Electronics : HP C7280 Photosmart All-in-One Printer (CC567A#ABA)

Rating: - Nice All-In-One, Firmware Isnt!
This is a nice all-in-one hardware wise -- the problem I have with this is the Firmware installed on the machine is just not good.

My condo is pre-wired for ethernet so all I had to do is plug it in to the ethernet connection in the wall and it was ready to go (I use a Mac) - No Installation Problems.

UNFORTUNATELY it relies heavily on the firmware installed on the actial printer / all-in-one machine.

The main problems I have is with the firmware that runs on the actual device. The firmware is extremely slow and isn't efficient. If you have a print queue it prints extremely slow. The menu on the screen is not very functional and it totally screws it up if the power happens to go out. My power went out from a thunderstorm and the firmware made the printer go through this huge process just to get back in action (tons of noise) -- never seen this from over 6+ printers. It also says it can possibly be damaged if not shut down properly (wtf?) this was displayed when the power went out and it was turned off involuntarily.

If only they would update the firmware.

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Rating: - Not really happy
I want to start out saying I LOVE HP products. I have two laptops a desktop and this is my 3rd or 4th printer from them. I have always been happy with their products. Until now.. I purchased this printer because I wanted a wireless networking printer. My laptops roam around my house and leaving a desktop on to serve as a print server is a waste of resources. And my wireless router is in one room while I wanted the printer to reside in another. I did read the reviews about the software and decided that I like many others would just download the drivers for the all in one. Initially this worked great. I have the printer connected via the USB cable to my desktop ( as recommended for large file prints ie pictures.) and wirelessly to everything else on my network. The first week and a half was great. I thought I had beat the HP software bug.. But then I woke up one morning to every light on the printer flashing. The printer would not respond to anything but a soft power cycle (I hit the power button). This brought the printer back and I didn't think anything more about it. Then another week went by and it happened again. This time I started researching what was going on. I found on the printer an error log area and found that the printer is having a firmware error 69666. I looked online, nope no firmware updates. I then turned to HP for support. This was/is the worst experience I have ever had with customer support. And I'm a comcast customer! The for lack of a better word "tech" first had me reset the printer and then said all should be well and disconnected our chat window. Another week or so and it happened again. I called over, the again "tech" had me checking every freaking function of this printer. No matter how many times I said this printer works its just locking up and that the functionality is not the problem. At the end of that call I was told that it was a power problem and that I should move the printer to another socket. (whatever! that is a brand new socket replaced by a professional!) The tech then refused to help me out and hung up. I ended up calling back speaking with someone and finally just told him look. The error log says firmware error. If you are unaware of this then here is your notice. They ended up sending me out a replacement. A refurbished replacement. I purchased a brand new printer and they want to send me out a refurb?? I got lucky and was able to work out something with the place that I purchased the printer with and they exchanged the refurb with another new printer.. And guess what this one is having the same problems as the first! The software sucks HP CUE is slow to load and will cause Vista to come to a halt during boot. You can disable that in services and not loose anything.. (Oh yeah I forgot to mention they had me load the software onto my PC because according to HP that was my problem).
I believe the problem with the printer is a firmware problem. But no one is willing to man up and admit to it. If I could I would return this printer and get my money back 270 bucks for a printer with this many problems upsets me. But I am stuck with it and hoping that HP will do the right thing and figure out why this printer has so many problems. Right now I power down the printer at night. No one uses it then anyway. This also keeps it from having the reoccurring issues it seems to have. Although there have been a couple of times that I had to do a hard shutdown (unplug the power cable) because the printer found itself in a software loop and wouldn't shut it self down after 30 minutes. Once the printer actually confused itself.. I would send a file to print and it would take over 5 minutes to print one page. ( Yes I waited) A power cycle corrected that problem also. Which is another reason for the power down at night.
I wouldn't recommend this printer at this point in time and I am half way tempted to say no to all HP products.. But I have had such good luck that I will probably still buy them.. Just invest in the stores insurance that way I can return it and the store can give me my money back to find a product that works.. Especially since HP's customer service is so bad. After reading a couple of reviews I am wondering if the problem isn't the wireless connectivity.. Or maybe a wireless/printer cable problem.. Who knows.. I shouldn't have to wonder why my brand new printer isn't working properly..

September 8, 2008
I couldn't let it rest. So I set out to see if I could fix the problem with my printer locking itself up. So far so good. For the past week and a few days I have fought my urge to turn the printer off at night (I am all about saving electricity) and have left the printer powered on.. And so far no problems. I did two things maybe both or just one of them fixed my problem. First I went into my wireless router and set it up so that my printers wireless nic could not access the internet. Then I gave my printer a static IP address. I had wondered if the problem wasn't when my wireless router would refresh IP's if my printer did not have some sort of problem. Unless I missed something I do not believe it was stated in the manual that this printer should have a static IP. Also I haven't had any further problems with slow printing.
In response to someones complaint that photos show a yellow tint to them. I have noticed that if I do not use the high end HP photo paper this will happen. I might be willing to raise the star level on this printer to 4 stars.. But I still do not like their customer service nor software..

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Rating: - Works perfectly with Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron
Long story short. It works perfect with Ubuntu 8.04. Install the HPLIP package. Printing, scanning, faxing all work across the wireless network.

Thank you HP for giving enough technical specifications to allow a project like HPLIP to work.

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Rating: - For anyone having trouble finding the printer on the network
Hello all, first of all I need to say I have only had this printer for a couple weeks, I have had quite a time getting all my computers to see it on installation, so why am I giving it 5 starts you ask? because I have found most problems are due to routers, network setup, type of Windows you are using and any Firewall software you have.

First point you should absolutely follow the instructions posted here by some other reviewers about downloading latest software of HP.com and installing only what software you will use, this will make your life a bit easier, however the problem with these network printers is you usually have to have a little more than basic knowlegde in networks and Windows and even with that, I struggled for 4 days to get things up and running.

As for wireless, following the included instructions I had my printer connected wirelessly in a jiffy..if you can't connect make sure your printer and router are using the same encryption type for the password (WEP or whatever), as soon as you are connected to the network, go and setup a static IP address for your PC, this will make it so your computers on the network can always resolve it to the same IP, this is done from the printer screen, go to setup => advanced Network Setup and choose a manual IP address, now you will need to know what range is assigned by your router by going into the router setup page through Internet Explorer (hey no one said this would be easy but trust me totally worth it in the end) most routers give a default range of say 192.168.1.100 to 192.168.1.150 now this means the first PC to come on to the network will get the IP 192.168.1.100 the next will get 192.168.1.101 and so on, so if you have 3 or 4 PCs the highest it might go to is 105, what you want to do is pick an IP adderess high above this range so you cause conflict, I set my printer to 192.168.1.149.

Now for installing on the computers I have 2 XP computers (one PC and one Laptop) and a Vista laptop, I use a Linksys router (which I highly reccomend, they have great routers) and I use AVG Firewall. first thing to do as everyone says it shutoff all Firewalls (some firewalls when shut off automatically turn on the Windows Firewall so you will have to go and disable it from Control Panel), I did this and shut down all firewall software, still the installation software could not find the printer, what I found out the hard way is that AVG and a lot of other firewall softwares run a firewall service in the background even when you shut down the program!!!! dang it!! go to service through Control Panel again and sure enough AVG Firwall was running, you need to disable and stop the service.... and...WALLA...PRINTER found..

since then it has been smooth sailing, the printer is not all that noisy, it is very fast even for color printing, photo quility is ridicolously great! and I love the duplex feature..sure it take a little longer, the printer waits for each page ink to dry then like magic, takes the page back in and and prints on the reverse side. The printer goes to sleep after some idle time and once you send a document to be printed, it wakes up and spits it out! love love love it, I no longer have to carry my laptop to the office and hook it up to print.also the web printing software is not half bad, you can select which part of the page you wanna print and presto... no longer have to print a whole page with ads in order to get the one tin box that I needed, if you tried printing selected text in the past then you probably know that the text comes out all messed up.
Sorry for this long long review but I just thought I had a little more to add that had not been mentioned in other reviews, hope this helps someone.Happy printing..totally recommended!!

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Rating: - Good product; tough installation
It was tough to install this product with a Vista (32-bit)operating system. The Photosmart C4380 was significantly easier, but this product does have a lot of nice features. Its color printing is phenomenal, and it can print on both sides of the page automatically. That said, I had to spend a while on the phone with HP just to get printing after struggling with it quite a while on my own. Price-wise, it was worth it. Time-wise, it was not.