your experiences to us in the past. I'm simply returning the favor.